Early Christianity and Judaism

The split of early Christianity and Judaism took place during the first centuries AD. It is commonly attributed to a number of events, including the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus (c. 33), the Council of Jerusalem (c. 50), the destruction of the Second Temple and institution of the Jewish tax in 70, the postulated, and largely discredited, Council of Jamnia c. 90, and the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–135.

While it is commonly believed that Paul the Apostle established a primarily Gentile church within his lifetime, it took centuries for a complete break with Judaism to manifest, and the relationship between Paul and Second Temple Judaism is still disputed with a wide range of views.

The traditional view has been that Judaism existed before Christianity and that Christianity separated from Judaism some time after the destruction of the Second Temple. Recently, some scholars have argued that there were many competing Jewish sects in the Holy Land during the Second Temple period, and that those that became Rabbinic Judaism and Proto-orthodox Christianity were but two of these. Some of these scholars have proposed 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 AD there were not yet two separate religions called 'Judaism' and 'Christianity'".

Daniel Boyarin proposes a revised understanding of the interactions between nascent Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity, viewing 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".

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