The
history of Judaism
It is history that provides the key to
an understanding of Judaism, for its primal
affirmations appear in early historical
narratives. Thus, the Bible reports
contemporary events and activities for
essentially religious reasons. The biblical
authors believed that the divine presence is
encountered primarily within history. God’s
presence is also experienced within the
natural realm, but the more immediate or
intimate disclosure occurs in human actions.
Although other ancient communities also
perceived a divine presence in history, the
understanding of the ancient Israelites
proved to be the most lasting and
influential. It is this particular claim—to
have experienced God’s presence in human
events—and its subsequent development that
is the differentiating factor in Jewish
thought.
Moreover,
the ancient Israelites’ entire mode of
existence was affected by their belief that
throughout history they stood in a unique
relationship with the divine. The people of
Israel believed that their response to the
divine presence in history was central not
only for themselves but for all humankind.
Furthermore, God—as person—had revealed in a
particular encounter the pattern and
structure of communal and individual life to
this people. Claiming sovereignty over the
people because of his continuing action in
history on their behalf, he had established
a covenant (berit) with them and required
from them obedience to his teaching, or law
(Torah). This obedience was a further means
by which the divine presence was made
manifest—expressed in concrete human
existence. The corporate life of the chosen
community was thus a summons to the rest of
humankind to recognize God’s presence,
sovereignty, and purpose—the establishment
of peace and well-being in the universe and
in humankind.
History,
moreover, disclosed not only God’s purpose
but also humankind’s inability to live in
accord with it. Even the chosen community
failed in its obligation and had to be
summoned back, time and again, to its
responsibility by the prophets—the divinely
called spokespersons who warned of
retribution within history and argued and
reargued the case for affirmative human
response. Israel’s role in the divine
economy and thus Israel’s particular
culpability were dominant themes sounded
against the motif of fulfillment, the
ultimate triumph of the divine purpose, and
the establishment of divine sovereignty over
all humankind.
The history of Judaism » General
observations » Nature and characteristics
In nearly 4,000 years of historical
development, the Jewish people and their
religion have displayed a remarkable
adaptability and continuity. In their
encounter with the great civilizations, from
ancient Babylonia and Egypt to Western
Christendom and modern secular culture, they
have assimilated foreign elements and
integrated them into their own social and
religious systems, thus maintaining an
unbroken religious and cultural tradition.
Furthermore, each period of Jewish history
has left behind it a specific element of a
Judaic heritage that continued to influence
subsequent developments, so that the total
Jewish heritage at any given time is a
combination of all these successive elements
along with whatever adjustments and
accretions have occurred in each new age.
The various
teachings of Judaism have often been
regarded as specifications of the central
idea of monotheism. One God, the creator of
the world, has freely elected the Jewish
people for a unique covenantal relationship
with himself. This one and only God has been
affirmed by virtually all professing Jews in
a variety of ways throughout the ages.
Jewish
monotheism has had both universalistic and
particularistic features. Along universal
lines, it has affirmed a God who created and
rules the entire world and who at the end of
history will redeem all Israel (the
classical name for the Jewish people), all
humankind, and indeed the whole world. The
ultimate goal of all nature and history is
an unending reign of cosmic intimacy with
God, entailing universal justice and peace.
Between creation and redemption lies the
particularistic designation of the Jewish
people as the locus of God’s activity in the
world, as the people chosen by God to be “a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation”
(Exodus 19:6). This arrangement is
designated a covenant and is structured by
an elaborate and intricate law. Thus, the
Jewish people are both entitled to special
privileges and burdened with special
responsibilities from God. As the prophet
Amos (8th century bce) expressed it: “You
alone have I intimately known of all the
families of the earth; therefore I will
punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos
3:2). The universal goal of the Jewish
people has frequently expressed itself in
messianism—the idea of a universal,
political realm of justice and peace. In one
form or another, messianism has permeated
Jewish thinking and action throughout the
ages, and it has strongly influenced the
outlook of many secular-minded Jews.
Law
embraces practically all domains of Jewish
life, and it became the principle means by
which Judaism was to bring about the reign
of God on earth. It is a total guide to
religious and ethical conduct, involving
ritualistic observance as well as individual
and social ethics. It is a liturgical and
ethical way constantly expatiated on by the
prophets and priests, by rabbinic sages, and
by philosophers. Such conduct was to be
performed in the service of God, the
transcendent and immanent ruler of the
universe, the Creator and the propelling
force of nature, and the one giving guidance
and purpose to history. According to Judaic
belief, this divine guidance is manifested
through the history of the Jewish people,
which will culminate in the messianic age.
Judaism, whether in its “normative” form or
in its sectarian deviations, never
completely departed from this basic ethical
and historical monotheism.
Salo
Wittmayer Baron
Lou Hackett Silberman
The history of Judaism » General
observations » Periodization
The division of the millennia of Jewish
history into periods is a procedure
frequently dependent on philosophical
predilections. The Christian world long
believed that until the rise of Christianity
the history of Judaism was but a
“preparation for the Gospel” (preparatio
evangelica) that was followed by the
“manifestation of the Gospel” (demonstratio
evangelica) as revealed by Christ and the
Apostles. This formulation could be
theologically reconciled with the assumption
that Christianity had been preordained even
before the creation of the world.
In the 19th
century, biblical scholars moved the
decisive division back to the period of the
Babylonian Exile and the restoration of the
Jews to the kingdom of Judah (6th–5th
century bce). They asserted that after the
first fall of Jerusalem (586 bce) the
ancient “Israelitic” religion gave way to a
new form of the “Jewish” faith, or Judaism,
as formulated by the reformer Ezra (5th
century bce) and his school. In Die
Entstehung des Judentums (1896; “The Origin
of Judaism”) the German historian Eduard
Meyer argued that Judaism originated in the
Persian period, or the days of Ezra and
Nehemiah (5th century bce); indeed, he
attributed an important role in shaping the
emergent religion to Persian imperialism.
These
theories, however, have been discarded by
most scholars in the light of a more
comprehensive knowledge of the ancient
Middle East and the abandonment of a theory
of gradual evolutionary development that was
dominant at the beginning of the 20th
century. Most Jews share a long-accepted
notion that there never was a real break in
continuity and that
Mosaic-prophetic-priestly Judaism was
continued, with only a few modifications, in
the work of the Pharisaic and rabbinic sages
well into the modern period. Even today the
various Jewish groups—whether Orthodox,
Conservative, or Reform—all claim direct
spiritual descent from the Pharisees and the
rabbinic sages. In fact, however, many
developments have occurred within so-called
normative or Rabbinic Judaism.
In any
event, the history of Judaism can be divided
into the following major periods: biblical
Judaism (c. 20th–4th century bce),
Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce), Rabbinic Judaism (2nd–18th
century ce), and modern Judaism (c. 1750 to
the present).
