The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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Secret Alias
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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It would not be shocking if only an elite few participated in the core rituals of Israel. Philo suggests it. As does a careful reading of Exodus:

“Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. Exodus 3:18

“The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ Exodus 4:29

Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, Exodus 12:21
Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Exodus 17:5

The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Exodus 17:6

I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. Exodus 18:12

Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat a meal with Moses’ father-in-law in the presence of God. Exodus 19:7

So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the Lord had commanded him to speak. Exodus 24:1
The Covenant Confirmed

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance, Exodus 24:9

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up Exodus 24:14
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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Secret Alias wrote: Fri Nov 18, 2022 1:14 pm It would not be shocking if only an elite few participated in the core rituals of Israel. Philo suggests it. As does a careful reading of Exodus:
And the "people of the land" are called sinners.

Yes. And that's what some scholars, including archaeologists, have diplomatically said in their studies pointing out that there is no evidence for those practices in the Persian era. Katz raises this expected objection to the evidence that conflicts with the biblical literature:
Biblical Judaism, then, would stand as one specific faction’s ideal. By no means presupposed by all Judeans or Yhwh-devotees during the post-state period, this ideal would have developed slowly and alongside other forms in pre-exilic and post-exilic times, achieving general acceptance only in the Hellenistic Roman era. (Historial and Biblical Israel, p. 143)
But elites clearly did not have the support of the priestly establishments (the archaeological discovery of the correspondence tells us that the priestly establishment was at home with everything we see being practised at Elephantine). The elites practising "biblical" Judaism would have done so on the fringes of society, perhaps as renegades. The only way the biblical writings can be imagined in the context of the evidence is that they were the products of scribes acting independently of the main political and religious establishments and were cut off from everyday Judaism.

In other words, we have to posit secret or dissident cells functioning outside mainstream society and who have sadly left us no evidence of their existence. (How were such groups supported if they existed?)
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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Evidence of Judaism, in some cases, may depend on definition and also on time and place.
For example, in first centuries BCE and CE in Judaea use of stoneware vessels may evidence ritual purity concerns. Maybe less so among Jews in Galilee, where, after all, circa 200 CE, the Mishnah was written. Compare ossuary use.
When did the yarmulke (kippah, skullcap) come into widespread use?
Did opinions vary on the temple in Leontopolis?
Did Kaifeng Jews pick up some Chinese customs?
Did both Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem write that Judaism had no essence? And then disagree on what that meant?

[added later:]
By "stoneware" above I do not mean that variety of pottery, but vessels made of chalk, limestone.
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD5VmGkqfAg

9,807 views Streamed live on Dec 3, 2022
The Origins of Judaism | Yonatan Adler PhD
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

Post by Leucius Charinus »

The author comments in the vid that his methodology was to start at a time period in which it is known for sure that Torah-based Judaism was being practiced, and then work backwards. Adler starts with the first century of the common era as the epoch during which we know for certain (that is by the weight of the evidence) that Torah based Judaism existed. He then works back through the 1st century BCE and the 2nd century BCE and finds some evidence for the proposition. He then draws a blank with the 3rd century BCE. The provisional conclusion is thus arrived at: Torah based Judaism first appears in the 2nd century BCE.

Now what happens if we do the same thing --- apply exactly the same methodology --- for the evidence for NT-based Christianity? We could start in the 4th century where we have truckloads of evidence including radiocarbon C14 results. Moving backwards into the 3rd century CE and 2nd century CE what do we find apart from Eusebius' 4th century research into the "history" of NT-based Christianity? Not much.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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Adler's conclusion is clear (pp 235f):
[T]he Judean way of life during the Persian period was more likely governed by cultural norms and traditions inherited from the Iron Age than by anything resembling some kind of Torah law. . . . there is little reason to interpret the evidence as reflecting practices that were somehow legally mandated by anything akin to a Mosaic law. A conjectural Persian period Judean way of life thus reconstructed, bereft of any sort of Torah as its regulating principle, can hardly be said to resemble Judaism in any meaningful way.

The roughly two centuries between the conquests of Alexander the Great circa 332 BCE and the founding of an independent Hasmonean pol­ity in the middle of the second century BCE remain a far more conducive epoch in which to seek the origins of Judaism. . . . it would not be wrong to view Judaism as having emerged out of the crucible of Hellenism, which dominated the cultural landscape of the time. In a poetic way, it seems only fitting that our English word “Judaism” itself is the result of a Hebrew/Greek hybrid, rooted etymologically in the Greek rendering of the Hebrew “yahudah” merged with the Greek suffix “-ismos.”
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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Adler on the methodology behind his conclusion(s)


See 25:40 onwards ...

https://youtu.be/vD5VmGkqfAg?t=1545
The method is actually quite simple and straightforward. I take a period of time in which we have ample evidence ... that Judaism exists. This is the first century of the CE. So in the 1st century of the CE ..... this century has provided a tremendous amount of evidence both textual and archeological which points to widespread observance of the Torah .... as a rule if you were a Jew living in the 1st century of the CE then you certainly knew about the Torah and you were basically keeping the laws of the Torah. I take that as the benchmark.

