Lecture: Judaism
A History of the Jewish People
The Jewish sense of history begins with Tanakh or the He
ew Bible. The He
ew Bible begins
with a supreme deity’s creation of the world, and details the experiences of the patriarchs,
matriarchs, and Moses, who
ought commandments
from God to his people. This portion of Jewish
history ended roughly at the end of the second
century BCE. Jewish history continued with the
temples in Jerusalem; after the destruction of the
Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish people
dispersed, finding unity through their teachings and
traditional practices, which were eventually compiled
into the Talmud.
Biblical stories
It is difficult to ascertain the historical accuracy of events
detailed in the Tanakh. The Pentateuch, or “five books of
Moses,” is held to be the most sacred portion of the
Tanakh. The traditionalist view is that these books were
divinely revealed to Moses; contemporary biblical
esearchers hypothesize that the books are reworked oral
traditions later set down by different sources. Some stories,
such as the Great Flood, resemble earlier Mesopotamian
legends. Whatever approach one takes to the origin of
these stories, they are spiritually significant for both
Judaism and Christianity.
The theme of exile recurs throughout the He
ew Bible.
Also central is the concept of covenant, a contract
etween God and the people. The stories of Noah and
A
aham illustrate covenants, each with its own sign.
Scholarly debate continues on whether the early patriarchs, and presumably matriarchs, were strictly
monotheistic. The neighboring Canaanites, who influenced the Israelites, were polytheists. In time,
the Israelites rejected the traditions of the people su
ounding them, and saw themselves as having
een chosen by a single divinity. This divinity may have initially been understood as a private god,
and then later became known as the sole, supreme universal deity.
The Israelites were likely of mixed ethnic stock; scholars debate the origins of the term “He
ew.”
The word Semite is a modern linguistic term applied to Jews, Arabs, and others whose languages are
classified as Semitic. It is inaccurate to use “Semite” as an ethnic designation. The genealogies of
the Pentateuch explain that the people called Israelites were the descendants of the offspring of
Jacob (and his wives).
Jacob, with his wives and his wives’
maidservants, had one daughter and twelve
sons. The twelve sons became the heads of
the twelve tribes of Israel. The whole
group left for Egypt during a famine; the
ook of Exodus opens there about four
centuries later. The pharaoh persecuted the
Israelites. Moses escaped the pharaoh’s
order that all male boys born to Israeli
women be killed. The book of Exodus
elates that Moses was chosen by God to
lead the Israelites out of Israel. God then
led the Israelites to Mt. Sinai in order to re-establish the covenant. There, according to Exodus, God
gave Moses a set of rules for the people which included the Ten Commandments, as well as
instructions for a portable tabernacle with a holy ark, the Ark of the Covenant, in which to keep
the stone tablets on which the
commandments were inscribed.
While Moses was receiving these
instructions, the people reverted to
idolatry; upon discovering this, Moses
smashed the original stone tablets, and
then got a new set after another forty-day
meeting with God. Accepting the new
laws
ought a new dimension to the
covenantal relationship. God freed the
Israelites from slavery in Egypt; now they
were to accept the Torah, or five books of
Moses.
The He
ew Bible explains that the
Israelites wandered through the desert for
forty years before being able to re-enter
the land earlier promised to them.
Archeological evidence indicates that
etween the thirteenth and eleventh
centuries BCE, every Canaanite town was
destroyed one to four times, although the
identity of those who destroyed them is
not known.
Under the reign of King David’s son
Solomon, a Temple was built in Jerusalem
to house the Ark of the
Covenant and serve as a
place for making burned
offerings of animals,
grains, and oil to God.
After a long period of
wandering, Judaism had a
central location. But
Solomon became very
wealthy and built altars to
the gods of his wives.
After Solomon’s death,
the kingdom was divided
into Israel and Judah.
Under these circumstances, prophets—men and women who underwent transformational ordeals
that made them instruments for the word of God—began to exhort the people. The early prophets
warned against idolatry; the later prophets cautioned that social injustice and moral co
uption
would signal the end of the Jewish state. During the eighth century, the northern kingdom of Israel
was conquered by Assyria and the Israelites were taken into exile among the Gentiles or non-Jewish
people. Most of the Israelites lost their distinct identity and came to be known as the “Ten Lost
Tribes of Israel.” In 586 BCE, the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple.
Many Judaeans were taken into exile in Babylonia, where they were called “Jews” because they were
from Judah.