Salo
Wittmayer Baron
The history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The ancient Middle
Eastern setting
The Bible depicts the family of the
Hebrew patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
(all early 2nd millennium bce)—as having its
chief seat in the northern Mesopotamian town
of Harran, which then belonged to the
Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni. From there
Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew people,
is said to have migrated to Canaan
(comprising roughly the region of modern
Israel and Lebanon), which was a vortex of
west Asian, Egyptian, and east Mediterranean
cultures throughout the biblical period and
later ages. From Canaan the Hebrew ancestors
of the people of Israel (named after the
patriarch Jacob, also called Israel)
migrated to Egypt, where they lived in
servitude; a few generations later they
returned to occupy part of Canaan.
Israelite
culture initially resembled that of its
surroundings; it was neither wholly original
nor wholly primitive. The Hebrews were
seminomadic herdsmen and occasionally
farmers. Their tribal structure resembled
that of the West Semitic steppe dwellers
known from the 18th-century-bce tablets
excavated at the north-central Mesopotamian
city of Mari; their family customs and law
have parallels in the Old Babylonian and
Hurro-Semite law of the early and middle 2nd
millennium. The conception of a messenger of
God that underlies biblical prophecy was
Amorite (West Semitic) and also found in the
tablets at Mari. Mesopotamian religious and
cultural conceptions are reflected in
biblical cosmogony, primeval history
(including the Flood story in Genesis
6:9–8:22), and law collections. The
Canaanite component of Israelite culture
consisted of the Hebrew language and a rich
literary heritage—whose Ugaritic form (which
flourished in the northern Syrian city of
Ugarit from the mid-15th century to
approximately 1200 bce) illuminates the
Bible’s poetry, style, mythological
allusions, and religious or cultic terms.
Egypt provides many analogues for Hebrew
hymnody and wisdom literature. All the
cultures among which the patriarchs lived
had cosmic gods who fashioned the world and
preserved its order, all had a developed
ethical system expressed in law and moral
admonitions, and all had elaborate religious
rites and myths.
Although
plainer when compared with some of the
learned literary creations of Mesopotamia,
Canaan, and Egypt, the earliest biblical
writings are so imbued with contemporary
ancient Middle Eastern elements that the
once-held assumption that Israelite religion
began on a preliterate level must be
rejected. Late-born amid high civilizations,
the Israelite religion had from the start
features characteristic of all the known
religions of the area. Implanted on the land
bridge between Africa and Asia, it was
exposed to crosscurrents of foreign thought
throughout its history.
The history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The pre-Mosaic
period: the religion of the patriarchs
Israelite tradition identified YHWH (by
scholarly convention pronounced Yahweh), the
God of Israel, with the creator of the
world, who had been known and worshipped
from the beginning of time. Abraham did not
discover this God but entered into a new
covenantal relationship with him, in which
Abraham was promised the land of Canaan and
numerous progeny. God fulfilled that
promise, it is believed, through the actions
of the Hebrew leader Moses (14th–13th
century bce): he liberated the people of
Israel from Egypt, imposed covenantal
obligations on them at Mt. Sinai, and
brought them to the Promised Land.
Historical
and anthropological studies present
formidable objections to the continuity of
YHWH worship from Adam (the biblical first
man) to Moses. The Hebrew tradition itself,
moreover, does not unanimously support even
the more modest claim of the continuity of
YHWH worship from Abraham to Moses. This
lack of continuity is demonstrated in Exodus
6:3, which says that God revealed himself to
the patriarchs not as YHWH but as El Shaddai—an
archaic epithet of unknown meaning that is
not specifically Israelite but is found
throughout the patriarchal narratives and in
the Book of Job. The epithet El Elyon (God
Most High) also appears frequently in the
patriarchal narratives. Neither of these
epithets is used in postpatriarchal
narratives (excepting the Book of Ruth).
Other compounds with El are unique to
Genesis: El Olam (God the Everlasting One),
El Bethel (God Bethel), and El Roʾi (God of
Vision). An additional peculiarity of the
patriarchal stories is their use of the
phrase “God of my [your, his] father.” All
these epithets have been taken as evidence
that patriarchal religion differed from the
worship of YHWH that began with Moses. A
relation to a patron god was defined by
revelations starting with Abraham (who never
refers to the God of his father) and
continuing with a succession of “founders”
of his worship. Attached to the founder and
his family, as befits the patron of
wanderers, this unnamed deity acquired
various Canaanite epithets (El, Elyon, Olam,
Bethel, Qone Eretz [“Possessor of the
Land”]) only after their immigration into
Canaan. Whether the name of YHWH was known
to the patriarchs is doubtful. It is
significant that while the epithets Shaddai
and El occur frequently in pre-Mosaic and
Mosaic-age names, YHWH appears as an element
only in the names of Yehoshuaʿ (Joshua) and
perhaps of Jochebed—persons who were closely
associated with Moses.
The
patriarchs are depicted as objects of God’s
blessing, protection, and providential care.
Their response is loyalty and obedience and
observance of a cult (i.e., a system of
religious beliefs and practices) whose
ordinary expression is sacrifice, vow, and
prayer at an altar, stone pillar, or sacred
tree. Circumcision was a distinctive mark of
the cult community. The eschatology
(doctrine of ultimate destiny) of their
faith was God’s promise of land and a great
progeny. Any flagrant contradictions between
patriarchal and later mores have presumably
been censored; yet distinctive features of
the post-Mosaic religion are absent. The God
of the patriarchs shows nothing of YHWH’s
“jealousy”; no religious tension or contrast
with their neighbours appears, and idolatry
is scarcely an issue. The patriarchal
covenant differed from the Mosaic, Sinaitic
covenant in that it was modeled upon a royal
grant to favourites and imposed no
obligations as conditions of the people’s
happiness. Evidently not the same as the
later religion of Israel, the patriarchal
religion prepared the way for the later one
through its familial basis, its personal
call by the Deity, and its response of
loyalty and obedience to him.
Little can
be said of the relation between the religion
of the patriarchs and the religions of
Canaan. Known points of contact between them
are the divine epithets mentioned above.
Like the God of the fathers, El, the head of
the Ugaritic pantheon, was depicted as both
a judgmental and a compassionate deity. Baal
(Lord), the aggressive young agricultural
deity of Ugarit, is remarkably absent from
Genesis. Yet the socioeconomic situation of
the patriarchs was so different from the
urban, mercantile, and monarchical
background of the Ugaritic myths as to
render any comparisons highly questionable.
The history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The Mosaic period:
foundations of the Israelite religion » The
Egyptian sojourn
According to Hebrew tradition, a famine
caused the migration to Egypt of the band of
12 Hebrew families that later made up a
tribal league in the land of Israel. The
schematic character of this tradition does
not impair the historicity of a migration to
Egypt, an enslavement by Egyptians, and an
escape from Egypt under an inspired leader
by some component of the later Israelite
tribes. To disallow these events, it can be
argued, would make their centrality as
articles of faith in the later religious
beliefs of Israel inexplicable.
