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.