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The message of love is not new
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Love is the answer.
The Christ had two rules, and only two rules, that he was concerned with: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. While the first is important, it is the second one on which we will focus.
Loving one’s neighbor as one’s self, at its core, is the concept of goodness. If we are good to ourselves, then we should be just as good to our neighbors. As vessels of goodness then, it means that we are not evil, nor do we do evil to another. While this is the simple message of the Christ, it is not a unique message.
Socrates, who lived about five centuries before the Christ was a man whose life was spent searching for goodness. He once said, “I have never stopped investigating and learning any good thing I could.” Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote of Socrates’ belief in goodness in one of his many letters: “They say that the great Socrates used to declare that his work was done when his encouragement had fairly driven a man to an urge to understand and acquire virtue. When a man was convinced that his prime need was to become a good man, the rest of philosophy followed easily.”
In the Hindu Upanishads, written approximately eight centuries prior to the Christ, we find the following:
“Concealed in the heart of all beings is the Atman, the Spirit, the Self; smaller than the smallest atom, greater than the vast spaces. ... Not even through deep knowledge can the Atman be reached, unless evil ways are abandoned. ... Who sees the many and not the One, wanders on from death to death. Even by the mind this truth is to be learned: there are not many but only One. Who sees variety and not the unity wanders on from death to death.” -- Katha Upanishad.
And in the Bhagavad Gita, written around the same time, give or take a century: “No doer of good works will tread an evil path...” -- (6:40)
The Buddhist Dhammapada (sayings attributed to Buddha, who lived from approximately 563 BC to 483 BC) contains the following: “He who for the sake of happiness hurts others who also want happiness, shall not hereafter find happiness.” (131) “He who overcomes the evil that he does with the good that he afterwards does, he sheds a light over the world like that of the moon when free from clouds.” (173)
So, no the Christ’s message is not new. But it was, and is, a universal message handed down from God, Allah, Vishnu, whatever one chooses to call the Divine.
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