Tradition
gives the following account of the birth of
the nation. At the Exodus from Egypt (13th
century bce), YHWH showed his faithfulness
and power by liberating the Israelites from
bondage and punishing their oppressors with
plagues and drowning them in the sea. At
Sinai he made the Israelites his people and
gave them the terms of his covenant,
regulating their conduct toward him and each
other so as to make them a holy nation.
After sustaining them miraculously during
their 40-year trek in the wilderness, he
enabled them to take the land that he had
promised to their fathers, the patriarchs.
Central to these events is Moses, who was
commissioned by God to lead the Israelites
out of Egypt, mediate God’s covenant with
them, and bring them to Canaan.
Behind the
legends and the multiform law collections,
it is possible to discern a historical
figure to whom the legends and the
legislative activity can be attached. And it
is precisely Moses’ unusual combination of
roles that makes him credible as a
historical figure. Like Muhammad (c. 570–632
bce) at the birth of Islam, Moses fills
oracular, legislative, executive, and
military functions. He shapes the main
institutions of Israel: the priesthood and
the sacred shrine, the covenant and its
rules, and the administrative apparatus of
the tribal league. Although Moses is
compared to a prophet in various texts in
the Pentateuch (the first five books of the
Bible), he is never designated as one—the
term being evidently unsuited for so
comprehensive and unique a figure.
The
history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The Mosaic period:
foundations of the Israelite religion »
Mosaic religion
The distinctive features of Israelite
religion appear with Moses. The proper name
of Israel’s God, YHWH, was revealed and
interpreted to Moses as meaning ehye asher
ehye—an enigmatic phrase of infinite
suggestiveness, literally meaning “I
am/shall be what I am/shall be.” The
covenant, defining Israel’s obligations, is
ascribed to Moses’ mediation. It is
impossible to determine what rulings go back
to Moses, but the Decalogue, or Ten
Commandments, presented in chapter 20 of
Exodus and chapter 5 of Deuteronomy, and the
larger and smaller covenant codes in Exodus
20:22–23:33 and 34:11–26 are held by critics
to contain early covenant law. From them the
following features may be noted: the rules
are formulated as God’s utterances—i.e.,
expressions of his sovereign will, directed
toward and often explicitly addressed to the
people at large, Moses merely conveying the
sovereign’s message to his subjects—and,
publication being of the essence of the
rules, the people as a whole are held
responsible for their observance.
The
liberation from Egypt laid upon Israel the
obligation of exclusive loyalty to YHWH.
This meant eschewing all other
gods—including idols venerated as such—and
the elimination of all magical recourses.
The worship of YHWH was aniconic (without
images); even figures that might serve in
his worship were banned, apparently because
their use suggested theurgy (the art or
technique of influencing or controlling a
god by fixing his presence in a particular
place and making him accessible). Although
there is a mythological background behind
some cultic terminology (e.g., “a pleasing
odour to YHWH” and “my bread”), sacrifice is
conceived as tribute or is regarded (in
priestly writings) as purely a
sacrament—i.e., as a material means of
interacting with or making a connection to
God. Hebrew festivals also have no
mythological basis; they either celebrate
God’s bounty (e.g., at the ingathering of
the harvest) or his saving acts (e.g., at
the festival of unleavened bread, which is a
memorial of the Exodus).
The values
of life and limb, labour, and social
solidarity were protected in the rules
governing interpersonal relations. The
involuntary perpetual slavery of Hebrews was
abolished, and a seven-year limit was set on
bondage. The humanity of slaves was
defended: one who beat his slave to death
was liable to death; if he maimed a slave,
he was required to set the slave free.
Murderers were denied asylum and could not
ransom themselves from death, and for
deliberate and severe bodily injuries the
lex talionis—the principle of “an eye for an
eye”—was ordained (see talion). Theft and
harm to property were punished monetarily
rather than by death.
Moral
exhortations called for solidarity with the
poor and the helpless and for brotherly
assistance to those in need. Institutions
were created—e.g., the sabbatical, or
seventh, fallow year, in which land was not
cultivated—to embody such exhortations in
practice.
Since the
goal of the Israelites was the conquest of a
land, their religion had warlike features.
Organized as an army (called “the hosts of
YHWH” in Exodus 12:41), they encamped in a
protective square around their palladium—the
tent housing the ark in which rested the
stone “Tablets of the Covenant.” When
journeying, the sacred objects were carried
and guarded by the Levite tribe or clan,
whose rivals, the Aaronites, exercised a
monopoly on the priesthood. God, sometimes
called “the warrior,” marched with the army;
in war, part of the booty was delivered to
his ministers.
The history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The period of the
conquest and settlement of Canaan
The conquest of Canaan was remembered as
a continuation of God’s marvels at the
Exodus. The Jordan River was split asunder,
the walls of Jericho fell at Israel’s shout,
the enemy was seized with divinely inspired
terror, and the sun stood still in order to
enable Israel to exploit its victory. Such
stories are not necessarily the work of a
later age; they reflect rather the impact of
these victories on the actors in the drama,
who felt themselves successful by the grace
of God.
A complex
process of occupation, involving both
battles of annihilation and treaty
agreements with indigenous peoples, has been
simplified in the biblical account of the
wars of Joshua (13th century bce).
Gradually, the unity of the invaders
dissolved (most scholars believe that the
invading element was only part of the Hebrew
settlement in Canaan; other Hebrews, long
since settled in Canaan from patriarchal
times, then joined the invaders’ covenant
league). Individual tribes made their way
with varying success against the residue of
Canaanite resistance. New enemies, Israel’s
neighbours to the east and west, appeared,
and the period of the judges (leaders, or
champions) began.
The Book of
Judges, the main witness for the period,
does not speak with one voice on the
religious situation. Its editorial framework
describes repeated cycles of apostasy,
oppression, appeal to God, and relief
through a champion sent by God. Israel’s
troubles prior to the institution of the
monarchy under Saul (11th century bce) were
caused by the weakness of the disunited
tribes and were thus accounted for by the
covenantal sin of apostasy. The individual
stories, however, present a different
picture. Apostasy does not figure in the
exploits of the judges Ehud, Deborah,
Jephthah, and Samson; YHWH has no rival, and
faith in him is periodically confirmed by
the saviours he sends to rescue Israel from
its neighbours. This faith is shared by all
the tribes; it is owing to their common cult
that a Levite from Bethlehem could serve
first at an Ephraimite and later also at a
Danite sanctuary. The religious bond,
preserved by the common cult, enabled the
tribes to work together under the leadership
of elders or an inspired champion in time of
danger or religious scandal.
Both
written and archaeological testimonies,
however, point to the Hebrews’ adoption of
Canaanite cults—the Baal worship of Gideon’s
family and neighbours in Ophrah in Judges,
chapter 6, is an example. The many cultic
figurines (usually female) found in
Israelite levels of Palestinian
archaeological sites also give colour to the
sweeping indictments of the framework of the
Book of Judges. But these phenomena belonged
to the private, popular religion; the
national God, YHWH, remained one—Baal sent
no prophets to Israel—though YHWH’s claim to
exclusive worship was obviously not
effectual. Nor did his cult conform with
later orthodoxy; Micah’s idol in Judges,
chapter 17, and Gideon’s ephod (priestly or
religious garment) were considered
apostasies by the editor, in accord with the
dogma that whatever is not orthodoxy is
apostasy—heterodoxy (nonconformity) being
unrecognized and simply equated with
apostasy.
