In reading March 29 cover story ”Scrolls link Judaism, Christianity”
(March 29) I found a number of issues in the article worth commenting on. First of all, it is surprising that assistant professor Michael Wise, who
”still attends church,” would think that the separation of Judaism and Christianity in the Middle East ”may have been an accident of history.”
While those persons holding a secular point of view might see an event as an
”accident,” those of a religious point of view (in this case Christian)
would see a supernatural plan.
A second issue is the assertion that the inevitable split between Jews and Jewish Christians occurred as a result of the second Jewish revolt against the Romans (A.D. 133-135) led by Simon Bar-Kokhba. History indicates the split between the two groups was occurring much earlier. Jewish Christians in Judea were formally banned from the synagogues sometime between A.D. 85 and 90 as a result of the Council of Jamnia.
Third, the supposition in the article that parallels between Judaism and Christianity is news because of newly released evi-dence from the Dead Sea Scrolls is misleading. Parallels also exist in fairly well known Judaic works from the intertestament-al period (165 B.C.-A.D. 49).