So this is the period of time when we know we have Judaism. I then go backwards in time from this benchmark to see if we continue to have evidence in the earlier periods. So I go to the 1st century BCE and then the 2nd century BCE ...
Secret Alias
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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But to be fair. If gospels and Torahs were not publicly distributed, if Jewish synagogues didn't exist yet and all knowledge and literary productivity was confined to the Jerusalem temple (outside of Qumran) how many scraps of paper should we find? I've always argued on behalf of Irenaeus being seminal in bringing Christian literature out from the grip of ritual secrecy. He might even have placed the texts in public libraries. But if the books weren't "public" and were rather "secret" - how much knowledge would we expect to have of them?
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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Secret Alias wrote: Fri Dec 23, 2022 8:25 pm But to be fair. If gospels and Torahs were not publicly distributed, if Jewish synagogues didn't exist yet and all knowledge and literary productivity was confined to the Jerusalem temple (outside of Qumran) how many scraps of paper should we find? I've always argued on behalf of Irenaeus being seminal in bringing Christian literature out from the grip of ritual secrecy. He might even have placed the texts in public libraries. But if the books weren't "public" and were rather "secret" - how much knowledge would we expect to have of them?
It's not about looking for "scraps of papyrus". It's about looking for evidence of practices:
The bulk of the book (chapters 1-6) will be taken up by a data-driven analysis. The procedure to be followed here is quite straightforward. A lit­any of practices and prohibitions regulated by the Torah will be examined with each chapter focused on a separate category of laws. We will begin with a historical period from which we possess a preponderance of evi­dence demonstrating that these laws were generally known and widely ob­served among ordinary Judeans. As will be seen throughout the book, the first century CE represents just such a time. The first century CE, then, will serve as our benchmark from which we will proceed backward in time in search of evidence indicating that these laws were widely known about and commonly being observed in earlier times, prior to the first century.
and
It is important to stress here that in our analysis of the data, we will not be seeking evidence suggesting universal observance of Torah law. There is no reason to expect that, at any point in history, all Judeans strictly adhered to all the rules of the Torah. Throughout our investigation, we will seek out evidence not only of observance but also of nonobservance, and any such evidence will be prominently noted. Rather than universal observance, what we will be seeking are patterns of evidence which indicate that familiarity with the Torah and practical adherence to its laws had become commonplace within Judean society at large.
In addition to the literary evidence, Adler examines the evidence for observances/practices/instances of:

1. Dietary Laws,
2. Ritual Purity,
3. Figural Art,
4. Tefillin and Mezuzot,
5. Miscellaneous Practices,
6. The Synagogue
Secret Alias
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Re: The Origins of Judaism, Yonatan Adler

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But this is a good example of something I noticed within Marcionism. We talk about the Marcionites and sexual abstinence. Because of our inherited assumptions there is this idea that "Marcionites" didn't have sex, didn't drink alcohol, didn't do X, Y or Z. Let's stick with sex. Is it really likely that Marcionites didn't procreate? Well it depends what you mean by "Marcionite." Was there this community where everyone abstained from sex (from lay people to priests)? That can't be true. Even within Manichaeanism we see a division between the priesthood and laity. Let's suppose the Manichaeans got this from the Marcionites who preceded them (cf. Acts of Archelaus). Did the Marcionites just invent this division between the priesthood and laity? It's present in Mandaean society. But let's suppose for a moment that the model with Judaism/Samaritanism. In this model you have a group of priests who are "full Jews" or "full Israelites" whatever you want to call them and then a large body of non-priests. Is there evidence that all Jews followed all the ordinances of Moses? If not, maybe it preceded and inspired the early Christian community.

Speaking of early Christianity, Heschel shows that "heretics" caused a disruption in Judaism by arguing that only the 10 commandments came from heaven. Why is this significant? Could it be that the common Jews and Samaritans simply followed the 10 commandments? The other laws were for the priesthood. Maybe at some period the whole 613 were imposed on the Jewish population. But let's re-contextualize the gospel narrative for a minute. Jesus is Man/Ish who gave the 10 commandments to Moses. The tablets could only have had the 10 rules. Nothing about circumcision. Nothing about dietary rules, divorce etc. This seems to be Paul's limit of authority. Could the gospel have been written in an age where the Pharisees were attempting to impose the entire 613 laws on the Jewish population? Interesting possibilities.

But none of this implies Judaism only existed for as early as evidence of these practices have residue.
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