The prophets
interpreted these
events as God’s
etribution for
the people’s
wicked ways.
Nonetheless, the
Jewish people
sought to
maintain their
faith, and
prophets
prophesied that
God would
ing
a new era of
justice and peace.
Only a small
number of Jews returned to Jerusalem; the remaining Jewish people were said to be living in
the diaspora. The Persian king Cyrus authorized the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, and it
was completed in 515 BCE. A hereditary priesthood focused on temple rituals and the redaction of
the stories of the Jewish people. The Torah now became the spiritual and secular foundation of the
dispersed Jewish people.
In the diaspora, Jews may have adopted
concepts from other traditions such as that of
Satan, the hierarchy of angels, resu
ection and
an afterlife (perhaps from the Zoroastrianism of
the Persian Empire). Not all Jews accepted these
eliefs. Ideas from rationalistic, humanistic
Hellenism also affected some Jews. In the
second century BCE, a Hellenistic ruler of Syria
sought to impose Hellenistic practices on all his
subjects, including the Jews, which led to the
Maccabean rebellion. The successful rebellion
led by the Hasmon family of priests established
an independent kingdom called Israel, centered
around Jerusalem, which lasted until 63 BCE when it was conquered by a Roman
general. It was the last independent Jewish nation until the twentieth
century.
Three sects formed under the Hasmonean king: Sadducees (who
were priests and wealthy business people, intent on the letter of the
law), the Pharisees (who sought to study applications of Torah to
everyday life), and the Essenes (who considered the priesthood
co
upt; a similar or related group retreated to Qumran and
developed li
ary now known as Dead Sea Scrolls). Scholars are still
studying the Dead Sea Scrolls for information about the period
etween biblical and ra
inic Judaism. It may be helpful to note that
this period in Jewish history will also be relevant for the rise of
Christianity.
After the Romans took over in 63 BCE, Jews began to express
elief in a messianic age in which the Jews would be able to return
to their homeland. This belief was bolstered by the words of some of the earlier
prophets. Prior to
this, apocalyptic literature,
which views the world in stark terms of good
and evil and foresees God’s victory over evil,
ecame popular. Some Jews concluded that
a Messiah would come to
ing evil to an
end and establish peace.
In 66 CE, led by the anti-Roman Zealots,
Jews rebelled against Rome. In 70 CE, the
Roman legions destroyed the Temple in
Jerusalem. The Western Wall remains to this
day. A second ill-fated revolt in XXXXXXXXXXCE
lead to the destruction of all Judean towns,
and remaining Jews were fo
idden to
engage in their traditional practices such as
eading the Torah, observing the Sa
ath,
and circumcising their sons.
Ra
inic Judaism
The Jewish people scattered throughout
the Medite
anean and western Asia. The
inheritors of the Pharisee tradition,
the ra
is, established new Jewish
traditions. Liturgical prayer and ethical
ehavior substituted for temple rituals.
People met in synagogues (meeting
places) to worship and read the Torah.
A minyan, or quorum of ten adult, males
was required for community worship. Torah study became increasingly important for many men;
women were excluded from such study, their responsibilities understood to be in the home. The
interpretation of the Torah gave unity to the Jewish people. The ra
is’ study, called Midrash,
ought about two types of interpretation: halakhah (proper conduct) and haggadah (folklore,
historical/sociological knowledge, etc.). Ra
inic Judaism and institutional Christianity were
developing in the same period.
The literature of the Midrash
process came to be known as
the oral Torah. In 200 CE,
Judah the Prince produced an
edition of the legal teaching of
the oral Torah called Mishnah.
The Mishnah includes directives
about the role of women. Later,
the Mishnah and commentaries
on it were organized into
the Talmud (of which there
were two authorized versions,
each with the same Mishnah but
differing Gamara or additional
commentaries). The Talmud
preserves multiple, sometimes
varying interpretations of
eligious questions. The ongoing process of exegesis provides a means of introducing new ideas
into Judaism—e.g. the concept of the soul and the concept of Shekhinah (a feminine noun), God’s
presence in the world.
Judaism in the Middle Ages
Ra
inic study continued throughout the diaspora (the dispersion of Israelites and later Jews out of
what is considered their ancestral homeland [the Land of Israel] and the communities built by them
across the world) even after the Talmud was complete. Responsa literature
ecords ra
inic answers to legal questions. Jews typically fared well under
Islamic rule, with some exceptions. Maimonides