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Hershel Shanks’ editorship of another collection50 was considered only partially successful by the reviewer Martin Goodman.51 One of its strengths lies in the detailed histories presented by such authors as Geza Vermes, James Charlesworth, and Harold Attridge. Four writers in the same volume, Louis Feldman, Lee Levine, Shaye Cohen, and Isaiah Gafni, treat the history of the Jews. That same year, Princeton University Press published Feldman's treatment of significant questions relevant to the separation of Christianity from Judaism such as proselytism.52
An examination of the vast array of secondary literature available serves to underline the sparseness of historical material to document the early stages of the conflict and to illustrate the complexity of the problem. As the source material for the early stages of the separation leaves many questions unanswered, it is possible for commentators to come to opposite conclusions when using the same source material. One example has been included in the chapter on Sabbath and Sunday.
John Painter has commented that, in general, the literature fails to acknowledge that though continuity can be seen in a number of areas, a distinction needs to be made between primary, essential elements, which mark out Christianity as having separated from Judaism, and secondary elements, where Christianity has remained attached to it.53 There is the need for another way of approaching the question of the separation of early Christianity from Judaism.
Again, a Judaism in transition is reflected in the literature and liturgical practices of the early church and in literature found at Qumran. Similarities in belief and practices outlined in Qumran literature and in those of the early Christians indicate that the teachings of both groups sprang from a common source within Judaism, rather than from direct contacts between the two ideologies.54
Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, some new studies have been added to the existing literature, such as the comprehensive work edited by Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, which grew