During theIron Age I period (12th to 11th centuries BCE[7]),the religion of theIsraelites branched out of the Canaanite religion and took the form ofYahwism. Yahwism was thenational religion of theKingdom of Israel and of theKingdom of Judah.[8][9]As distinct from other Canaanite religious traditions, Yahwism wasmonolatristic and focused on the particular worship ofYahweh, whom his worshippers conflated withEl.[10] Yahwists started to deny the existence of other gods, whether Canaanite or foreign, as Yahwism became more strictlymonotheistic over time.[11][12]
Rabbinic Judaism developed inlate antiquity, during the 3rd to 6th centuries CE; theMasoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible and theTalmud were compiled in this period. The oldest manuscripts of the Masoretic tradition come from the 10th and 11th centuries CE, in the form of theAleppo Codex (of the later portions of the 10th century CE) and of theLeningrad Codex (dated to 1008–1009 CE). Due largely to censoring and the burning of manuscripts in medieval Europe, the oldest existing manuscripts of variousrabbinic works are quite late. The oldest surviving complete manuscript copy of theBabylonian Talmud dates from 1342 CE.[16]
Judaism has three essential and related elements: the study of theTorah; the recognition ofIsrael as God'schosen people and the recipients of God'slaw atMount Sinai; and the requirement that Israel and their descendants live according to the laws outlined in the Torah.[17] These three elements have their origins in Iron AgeYahwism, and, laterSecond Temple Judaism.[18]
Other neighbouring Canaanite kingdoms also each had their own national god originating from the Canaanite pantheon of gods:Chemosh was the god ofMoab,Milcom was the god of theAmmonites,Qaus was the god of theEdomites, and so on. In each kingdom, the king was his national god'sviceroy on Earth.[22][23][24]
The national gods in Canaan were relatively equal, mirroring the balance of the kingdoms. Each kingdom featured a divine couple—Yahweh and the goddessAsherah in Israel and Judah—who led a pantheon of lesser gods.[20][25][26]
By the late 8th century BCE, both Judah and Israel had become vassals of theAssyrian Empire, bound by treaties of loyalty on one side and protection on the other. TheNorthern Kingdom rebelled and was destroyedc. 722 BCE; refugees from the former kingdom fled to Judah, bringing with them the tradition that Yahweh, already known in Judah, was not merely the most important of the gods, but theonly god who should be served.[27]Variousprophets traditionally played significant roles in promoting Yahwism at the expense of its rival religions, both in the North and South.[28]The Yahwist-centred outlook was taken up by the Judahite landowning elite, who became extremely powerful in court circles in the next century when they placed the eight-year-oldJosiah (r. 641–609 BCE) on the throne. During Josiah's reign, Assyrian power suddenly collapsed (after 631 BCE), and a pro-independence movement took power in Jerusalem, promoting both the independence of Judah from foreign overlords and loyalty to Yahweh as the sole god of Israel. With Josiah's support, the "Yahweh-alone" movement launched a full-scale reform of worship, including a covenant (i.e., treaty) between Judah and Yahweh, replacing that between Judah and Assyria.[29]
By the time this occurred, Yahweh had already been absorbing or superseding the positive characteristics of the other gods and goddesses of the pantheon, a process of appropriation that was an essential step in the subsequent emergence of one of Judaism's most notable features: its uncompromisingmonotheism.[25]Philip R. Davies argues that the people of ancient Israel and Judah did not adhere to Judaism as it is understood now. Instead, they practiced polytheistic worship involving multiple gods, focusing on fertility, local shrines, and regional legends. They likely did not possess a written Torah, specific laws governing ritual purity, or a sense of a covenant with a singular national deity.[30]
Model of theSecond Temple showing the courtyards and the Sanctuary, as described inMiddot
In 586 BCE, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the Judean elite – the royal family, the priests, the scribes, and other members of the elite – were taken to Babylon in captivity. They represented only a minority of the population, and Judah, after recovering from the immediate impact of war, continued to have a life not much different from what had gone before. In 539 BCE, Babylon fell to the Persians; theBabylonian exile ended and a number of the exiles, but by no means all and probably a minority, returned to Jerusalem. They were the descendants of the original exiles, and had never lived in Judah; nevertheless, in the view of the authors of the Biblical literature, they, and not those who had remained in the land, were "Israel".[31] Judah, now called Yehud, was a Persian province, and the returnees, with their Persian connections in Babylon, were in control of it. They represented also the descendants of the old "Yahweh-alone" movement, but the religion they instituted was significantly different from both monarchic Yahwism[6] and modern Judaism. These differences include new concepts of priesthood, a new focus on written law and thus on scripture, and a concern with preserving purity by prohibiting intermarriage outside the community of this new "Israel".[6]
The Yahweh-alone party returned to Jerusalem after the Persian conquest of Babylon and became the ruling elite of Yehud. Much of the Hebrew Bible was assembled, revised and edited by them in the 5th century BCE, including theTorah (the books ofGenesis,Exodus,Leviticus,Numbers, andDeuteronomy), the historical works, and much of the prophetic andWisdom literature.[32][33] The Bible narrates the discovery of a legal book in the Temple in the seventh century BCE, which the majority of scholars see as some form of Deuteronomy and regard as pivotal to the development of the scripture.[34] The growing collection of scriptures was translated into Greek in the Hellenistic period by the Jews of the Egyptian diaspora, while the Babylonian Jews produced thecourt tales of theBook of Daniel (chapters 1–6 of Daniel – chapters 7–12 were a later addition), and the books ofTobit andEsther.[35]
In his seminalProlegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Prologue to the History of Israel) of 1878,Julius Wellhausen argued that Judaism as a religion based on widespread observance of Torah law first emerged in 444 BCE when, according to the biblical account provided in theBook of Nehemiah (chapter 8), a priestly scribe namedEzra read a copy of the Mosaic Torah before the populace of Judea assembled in a central Jerusalem square.[39] Wellhausen believed that this narrative should be accepted as historical because it sounds plausible, noting: "The credibility of the narrative appears on the face of it."[40] Following Wellhausen, most scholars throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries have accepted that widespread Torah observance began sometime around the middle of the 5th century BCE.
