Split of early Christianity and Judaism

[Anthony]

The split between Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism and Early/Proto-orthodox Christianity was a slowly growing chasm between Christians and Jews in the first centuries of the Christian Era. It is commonly attributed to a number of pivotal events: the Rejection of Jesus c.30, the Council of Jerusalem c.50, the Destruction of the Second Temple in 70, the postulated Council of Jamnia c.90, and/or the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–135. On the one hand, while it is commonly thought that Paul established a Gentile church within his lifetime, it took centuries for a complete break to manifest, and the relationship of Paul of Tarsus and Judaism is still disputed, as are many events of the nascent common era; on the other, this is one of best documented and fertile epochs of history, archaeology and the formative years of Western thought.

For centuries, the traditional understanding has been that Judaism came before Christianity and that Christianity separated from Judaism some time after the destruction of the Second Temple. Recently, scholars have begun to believe that the historical picture is quite a bit more complicated than that. In the 1st century, many Jewish sects existed in competition with each other; see Second Temple Judaism. The sects which eventually became Rabbinic Judaism and Proto-orthodox Christianity were but two of these. Some scholars have begun to propose a model which envisions a twin birth of Proto-Orthodox Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism rather than a separation of the former from the latter. For example, Robert Goldenberg asserts that it is increasingly accepted among scholars that "at the end of the 1st century CE there were not yet two separate religions called ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’".[1]

Daniel Boyarin proposes a revised understanding of the interactions between nascent Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity which views the two "new" religions as intensely and complexly intertwined throughout this period. Boyarin writes: "for at least the first three centuries of their common lives, Judaism in all of its forms and Christianity in all of its forms were part of one complex religious family, twins in a womb, contending with each other for identity and precedence, but sharing with each other the same spiritual food, as well".

"Without the power of the orthodox Church and the Rabbis to declare people heretics and outside the system it remained impossible to declare phenomenologically who was a Jew and who was a Christian. At least as interesting and significant, it seems more and more clear that it is frequently impossible to tell a Jewish text from a Christian one. The borders are fuzzy, and this has consequences. Religious ideas and innovations can cross borders in both directions."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Chris...nd_Judaism