To the
earliest sanctuaries and altars honoured as
patriarchal foundations—at Shechem, Bethel,
Beersheba, and Hebron in Cisjordan (west of
the Jordan); and at Mahanaim, Penuel, and
Mizpah in Transjordan (east of the
Jordan)—were added new sanctuaries and
altars at Dan, Shiloh, Ramah, Gibeon, and
elsewhere. A single priestly family could
not operate all these establishments, and so
Levites rose to the priesthood; at private
sanctuaries even non-Levites might be
consecrated as priests. The Ark of the
Covenant was housed in the Shiloh sanctuary,
staffed by priests of the house of Eli, who
traced their consecration back to Egypt. But
the ark remained a portable palladium in
wartime; Shiloh was not regarded as its
final resting place. The law in Exodus
20:24–26, which authorized a plurality of
altar sites and the simplest forms of
construction (earth and rough stone), suited
the plain conditions of this period.
The history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The period of the
united monarchy » The religious and
political problem
The decentralized tribal league could
not cope with the constant pressure of
external enemies—camel-riding desert
marauders who pillaged harvests annually and
iron-weaponed Philistines (an Aegean people
settling coastal Palestine c. 12th century
bce) who controlled key points in the hill
country occupied by the Israelites. In the
face of such threats, a central authority
that could mobilize the forces of the entire
league and create a standing army had to be
established. Two attitudes were distilled in
the crisis—one conservative and
anti-monarchic, the other radical and
pro-monarchic. The conservative attitude
appears first in Gideon’s refusal to found a
dynasty in Judges 8:23: “I will not rule
you,” he tells the people, “my son will not
rule over you; YHWH will…!” This theocratic
view pervades one of the two contrasting
accounts of the founding of the monarchy
fused in chapters 8–12 of the First Book of
Samuel (see Samuel, books of). The popular
demand for a king was viewed as a rejection
of the kingship of God, and in response to
the demand there appeared a series of
inspired saviours, from Moses and Aaron
(14th–13th century bce) through Jerubbaal,
Bedan, and Jephthah to Samuel (11th century
bce) himself. The other, more radical
account depicts the monarchy as a gift of
God, designed to rescue his people from the
Philistines (1 Samuel 9:16). Both accounts
represent the seer-judge Samuel as the key
figure in the founding of Israel’s monarchy,
and it is not unlikely that the two
attitudes struggled within him.
The
Benjaminite Saul was made king (c. 1020 bce)
by divine election and by popular
acclamation after his victory over the
Ammonites (a Transjordanian Semitic people),
but his career was clouded by conflict with
Samuel, the major representative of the old
order. Saul’s kingship was bestowed by
Samuel and had to be accommodated to the
ongoing authority of that man of God. The
two accounts of Saul’s rejection by God
(through Samuel) involve his usurpation of
the prophet’s authority. King David (10th
century bce), whose forcefulness and
religious and political genius established
the monarchy on an independent spiritual
footing, resolved the conflict.
The
history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The period of the
united monarchy » The Davidic monarchy
The essence of the Davidic innovation
was the idea that, in addition to divine
election through Samuel and public
acclamation, David had received God’s
promise of an eternal dynasty; a conditional
(perhaps earlier) and an unconditional
(perhaps later) form of this promise exist
in Psalms, chapter 132 and 2 Samuel, chapter
7, respectively. In its developed form, the
promise was conceived of as a covenant with
David, paralleling the covenant with Israel
and instrumental in the latter’s
fulfillment—the covenant being that God
would channel his benefactions to Israel
through the chosen dynasty of David. With
this new status came the inviolability of
the person of God’s anointed (a
characteristically Davidic idea) and a court
rhetoric—adapted from pagan models—in which
the king was styled “the [firstborn] son of
God.” An index of the king’s sanctity was
his occasional performance of priestly
duties. Yet the king’s mortality was never
forgotten: he was never deified, and,
although prayers and hymns might be said on
his behalf, they were never addressed to him
as a god.
David
captured the Jebusite stronghold of
Jerusalem and made it the seat of a national
monarchy (Saul had never moved the seat of
his government from his birthplace, the
Benjaminite town of Gibeah, about three
miles north of Jerusalem). Then, fetching
the ark from an obscure retreat, David
installed it in his capital, asserting his
royal prerogative (and obligation) to build
a shrine for the national God and thus at
the same time joining the symbols of the
dynastic and the national covenants. This
move of political genius linked the God of
Israel, the chosen dynasty of David, and the
chosen city of Jerusalem in a henceforth
indissoluble union.
David
planned to build a temple to house the ark,
but the tenacious tradition of the ark’s
portability in a tent shrine forced the
postponement of the project to the reign of
his son Solomon. As part of his extensive
building program, Solomon erected the Temple
on a Jebusite threshing floor, located on a
hill north of Jerusalem, which David had
purchased to mark the spot where a plague
had been halted. The ground plan of the
Temple—a porch with two freestanding pillars
before it, a sanctuary, and an inner
sanctum—followed Syrian and Phoenician
sanctuary models. A bronze “sea” resting on
bulls and placed in the Temple court had a
Babylonian analogue. The Temple of Jerusalem
resembled Canaanite and other Middle Eastern
religious structures but was also different
from them: notably, in the inner sanctum of
the Temple there was no image of God but
only the ancient ark covered by the wings of
large cherubim. YHWH, who was enthroned upon
celestial cherubim, was thus symbolically
present in the Temple.
Alongside a
brief inaugural poem in 1 Kings 8:12–13, an
extensive (and, in its present form, later)
prayer expresses the distinctively biblical
view of the Temple as a vehicle through
which God provided for his people’s needs.
Since no reference to sacrifice is made, not
a trace appears of the standard pagan
conception of temple as a vehicle through
which humans provided for the gods.
The quality
of the preserved narrative of the reign of
David, which gives every indication of
having come from the hand of a contemporary
eyewitness, demonstrates that literature
flourished under the aegis of the court.
Attached to the royally sponsored Temple
must have been a library and a school (in
keeping with the universally attested
practice of the ancient Middle East), among
whose products would have been not only
royal psalms but also liturgical pieces
intended for the common people that
eventually found their way into the book of
Psalms.
The latest
historical allusions in the Torah literature
(the Pentateuch) are to the period of the
united monarchy—e.g., the defeat and
subjugation of the peoples of Amalek, Moab
(see Moabite), and Edom by Saul and David,
in Numbers 24:17–20. On the other hand, the
polity reflected in the laws is tribal and
decentralized, with no bureaucracy. Its
economy is agricultural and pastoral; class
distinctions—apart from slave and free—are
lacking; and commerce and urban life are
rudimentary. A pre-monarchic background is
evident, with only rare explicit reflections
of the later monarchy—e.g., in Deuteronomy
17:14–20. The groundwork of the Torah
literature most likely crystallized under
the united monarchy.