More recently, Yonatan Adler argued in his 2022 book,The Origins of Judaism, that in fact there is no surviving evidence to support the notion that the Torah was widely known, regarded as authoritative, and put into practice, any time prior to the middle of the 2nd century BCE.[41] Adler explored the likelihood that Judaism, as the widespread practice of Torah law by Jewish society at large, first emerged in Judea during the reign of theHasmonean dynasty, centuries after the putative time of Ezra.[42] This point of view is supported by Israeli archaeologistIsrael Finkelstein.[43]
Not all scholars have been convinced by Adler's thesis. In his review of Adler's work, Benjamin D. Gordon argued that Adler relies on a questionable argument from silence to support his claim that the Torah was not widely observed before the 2nd century BCE. Gordon states that, sinceJudea in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods was sparsely populated and its material culture was nondescript and austere, the lack of evidence for Torah-observance during these periods "may simply reflect the limitations of our source material."[44] Malka Z. Simkovich has also argued that there is some positive evidence that Jews from pre-Hasmonean times observed precepts from the Torah.[45]
John J. Collins argues thatHecataeus of Abdera (c. 300 BCE) recorded that the writtenMosaic law was already "known and accepted as the authoritative expression of the Jewish way of life at the beginning of the Hellenistic period". According to Collins, this implies that Jews had started observing the Torah already in thePersian period.[15]
For centuries, the traditional understanding has been that thesplit of early Christianity and Judaism some time after thedestruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE was the first major theological schism in Jewish tradition. Starting in the latter half of the 20th century, some scholars have begun to argue that the historical picture is quite a bit more complicated than that.[46][47]
By the 1st century, Second Temple Judaism was divided into competing theological factions, notably thePharisees and theSadducees, besides numerous smaller sects such as theEssenes,messianic movements such asEarly Christianity, and closely related traditions such asSamaritanism (which gives us theSamaritan Pentateuch, an important witness of the text of the Torah independent of theMasoretic Text). The sect of Israelite worship that eventually becameRabbinic Judaism and the sect which developed intoEarly Christianity were but two of these separate Israelite religious traditions. Thus, some scholars have begun to propose a model which envisions a twin birth of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, rather than an evolution and separation of Christianity from Rabbinic Judaism. It is increasingly accepted among scholars that "at the end of the 1st century CE there were not yet two separate religions called 'Judaism' and 'Christianity'".[48]Daniel Boyarin (2002) proposes a revised understanding of the interactions between nascent Christianity and nascent Rabbinic Judaism inLate Antiquity which views the two religions as intensely and complexly intertwined throughout this period.
TheAmoraim were the Jewish scholars ofLate Antiquity who codified andcommented upon the law and the biblical texts. The final phase of redaction of the Talmud into its final form took place during the 6th century CE, by the scholars known as theSavoraim. This phase concludes theChazal era foundational to Rabbinical Judaism.
^Hackett 2001, p. 156: "[...] some contemporary scholars propose that what distinguished 'Israel' from other emerging Canaanite Iron I societies was religion - the belief in Yahweh as one's god rather than Chemosh (of the Moabites), for example, or Milcom (of the Ammonites). Indeed, the early Iron Age marked the rise of national religion in the Near East, tying belief in the national god to ethnic identity. Thus the Israelites are the people of Yahweh, just as Moabites are the people of Chemosh; Ammonites, worshipers of Milcom; Edomites, of Qaus. [...] (The termsnational religion andnational god, though commonly used, are admittedly misleading: the particulars of modern nation-states should not be read back into these ancient societies.)"
^Compare:Ahlström, Gösta Werner (1982).Royal Administration and National Religion in Ancient Palestine. Volume 1 of Studies in the history of the ancient Near East / Studies in the history of the ancient Near East. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 83.ISBN9789004065628. Retrieved11 November 2023.[...] the picture drawn for us of the northern kingdom and its religion is not reliable. Furthermore, the so-called conservative Yahwism which is said to have predominated in Judah, seems to have existed only in the Jewish scholars' reconstruction of history.
