Very interesting indeed, Jazzo. Thanks for starting this thread.

Since I was just a short while ago posting in reply to remarks in the "Didymus' thread, I suppose the Bible was still fresh in my mind. So here is an instance of conflict resolution which changed the course of history. This is recorded in the 10th and 11th chapters of the Acts of the Apostles (the 5th book of the New Testament for those of you who are not Biblical scholars and want to LIU).

The background: The Jews had, for centuries, followed a set of beliefs, laws and customs which were peculiar to themselves and very different from the rest of the ancient world. They kept themselves strictly apart from non-Jews, or Gentiles; so much so that the few exceptions recorded merely show how complete this separateness was. Jesus, when he began teaching and preaching, did not absolutely shun and exclude Gentiles, although he made it very clear that he considered himself to have been sent to the Jews.

When the Apostles and other followers of Jesus, who were all Jews, began preaching the new Way (as it is called in the Acts) they began organizing their followers. They did not set out to found a new religion, but a new way of practicing the Jewish religion. But the authorities of the Temple in Jerusalem closed that path to them by forbidding them to continue to teach or follow the new Way, thus forcing the separation of the Way from official Judaism. Not long after, the first signs of conflict began to appear, between the Hellenistic Jews and the Israelite Jews. This disappeared when one of the most popular of the Hellenistic party, Stephen, was stoned to death for daring to confront the Sanhedrin. But another source of conflict arose with the appearance of Gentiles who wanted to follow the Way and associate themselves with the other followers, who were all Jews, either Hellenistic or Israelite. The conservative members of the movement objected strongly to the idea of associating with uncircumcized Gentiles who practiced dietary and othe habits which were not only foreign but disgusting to Jews. One of those who thought that Gentiles should be accepted was the former Saul of Tarsus, who had formerly been a very righteous Pharisee and a persecutor of the new religion and who had undergone a sudden conversion whilst en route to Damascus to arrest some of the heretics. He changed his name to Paul and returned to Jerusalem, seeking to be accepted and put to work, but no one at that point trusted him.

All the above is described in the first 9 chapters of Acts and covers at least several years, maybe as many as 10.

Acts 10 and 11 gives this story: One Cornelius, a Roman centurion living in Caesarea, who was a good and devout man, had a vision which told him to seek a man called Peter who was then in Joppa lodging with Simon the tanner, as Peter was the answer to his prayers to God. Cornelius sent a couple slaves and a soldier whom he trusted to go find Peter. Meanwhile Peter (the same Peter who was Jesus' chief disciple and one of the leaders of the new Way) had a vision in which he saw all manner of birds and animals which were unclean to Jews. A voice commanded him to eat of them. Peter demurred on the grounds of being a good Jew, but the voice informed him that what God made clean, he should not call profane. While he was trying to figure out what this meant, the messengers from Cornelius arrived and begged Peter to come to their master. He went to him, although as a Jew he should not have entered the house of a Gentile. Cornelius told him of his vision and Peter realized that the two were connected. He then began to preach to those around him, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him." He went on, expounding the history of Jesus and beliefs of his followers. The Holy Spirit came over all those present and even the Gentiles manifested the gifts of the Spirit, much to the surprise of the Jews. When Peter returned to Jerusalem, he recounted all this in detail to the other leaders of the infant Church and it was at that time that it became official policy that Gentiles might be admitted to membership in the new Way, although it took until Paul and his associates began converting large numbers of Gentiles that they were accepted as complete equals with Jews, with no requirements that they be circumcized or follow the Jewish laws and customs.

The followers of the Way, who were first called 'Christians' in Antioch, went on to spread the new religion through many churches planted all over the ancient world, into Rome itself, and eventually to turn the Roman Empire upside down. Could this ever have been if the early [Jewish] leaders had insisted on keeping it a purely Jewish movement, rejecting the Gentiles? I have no doubt that under those circumstances it would have survived, if at all, merely as a minor offshoot of Judaism, sort of like the way Hasidism exists within Judaism. And the Gentile world would, I imagine, have followed a totally different path from what it actually did. The willingness of Peter and the other Jewish leaders of the Way to embrace people totally foreign to them made this possible.