In this
period the traditional wisdom cultivated
among the learned in neighbouring cultures
came to be prized in Israel. Solomon is
represented as the author of an extensive
literature comparable to that of other sages
in the region. His wisdom is expressly
attributed to YHWH in the account of his
night oracle at Gibeon (in which he asked
not for power or riches but for wisdom),
thus marking the adaptation to biblical
thought of this common Middle Eastern genre.
As set forth in Proverbs 2:5, “It is YHWH
who grants wisdom; knowledge and
understanding are by his command.” Patronage
of wisdom literature is ascribed to the
later Judahite king, Hezekiah (8th–7th
century bce); the connection of wisdom with
kings is also common in extra-biblical
cultures.
Domination
of all of Palestine entailed the absorption
of “the rest of the Amorites”—the
pre-Israelite population that lived chiefly
in the valleys and on the coast. Their
impact on Israelite religion is unknown,
though some scholars contend that there was
a “royally sponsored syncretism” aimed at
fusing the two populations. Because popular
religion incorporated pagan elements, it is
likely that it did not meet the standards of
the biblical writers; such elements may have
increased as a result of intercourse with
the newly absorbed Amorites. The court
itself welcomed foreigners—Philistines,
Cretans, Hittites, and Ishmaelites are
named, among others—and made use of their
service. Their effect on the court religion
may be surmised from what is recorded
concerning Solomon’s many diplomatic
marriages: foreign princesses whom Solomon
married brought with them the apparatus of
their native cults. The king even had
shrines to their gods built and maintained
on the Mount of Olives. Yet such private
cults, while indeed royally sponsored, did
not make the religion of the people
syncretistic.
Such
compromise with the pagan world, entailed by
the widening horizons of the monarchy,
violated the sanctity of the holy land of
YHWH and turned the king into an idolator in
the eyes of zealots. Religious opposition,
combined with grievances against the
organization of forced labour for state
projects, led to the secession of the
northern tribes (headed by the Joseph
tribes) after Solomon’s death.
The history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The period of the
divided kingdom
Jeroboam I (10th century bce), the first
king of the north, now called Israel (the
kingdom in the south was called Judah),
appreciated the inextricable link of
Jerusalem and its sanctuary with the Davidic
claim to divine election to kingship over
all of Israel (the whole people, north and
south). He therefore founded rival
sanctuaries at the ancient cult sites of Dan
and Bethel and staffed them with non-Levite
priests whose symbol of YHWH’s presence was
a golden calf—a pedestal of divine images in
ancient iconography and the equivalent of
the cherubim of Jerusalem’s Temple. He also
moved the autumn ingathering festival one
month ahead so as to foreclose celebrating
this most popular of all festivals
simultaneously with Judah.
The Book of
Kings (later divided into two books; see
Kings, books of) remains the almost
exclusive source for the evaluation of
Jeroboam’s innovations and the subsequent
official religion of the north down to the
mid-8th century. However, this work has
severe limitations as a source for religious
history. It is dominated by a dogmatic
historiography that regards the whole
enterprise of the north as one long apostasy
ending in a deserved disaster. The
culmination of Kings’ history with the exile
of Judah shows that it came from the
northern kingdom. Yet the evaluation of
Judah’s official religion is subject to an
equally dogmatic standard: namely, the royal
adherence to the Deuteronomic rule of a
single cult site. The author considered the
Temple of Solomon to be the cult site chosen
by God, according to Deuteronomy, chapter
12, the existence of which rendered all
other sites illegitimate. Every king of
Judah is judged according to whether or not
he did away with all places of worship
outside Jerusalem. The date of this
criterion may be inferred from the
indifference toward it of all persons prior
to Hezekiah—e.g., the prophets Elijah and
Elisha and Jehoiada, a priest of Jerusalem
(all 9th century bce).
Another
serious limitation is the restriction of
Kings’ purview: excepting the Elijah-Elisha
stories, it recognizes only the royally
sponsored cult and pays scant attention to
popular religion. In the mid-8th century the
writings of the classical prophets, starting
with Amos, first appeared. These take in the
people as a whole, in contrast to Kings; on
the other hand, their interest in theodicy
(the problem of reconciling the presumed
goodness of God with the existence of evil
in the world) and their polemical tendency
to exaggerate and generalize what they deem
evil must be taken into consideration before
accepting their statements as history per se
(see also evil, problem of).
For half a
century after the north’s secession (c. 922
bce), the religious situation in Jerusalem
was unchanged. The distaff side of the royal
household perpetuated, and even augmented,
the pagan cults. King Asa (reigned c.
908–867 bce) is credited with a general
purge, including the destruction of an image
made for the goddess Asherah by the queen
mother, granddaughter of an Aramaean
princess. He also purged the qedeshim
(“consecrated men”—conventionally rendered
as “sodomites,” or “male sacred
prostitutes”).
Foreign
cults entered the north with the marriage of
King Ahab (reigned 874–853 bce) to the
Tyrian princess Jezebel (died c. 843 bce).
Jezebel was accompanied by a large entourage
of sacred personnel to staff the temple of
Baal and Asherah that Ahab built for her in
Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom
of Israel. Although Ahab’s orthodoxy was in
every other respect irreproachable, some
members of his court may have worshipped the
gods of the foreign princess. Jezebel’s
persecution of the prophets of YWHW—conduct
untypical of a polytheist except in
self-defense—was probably prompted by the
fierce opposition to non-YHWH cults in
Israel. Elijah’s assertion that the whole
country apostatized is a piece of hyperbole
based on the view that whoever did not
actively fight Jezebel was implicated in her
polluted cult. Such must have been the view
of the prophets, whose fallen were the first
martyrs to die for the glory of God. The
quality of their opposition may be gauged by
Elijah’s summary execution of the foreign
Baal cultists after they failed at the
contest on Mt. Carmel (Elijah and the
priests of Baal appealed respectively to
YHWH and Baal to set a pile of wood ablaze
to prove whose god was truly God). A
three-year drought (attested also in
Phoenician sources), declared by Elijah to
be punishment for the sin of apostasy, did
much to kindle the prophets’ zeal.
To judge
from the stories of Elisha, devotion to the
cult of Baal existed in the capital city,
Samaria, but was not felt in the
countryside. The religious tone there was
set by the popular prophets and their
adherents (“the sons of the prophets”). In
popular consciousness these men were
wonder-workers—healing the sick and reviving
the dead, foretelling the future, and
helping to find lost objects. To the
biblical narrator, they witnessed the
working of God in Israel. Elijah’s rage at
the Israelite king Ahaziah’s recourse to the
pagan god Baalzebub, Elisha’s cure of the
Syrian military leader Naaman’s leprosy, and
anonymous prophets’ directives and
predictions in matters of peace and war all
served to glorify God. Indeed, the equation
of Israel’s prosperity with God’s interest
generated the first appearance of the issue
of “true” and “false” prophecy. The fact
that prophecy of success could turn out to
be a snare is exemplified in a story of
conflict between the prophet of doom Micaiah
(9th century bce) and 400 unanimous prophets
of victory who lured King Ahab to his death.