^Betz 2000, p. 917: "Monotheism in Israel [...] appears to have developed over a long period of time, beginning about the 10th century up until the end of the Babylonian Exile."
^Albertz 1994, p. 61 The propagation of the sole worship of Yahweh is said to have begun only at a late stage, at the earliest with Elijah in the ninth century, but really only with Hosea in the eighth century, and to have been the concern of only small opposition groups (the 'Yahweh alone['] movement). [...] According to this view, this movement was only able to influence society for a short period under Josiah, but then finally helped monotheism to victory in the exilic and early post-exilic period.
^Golb, Norman (1998).The Jews in Medieval Normandy: A Social and Intellectual History. Cambridge University Press. p. 530.ISBN978-0521580328.A copy [...] was completed at the end of 1342 [...] by the scribe Solomon b. Simson [...]. [...] This manuscript, now at the Bayerische Staatsbibliotek in Munich (MS Heb. 95), remains the only complete manuscript of the Babylonian Talmud to survive from the Middle Ages.
^Finkelstein, Israel, (2020)."Saul and Highlands of Benjamin Update: The Role of Jerusalem", in Joachim J. Krause, Omer Sergi, and Kristin Weingart (eds.),Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel: Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives, SBL Press, Atlanta, GA, p. 48, footnote 57: "...They became territorial kingdoms later, Israel in the first half of the ninth century BCE and Judah in its second half..."
^Staples, Jason A. (20 May 2021). "The Other Israelites: Samaritans, Hebrews, and non-Jewish Israel".The Idea of 'Israel' in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 61, 62.ISBN9781108842860. Retrieved4 February 2024.[Note 23:] The settlement of Israelite groups in Judah in the wake of the northern kingdom's destruction may have brought much of the northern biblical material with it, engendering a pan-Israelite sentiment in Judah (Finkelstein,Forgotten Kingdom, 155).
^Rogerson, John (27 August 2009) [2007]. "Ancient Israel to the fall of the Second Temple". InHinnells, John R. (ed.).The Penguin Handbook of Ancient Religions. London: Penguin UK.ISBN9780141956664. Retrieved4 February 2024.'Pure' Yahwism was upheld by ecstatic prophetic groups led by men such as Samuel, Elijah and Elisha who involved themselves actively in political matters. Later, this role was taken on by the so-called writing prophets: Hosea, Amos, Micah and Isaiah [...] in the eighth century. These prophets were the creators of the ethical monotheism of ancient Israel.
^Frederick J. Murphy (15 April 2008)."Second Temple Judaism". In Alan Avery-Peck (ed.).The Blackwell Companion to Judaism. Jacob Neusner. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 61–.ISBN978-0-470-75800-7.
^Adler 2022, p. 223: "[...] the literary sources that are firmly dated to the early Hellenistic period provide no compelling evidence regarding the degree to which the Torah might have been known or regarded as authoritative among the Judean masses of the time."
^Gordon, Benjamin D. (2024). "The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal by Yonatan Adler (review)".AJS Review.48 (1):204–207.doi:10.1353/ajs.2024.a926065.ISSN1475-4541.
^Simkovich, Malka Z. (Winter 2024)."Origin Stories".Jewish Review of Books. No. 56. Retrieved2024-06-28.
^Goldenberg, Robert (2002). "Reviewed Work:Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism by Daniel Boyarin".The Jewish Quarterly Review.92 (3/4):586–588.doi:10.2307/1455460.JSTOR1455460.
Collins, John J. (2024)."Hecataeus as a Witness to Judaism". In Brody, Robert; Hacham, Noah; Piotrkowski, Meron M.; van Henten, Jan Willem (eds.).A Vision of the Days: Studies in Early Jewish History and Historiography: In Honor of Daniel R. Schwartz. BRILL.ISBN978-90-04-68556-7.
Davies, Philip R. (2010)."Urban Religion and Rural Religion". In Stavrakopoulou, Francesca; Barton, John (eds.).Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah. Continuum International Publishing Group.ISBN9780567032164.
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Gnuse, Robert Karl (1999). "The Emergence of Monotheism in Ancient Israel: A Survey of Recent Scholarship".Religion.29 (4):315–336.doi:10.1006/reli.1999.0198.
Gorman, Frank H. Jr. (2000)."Feasts, Festivals". In Freedman, David Noel; Myers, Allen C. (eds.).Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Amsterdam University Press.ISBN978-1-57506-083-5.
Humphries, W. Lee (1990)."God, Names of". In Mills, Watson E.; Bullard, Roger Aubrey (eds.).Mercer Dictionary of the Bible. Mercer University Press.ISBN9780865543737.
Levenson, Jon Douglas (2012).Inheriting Abraham: the legacy of the patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-16355-0.
Smith, Mark S. (2003)."Astral Religion and the Divinity". In Noegel, Scott; Walker, Joel (eds.).Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World. Penn State Press.ISBN0271046007.
Sommer, Benjamin D. (2011)."God, Names of". In Berlin, Adele; Grossman, Maxine L. (eds.).The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion. Oxford University Press.ISBN9780199730049.
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