What started Judaism?

[Peter Kirby]

There is no writing from this culture for two hundred years, so there is a absense of evidence for your statement.

The people here were identified by the Merneptah stele as a semi nomodic people called I.si.ri.ar whos crops were wasted making them not a threat to egypt militarily speaking. 1209 ish BC

We dont have any writing from these people until 1000 BC ish and what we do have is a polytheistic people worshipping Canaanite deities

What we see as a first marker of Israelites from Canaanites is a absense of pig bones from 1200 -1000 BC but that is problamatic as it could be a geographical marker more then a cultural one.

Judaism itself doesnt even come close to forming into its own until after 1000 BC as a culture that is different from the Canaanite cullture.

In this early period we see a smaller family of Canaanite deities then the wide range Canaanites used.

This is how the evolution from the Canaanite culture to Israelite culture played out over 200 years and it is the best we have to explain the people that would build Judaism.

The religion itself is nothing more then a evolution of the Canaanite religion

It seems that the origins of Christianity gets a lot more attention online than the origins of Judaism, online that is, but they're both interesting questions to investigate. While we can make more of archaeology for the origins of Judaism, as the local religion of the people of an area, there's still a lot unknown. Maybe more unknown because our sources in the Hebrew Bible, which might otherwise provide literary evidence, have succumbed to "minimalist" criticism discounting much of their historical value in the last several decades.

[MrMacSon]

Hasn't there been increased doubt about much of what has been proposed about Jewish origins, including the Exodus?

Huff. Post 2011 - Passover In Egypt: Did the Exodus Really Happen?

[Peter Kirby]

Yes, I don't know of any serious argument that there was a historical Exodus. This is fairly well-known, of course, and not exactly new.

[DCHindley]

It might be easier to go backwards in time when attempting to determine what evolutionary steps have formed the modern Judaism(s) we know. If we look at Rabbinic (Orthodox) Judaism, the events that let to its development can be traced to 1st & 2nd century CE: Destruction of temple (70 CE) and little likelihood temple sacrifices will be reinstated.

Once faced with that, anyone determined to continue to worship their ancestral god (YHWH) must revaluate what these changes in circumstances "mean" and rationalize any novelties that must be introduced to replace the social value of the actual sacrifices.

Luckily Judaism was so largely dispersed that almost everyone who practiced it was doing so symbolically anyways.

Previous pronounced change:

Creation of a semi-autonomous Judean political state in the 1st half of 2nd century CE (around 172 CE to 164 CE). This resulted in a lot of cryptically written histories and/or apocalypses such as Ezra-Nehemiah and Daniel, written, I suppose, to "explain" various claims being made by the new Judeans.

So, it is not really "the return" that created Judaism (as opposed to Israelite) but how the leaders of the new Province of Judaea wanted to interpret that period of return.

[andrewcriddle]

Creation of a semi-autonomous Judean political state in the 1st half of 2nd century CE (around 172 CE to 164 CE). This resulted in a lot of cryptically written histories and/or apocalypses such as Ezra-Nehemiah and Daniel, written, I suppose, to "explain" various claims being made by the new Judeans.

Should this be BCE not CE ?

Andrew Criddle

[DCHindley]

Yes, sure does.

Now that I am pretty much past the need for the post-surgical pain meds I just started to cut back on it today. I was already taking the minimal dose, but it still results in brain fog ... mmblx.

Back to the point, I think Daniel and the "Ezra-Nehemiah" books (including the alternative forms 1 & 2 Esdras), all follow the pattern of breaking stories out of their original context and recombining them in ways that seem to defy known history of the times being reported.

But why are the recombined accounts so chronologically challenged? Its the "why" part that perplexes me.

I can try to piece together events (by following progression of events and the calendric dating of them), which actually works pretty well for events related to Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel & Joshua, and Nehemiah, but anything to do with Ezra firmly sets our feet on a different planet.

I'm looking at the work of Charles C. Torrey, who is at the same time a bit fringy yet respected by others, so I have a fixed critical perspective to compare myself to.

Hmmm. Better open yon' winder as it is a bit smoky in har.

DCH

Creation of a semi-autonomous Judean political state in the 1st half of 2nd century CE (around 172 CE to 164 CE). This resulted in a lot of cryptically written histories and/or apocalypses such as Ezra-Nehemiah and Daniel, written, I suppose, to "explain" various claims being made by the new Judeans.

Should this be BCE not CE ?

Andrew Criddle

[beowulf]

What started Judaism? Religion in some form or another is very old and therefore the religion of any specific group of people must have been born in the midst of an existing religious background by a process of differentiation and acquisition of identifying characteristics.


Judaism claims to be the first monotheistic religion and to have been an original creation of the people of Israel. It must have started by discarding a myriad of confusing and ridiculous divine masters and replacing them with the unifying and orderly concept of one god, one law and one people.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

http://www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alex ... index.html

If we decide Judaism is people who follow the OT in some manner then it could not have started before the OT appeared. The oldest known version of the OT is the Septuagint. There is no evidence of the Septuagint being anything other than the original. The idea it was a translation is an unprovenanced religious tradition. And as there is no evidence of a literate culture in Jerusalem/Judea until the 2nd c. BC the idea of an original to be translated is absurd.

[stephan happy huller]

But what Greek could have read the Hebrew? Why would they know about it? Are you sure that we have older Greek texts than the fragments of the Hebrew text still in the hands of the Bedouin?

[semiopen2]

Matt Giwer has some notoriety on the web as being a jerk.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... D67IZD-rYg

Matt Giwer is a neo-Nazi anti-Semitic Holocaust revisionist Usenet troll.
He's in his fifties, is unemployed, and lives in Florida.

Giwer has been a troll for almost a decade now, and he's been visiting this NG
on and off since it was first set up. Typically he shows up every six months
or so.

Giwer is a pretty thoroughly odious character. Although he can pass as a
semi-rational poster for a while, he _always_ breaks down, sooner or later,
into personal attacks, obscenities, flames, and ravings about Jews and Communists.

I guess that explains why the post above seems almost rational.

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/g/giwer-matt/

I wasn't sure what to make of this but -

http://www.nizkor.org/

This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and to combat hatred. Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.

so I guess we can confidently state that Giwer is sort of evil.