The poignancy of the issue is highlighted by
Micaiah’s acknowledgment that the 400 were
also prophets of YHWH—but inspired by him
deliberately with a “lying spirit.”
The history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The period of
classical prophecy and cult reform » The
emergence of the literary prophets
By the mid-8th century, one hundred
years of chronic warfare between Israel and
Aram had finally ended—the Aramaeans having
suffered heavy blows from the Assyrians.
King Jeroboam II (8th century bce) undertook
to restore the imperial sway of the north
over its neighbour, and Jonah’s prophecy
that Jeroboam would extend Israel’s borders
from the Dead Sea to the entrance to Hamath
(Syria) was borne out. The well-to-do
expressed their relief in lavish attentions
to the institutions of worship and to their
private mansions. But the strain of the
prolonged warfare showed in the polarization
of society between the wealthy few who had
profited from the war and the masses whom it
had ravaged and impoverished. Dismay at the
dissolution of Israelite society animated a
new breed of prophets—the literary or
classical prophets, the first of whom was
Amos (8th century bce), a Judahite who went
north to Bethel.
The point
that apostasy would set God against the
community was made in early prophecy; the
idea that violation of the social and
ethical injunctions of the covenant would
have the same result was first proclaimed by
Amos. Amos almost ignored idolatry,
denouncing instead the corruption and
callousness of the oligarchy and rulers. He
proclaimed the religious exercises of such
villains to be loathsome to God; on their
account Israel would be oppressed from the
entrance of Hamath to the Dead Sea and
exiled from its land.
The
westward push of the Neo-Assyrian empire in
the mid-8th century bce soon brought Aram
and Israel to their knees. In 733–732
Assyria took Gilead and Galilee from Israel
and captured Aramaean Damascus; in 721
Samaria, the Israelite capital, fell. The
northern kingdom sought to survive through
alliances with Assyria and Egypt; its kings
came and went in rapid succession. The
troubled society’s malaise was interpreted
by Hosea, a prophet of the northern kingdom
(Israel), as a forgetting of God (see Hosea,
Book of). As a result, in his view, all
authority had evaporated: the king was
scoffed at, priests became hypocrites, and
pleasure seeking became the order of the
day. The monarchy was godless, putting its
trust in arms, fortifications, and alliances
with great powers. Salvation, however, lay
in none of these but in repentance and
reliance upon God.
The
history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The period of
classical prophecy and cult reform »
Prophecy in the southern kingdom
Judah was subjected to such intense
pressure to join an Israelite-Aramaean
coalition against Assyria that its king Ahaz
(8th century bce) instead submitted to
Assyria in return for relief. Ahaz
introduced a new Aramaean-style altar in the
Temple of Jerusalem and adopted other
foreign customs that are counted against him
in the Book of Kings. It was at this time
that Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem (see
also Isaiah, Book of). At first (under
Uzziah, Ahaz’s prosperous grandfather) his
message emphasized the social and religious
corruption of Judah, stressing the new
prophetic themes of indifference to God
(which went hand in hand with a thriving
cult) and the fateful importance of social
morality. Under Ahaz the political crisis
evoked Isaiah’s appeals for trust in God,
with the warning that the “hired razor from
across the Euphrates” would shave Judah
clean as well. Isaiah interpreted the
inexorable advance of Assyria as God’s
chastisement. The “rod of God’s wrath,”
Assyria would be broken on Judah’s mountains
because of its insolence when God was
finished with his purgative work. Then the
nations of the world, which had been
subjugated by Assyria, would recognize the
God of Israel as the lord of history. A
renewed Israel would prosper under the reign
of an ideal Davidic king, all humanity would
flock to Zion (the hill symbolizing
Jerusalem) to learn the ways of YHWH and to
submit to his adjudication, and universal
peace would prevail (see also eschatology).
The
prophecy of Micah (8th century bce), also
from Judah, was contemporary with that of
Isaiah and touched on similar themes—e.g.,
the vision of universal peace is found in
both their books (see Micah, Book of).
Unlike Isaiah, however, who believed in the
inviolability of Jerusalem, Micah shocked
his audience with the announcement that the
wickedness of its rulers would cause Zion to
become a plowed field, Jerusalem a heap of
ruins, and the Temple Mount a wooded height.
Moreover, from the precedence of social
morality over the cult, Micah drew the
extreme conclusion that the cult had no
ultimate value and that God’s requirement of
humanity could be summed up as “to do
justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your God.”
The
history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The period of
classical prophecy and cult reform » Reforms
in the southern kingdom
According to the Book of Jeremiah (about
100 years later), Micah’s prophetic threat
to Jerusalem had caused King Hezekiah
(reigned c. 715–c. 686 bce) to placate
God—possibly an allusion to the cult reform
instituted by the king in order to cleanse
Judah of various pagan practices. A
heightened concern over assimilatory trends
resulted in his also outlawing certain
practices considered legitimate up to his
time. Thus, in addition to removing the
bronze serpent that had been ascribed to
Moses (and that had become a fetish), the
reform did away with the local altars and
stone pillars, the venerable (patriarchal)
antiquity of which did not save them from
the taint of imitation of Canaanite
practice. Hezekiah’s reform, part of a
policy of restoration that had political as
well as religious implications, was the most
significant effect of the fall of the
northern kingdom on official religion. The
outlook of the reformers is suggested by the
catalog in 2 Kings, chapter 17, of religious
offenses that had caused the fall; the
objects of Hezekiah’s purge closely
resembled them. Hezekiah’s reform is the
first historical evidence for Deuteronomy’s
doctrine of cult centralization.
Similarities between Deuteronomy and the
Book of Hosea lend colour to the supposition
that the reform movement in Judah, which
culminated a century later under King
Josiah, was sparked by attitudes inherited
from the north.
Hezekiah
was the leading figure in a western
coalition of states that joined with the
Babylonian king Merodach-Baladan II in a
rebellion against the Assyrian king
Sennacherib shortly after the Assyrian’s
accession in 705 bce. When Sennacherib
appeared in the west in 701, the rebellion
collapsed; Egypt sent a force to aid the
rebels but was defeated. His kingdom
overwhelmed, Hezekiah offered tribute to
Sennacherib; the Assyrian, however, pressed
for the surrender of Jerusalem. In despair,
Hezekiah turned to the prophet Isaiah for an
oracle. While condemning the king’s reliance
upon Egyptian help, Isaiah stood firm in his
faith that Jerusalem’s destiny precluded its
fall into heathen hands. The king held fast,
and Sennacherib, for reasons still obscure,
suddenly retired from Judah and returned
home. This unlooked-for deliverance of the
city may have been regarded as a vindication
of the prophet’s faith and was doubtless an
inspiration to the rebels against Babylonia
a century later. For the present, although
Jerusalem was intact, the country had been
devastated and the kingdom turned into a
vassal state of Assyria.
