Regarding Christians being "just" a Jewish sect foe "hundreds of
years."
Uh . no. Sorry. Wrong.
Jesus was indeed born Jewish. Some of what Jesus preached is very
reminiscent of Hillel's preaching - no surprise, because they were
members of the same tradition. But at the time of his death, the most
powerful groups and/or sects in Roman Judaea considered Jesus and his
followers heretical. This is one of the reasons Pilate didn't want to
be involved - it was an internal Jewish matter, as far as he was
concerned. Moreover, the protection given Christians as Jews didn't
last all that long. Jews who saw Christians as heretics pushed for the
protections to be removed, and we have executions of Christians under
Claudius and Nero. Under emperors like Trajan, Christianity was only
prosecuted as a crime in a don't ask, don't tell" way - but it was
certainly considered a crime. And from the very early stages,
Christians didn't consider themselves Jews any longer.
SO, if Christians didn't consider themselves to be Jewish, proper Jews
didn't consider them Jewish, and the Romans (who only began to define
Christians as different *after* being told by the Sanhedrin et al. that
Christians weren't Jews) didn't think they were Jews, how could they
have been Jewish for hundreds of years? Just wondering ;-)
Absolutes can be awkward on the wikipedia unless you have facts to back
them up - and even then, if it's historical, there will be other facts
that might not back you - and someone else is bound to know them.