As I have been thinking through the significance of Hillel in the framework of changing modes of leadership and transmission of the Masorah in the turbulent times in which Jewry found itself about a hundred years before the Destruction of the Second Temple, I came across a significant body of scholarship that argues that the figure of the founder of Christianity was modeled in many ways after the character of Hillel. As jarring as this may be to a Jewish reader, to whom Hillel is a revered figure and Jesus is, at best, an upstart rebel whose teachings and conduct caused a schism within Judaism that has brought untold suffering to his people and delayed, by who knows how long, the revelation of Hashem's unity to humanity, many of these parallels are compelling. Both were outsiders, Hillel from Babylonia and Jesus from Galilee. Both were traced to David though their mothers (there is a contradiction between Luke and Matthew on this point: Under the Lucan text, Jesus would be a biological descendant of David through his mother). Both were described as gentle and loving teachers (although Jesus unlike HIllel, lehavdil, made some agressive statements) and, as is well known, the New Testament quotes a number of teachings of Hillel and only one (limitation of divorce to adultery) of Shammai. There are many other parallels.
This is not surprising. Modern scholarship takes for granted that the "New" Testament was shaped many years after the events that it purports to describe and that it was edited to conform to prophecies, texts and traditions of the past. This is why the central argument of Christianity that Jesus was foretold by Hebrew Scripture is spurious at its core. Of course - the stories of Jesus were written down and edited to specifically conform to the per-existent texts. In science this would be known as writing the paper to fit the data and it would be called scientific misconduct. A prophecy is only valid if it predicts something that was not known at the time of its composition.
A interesting anthology devoted to this question is Hillel and Jesus (with synopses of the articles). A review of the book is found here. A short discussion here.
Add: A reader pointed out to me an article from Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks that compares R. Akiva and Paul.
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