The study of the historical Jesus has wavered, since its earliest phases, between two extremes: uncritical acceptance and an equally uncritical scepticism - either Jesus is the divine Messiah proclaimed by the Christian faith over the centuries, or is only a prophet, who was defeated in his expectations and rehabilitated only by the mythical narrative created by his followers to justify the failure of their hopes. There is however another, historically more likely, alternative. The rediscovery of the diversity of Judaisms in the Second Temple period makes it now possible to relocate Jesus and his movement within the Jewish world, with full respect for his Jewish identity, without downplaying the originality and specificity of the Christian position. There was in fact not a single normative Jewish messianism from which, or against which, the Christian messianism arose. In its origins, Christian messianism was nothing but one of the possible messianisms in competition with others. Starting from the analysis of the trajectories of ancient Jewish messianism to the eschatological expectations in a final Messiah in the Second Temple period, the paper sieves the Jewish roots of early christology in the perspective of continuity with the Jewish messianism. It thus becomes possible to say that Jesus was both Jewish and Christian. He was totally Jewish by birth, culture and religion. He was and remained such even when he became the founder and leader of the Christian movement and the promoter of a distinctive messianic interpretation.