During the
long and peaceful reign of Manasseh in the
7th century bce, Judah was a submissive ally
of Assyria. Manasseh’s forces served in the
building and military operations of the
Assyrian kings Esarhaddon (reigned 680–669
bce) and Ashurbanipal (reigned 668–627 bce).
Judah benefitted from the increase in
commerce that resulted from the political
unification of the entire Middle East. The
prophet Zephaniah (7th century bce) attests
to heavy foreign influence on the mores of
Jerusalem—merchants who adopted foreign
dress, cynics who lost faith in the power of
YHWH to do anything, and people who
worshipped the pagan host of heaven on their
roofs (see also Zephaniah, Book of).
Manasseh’s court was the centre of such
influences. The royal sanctuary became the
home of a congeries of foreign gods; the
sun, astral deities, and Asherah (the female
fertility deity) all had their cults
alongside YHWH. The countryside also was
provided with pagan altars and priests,
alongside local YHWH altars that were
revived. Presumably, at least some of the
blood that Manasseh is said to have spilled
freely in Jerusalem must have belonged to
YHWH’s devotees. No prophecy is dated to his
long reign.
With the
death of Ashurbanipal, Assyria’s power faded
quickly. The young king of Judah, Josiah
(reigned c. 640–609 bce), had already set in
motion a vigorous movement of independence
and restoration, a cardinal aspect of which
was religious. First came the purge of
foreign cults in Jerusalem under the aegis
of the high priest Hilkiah; then the
countryside was cleansed. In the course of
renovating the Temple, a scroll of Moses’
Torah (by scholarly consensus an edition of
Deuteronomy) was found. Anxious to abide by
its injunctions, Josiah had the local YHWH
altars polluted to render them unusable and
collected their priests in Jerusalem. The
celebration of the Passover that year was
concentrated in the Temple, as it had not
been “since the days of the judges who
judged Israel,” according to 2 Kings 23:22,
or since the days of Samuel, according to 2
Chronicles 35:18; both references reflect
the theory of the Deuteronomic (Josianic)
reformers that the Shiloh sanctuary was the
precursor of the Jerusalem Temple as the
sole legitimate site of worship in Israel
(as demanded by Deuteronomy, chapter 12). To
seal the reform, the king convoked a
representative assembly and directed it to
enter into a covenant with God over the
newfound Torah. For the first time, the
power of the state was enlisted on behalf of
the ancient covenant and in obedience to a
covenant document. It was a major step
toward the establishment of a sacred canon.
Josiah
envisaged the restoration of Davidic
authority over the entire domain of ancient
Israel, and the retreat of Assyria
facilitated his ambitions—until he became
fatally embroiled in the struggle of the
powers over the dying empire. His death in
609 was doubtless a setback for his
religious policy as well as his political
program. To be sure, the royally sponsored
syncretism of Manasseh’s time was not
revived, but there is evidence of a
recrudescence of unofficial local altars.
Whether references in the Book of Jeremiah
and the Book of Ezekiel to child sacrifice
to YHWH reflect post-Josianic practices is
uncertain. Yet there is stronger indication
of private recourse to pagan cults in the
worsening political situation.
The
unsettled conditions following Assyria’s
fall dismayed the devotees of YHWH, who had
not been prepared for it by prophecy. Their
mood finds expression in the oracles of the
prophet Habakkuk in the last years of the
7th century bce (see Habakkuk, Book of).
Confessing perplexity at God’s toleration of
the success of the wicked in subjugating the
righteous, the prophet affirms his faith in
the coming salvation of YHWH, tarry though
it might. And in the meantime, “the
righteous must live in his faith.”
Despite
these expectations of salvation, the
situation grew worse as Judah was caught in
the Babylonian-Egyptian rivalry. Some
attributed the deterioration to Manasseh’s
sin of moving toward polytheism. For the
prophet Jeremiah (c. 650–c. 570 bce), the
Josianic era was only an interlude in
Israel’s career of guilt, which went back to
its origins. His pre-reform prophecies
denounced Israel as a faithless wife and
warned of imminent retribution at the hands
of a nameless northerner. After
Nebuchadrezzar II (reigned c. 605–c. 561
bce) decisively defeated Egypt at Carchemish
(605 bce), Jeremiah identified the scourge
as Babylonia. King Jehoiakim’s attempt to be
free of Babylonia ended with the exile of
his successor, Jehoiachin, along with
Judah’s elite (597 bce); yet the court of
the new king, Zedekiah (reigned 597–587/586
bce), persisted in plotting new revolts,
relying—against all experience—on Egyptian
support. Jeremiah now proclaimed a
scandalous doctrine of the duty of all
nations, Judah included, to submit to the
divinely appointed world ruler,
Nebuchadrezzar, as the only hope of avoiding
destruction; a term of 70 years of
submission had been set to humiliate all
nations beneath Babylonia. Imprisoned for
demoralizing the people, Jeremiah persisted
in what was viewed as his traitorous
message; Judah’s leaders, on their part,
persisted in their policy, confident of
Egypt and the saving power of Jerusalem’s
Temple to the bitter end.
Jeremiah
also had a message of comfort for his
hearers. He foresaw the restoration of the
entire people—north and south—under a new
David. And since events had shown that human
beings were incapable of achieving a lasting
reconciliation with God on their own, he
envisioned the penitent of the future being
met halfway by God, who would remake their
nature so that doing his will would come
naturally to them. God’s new covenant with
Israel would be written on their hearts, so
that they should no longer need to teach
each other obedience, for young and old
would know YHWH.
Among the
exiles in Babylonia, the prophet Ezekiel,
Jeremiah’s contemporary, was haunted by the
burden of Israel’s sin. He saw the defiled
Temple of Manasseh’s time as present before
his eyes and described God as abandoning it
and Jerusalem to their fates. Although
Jeremiah offered hope through submission,
Ezekiel prophesied an inexorable, total
destruction as the condition of
reconciliation with God. The majesty of God
was too grossly offended for any lesser
satisfaction. The glory of God demanded
Israel’s ruin, but the same cause required
its restoration. Israel’s fall disgraced
YHWH among the nations; to save his
reputation, he must therefore restore Israel
to its land. The dried bones of Israel must
revive, so that they and all the nations
should know that he was YHWH (Ezekiel 37).
Ezekiel too foresaw the remaking of human
nature, but as a necessity of God’s
glorification; the concatenation of Israel’s
sin, exile, and consequent defamation of
God’s name must never be repeated. In
587/586 bce the doom prophecies of Jeremiah
and Ezekiel came true. Rebellious Jerusalem
was reduced by Nebuchadrezzar, the Temple
was burned, and much of Judah’s population
was dispersed or deported to Babylonia.
