Jewish Christians, also Hebrew Christians or Judeo-Christians, were the original members of the Jewish movement that later became Christianity. In the earliest stage the community was made up of all those Jews who accepted Jesus as a venerable person or even the Messiah (Christ). As Christianity grew and evolved, Jewish Christians became only one strand of the early Christian community, characterised by combining the confession of Jesus as Christ with continued adherence to Jewish traditions such as Sabbath observance, observance of the Jewish calendar, observance of Jewish laws and customs, circumcision, and synagogue attendance, and by a direct genetic relationship to the earliest Jewish Christians.