The history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The Babylonian
Exile
The survival of the religious community
of exiles in Babylonia demonstrates how
rooted and widespread the religion of YHWH
was. Abandonment of the national religion as
an outcome of the disaster is recorded of
only a minority. There were some cries of
despair, but the persistence of prophecy
among the exiles shows that their religious
vitality had not flagged. The Babylonian
Jewish community, in which the cream of
Judah lived, had no sanctuary or altar (in
contrast to the Jewish garrison of
Elephantine in Egypt); what developed in
their place can be surmised from new
postexilic religious forms: fixed prayer;
public fasts and confessions; and assembly
for the study of the Torah, which may have
developed from visits to the prophets for
oracular edification. The absence of a local
or territorial focus must also have spurred
the formation of a literary centre of
communal life—the sacred canon of covenant
documents that came to be the core of the
present Pentateuch. Observance of the
Sabbath—a peculiarly public feature of
communal life—achieved a significance among
the exiles virtually equivalent to all the
rest of the covenant rules together.
Notwithstanding its political impotence, the
exile community possessed such high spirits
that foreigners were attracted to its ranks,
hopeful of sharing in its future glory. This
moment marks the origin of conversion to
Judaism for distinctly religious reasons
rather than for reasons of politics,
culture, or nationalism.
Assurance
of that future glory was given not only by
Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s consolations, which
were made credible by the fulfillment of the
prophecies of doom, but also by the great
comforter of the exile, the writer or
writers of what is known as Deutero-Isaiah
(Isaiah 40–66), who perceived the instrument
of God’s salvation in the rise and progress
of the Persian king Cyrus II (the Great;
reigned 550–529 bce; see Isaiah, Book of).
Going beyond the national hopes of Ezekiel
and animated by the universal spirit of the
pre-exilic Isaiah, Deutero-Isaiah saw in the
miraculous restoration of Israel a means of
converting the whole world to faith in
Israel’s God. Israel would thus serve as “a
light for the nations, that YHWH’s salvation
may reach to the end of the earth.” In his
conception of the vicarious suffering of
God’s servant—through which atonement is
made for the ignorant heathen—Deutero-Isaiah
found a handle by which to grasp the enigma
of faithful Israel’s lowly state among the
Gentiles. The idea was destined to play a
decisive role in the self-understanding of
the Jewish martyrs persecuted by the Syrian
king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (reigned 175–164
bce)—as recounted in the Book of Daniel—and
later again in the Christian appreciation of
the death of Jesus.
The history of Judaism » Biblical Judaism
(20th–4th century bce) » The period of the
restoration
After conquering Babylonia, Cyrus
allowed those Jews who wished to do so to
return and rebuild their Temple. Although
some 40,000 eventually made their way back,
they were soon disillusioned and ceased
their rebuilding as the glories of the
restoration failed to materialize and as
controversy arose with the Samaritans, who
opposed the reconstruction. (The Samaritans
were a Judaized mixture of native north
Israelites and Gentile deportees settled by
the Assyrians in the erstwhile northern
kingdom.) A new religious inspiration
attended the governorship of Zerubbabel (6th
century bce), a member of the Davidic line,
who became the centre of messianic
expectations during the anarchy attendant
upon the accession to the Persian throne of
Darius I (522 bce). The prophets Haggai and
Zechariah understood the disturbances as
heralds of the imminent overthrow of the
Persian empire, as a worldwide manifestation
of God, and as a glorification of Zerubbabel
(see Haggai, Book of; Zechariah, Book of).
Against the day of the empire’s fall, they
urged the people to quickly complete the
building of the Temple. The labour was
resumed and completed in 516, but the
prophecies remained unfulfilled. Zerubbabel
then disappears from the biblical narrative,
and the spirit of the community flags again.
The one
religious constant in the vicissitudes of
the restored community was the mood of
repentance and the desire to win back God’s
favour by adherence to the rules of his
covenant. The anxiety that underlay this
mood produced a hostility to strangers and
encouraged a lasting conflict with the
Samaritans, who asked permission to take
part in rebuilding the Temple of the God
whom they too worshipped. The Jews rejected
the Samaritans on ill-specified but
apparently ethnic and religious grounds:
they felt the Samaritans to be alien to the
Jewish historical community of faith and
especially to its messianic hopes.
Nonetheless, intermarriage between the two
peoples occurred, precipitating a new crisis
in 458, when the priest Ezra arrived from
Babylon, intent on enforcing the regimen of
the Torah. By reviving ancient laws
excluding Canaanites and others and applying
them to their own times and neighbours, the
leaders of the Jews brought about the
divorce and expulsion of several dozen
non-Jewish wives and their children. Tension
between the xenophobic and xenophilic in
postexilic Judaism was finally resolved some
two centuries later with the development of
a formality of religious conversion, whereby
Gentiles who so wished could be taken into
the Jewish community by a single, simple
procedure.
The
decisive constitutional event of the new
community was the covenant subscribed to by
its leaders in 444, which made the Torah the
law of the land. A charter granted to Ezra
by the Persian king Artaxerxes I empowered
the latter to enforce the Torah as the
imperial law for the Jews of the province
Avar-nahra (“Beyond the River”), in which
the district of Judah (now reduced to a
small area) was located. The charter
required the publication of the Torah, which
in turn entailed its final editing—now
plausibly ascribed to Ezra and his circle.
The survival in the Torah of patent
inconsistencies and disagreements with the
postexilic situation indicate that its
materials were by then sacrosanct, to be
compiled but no longer created. But these
survivals made necessary the immediate
invention of a harmonizing and creative
method of textual interpretation to adjust
the Torah to the needs of the times. The
Levites were trained in the art of
interpreting the text to the people; the
first product of the creative exegesis later
known as Midrash (meaning “investigation” or
“interpretation”; plural Midrashim) is to be
found in the covenant document of Nehemiah,
chapter 9—every item of which shows
development, not reproduction, of a ruling
of the Torah (see Ezra and Nehemiah, books
of). Thus, the publication of the Torah as
the law of the Jews laid the basis of the
vast edifice of Oral Law so characteristic
of later Judaism.
Concern
over observance of the Torah was raised by
the stark contrast between messianic
expectations and the harsh reality of the
restoration. The contrast signified God’s
continued displeasure, and the only way to
regain his favour was to do his will. Thus,
the Book of Malachi, named after the last of
the prophets, concludes with an admonition
to be mindful of the Torah of Moses. God’s
displeasure, however, had always been
signaled by a break in communication with
him. As time passed and messianic hopes
remained unfulfilled, the sense of a
permanent suspension of normal relations
with God took hold, and prophecy died out.
God, it was believed, would some day be
reconciled with his people, and a glorious
revival of prophecy would then occur. For
the present, however, religious vitality
expressed itself in dedication to the
development of institutions that would make
the Torah effective in life. The course of
this development is hidden from view by the
dearth of sources from the Persian period.
But the community that emerged into the
light of history in Hellenistic times had
been radically transformed by this
momentous, quiet process.
Moshe
Greenberg
