History

PRE-MONOTHEISTIC PERIOD

Around 2000 BCE: The history of Israel and of Judaism begins with Abraham, who is said to have been born in Ur, a center of advanced civilization in what was then Chaldea, in Egypt. Abraham comes to believe that there really is only one God, the maker of all things, and thus he broke with the idol worship of his family and community. The God of the ancient Israelites establishes a divine covenant with Abraham, making him the patriarch of many nations. The term Abramic Religions is derived from his name. The people start identifying themselves with words close to "Hebrew" or "Israel".

2000 - 1400: Upon Abraham's death, his son Isaac became the leader of the people who had become known as the Hebrews. Covenant with the Lord is renewed with Isaac and then with Jacob, Isaac's son. Jacob had twelve sons, who were to become founders of the twelve tribes of Israel. One of those sons, Joseph becomes one of the most honored men in Egypt, saving Egypt from a horrible famine and was able to bring Jacob and his eleven brothers and their families to Egypt, where they settled around the Nile valley about 1700 B. C.

The Hebrews lived in Egypt peacefully and prosperously until 1580 B.C. when the friendly Hykosos dynasty fell, and the Theban Pharaohs began to persecute them. The pharaohs considered the Hebrews a threat because they had grown so numerous. Pharaoh orders the killing of the male babies. Prophet Moses was one of the rescued male babies who is raised by the pharoahs daughter.

Moses is approached by the Lord in the form of a burning bush and gives him direction to lead the Israelites out of bondage from the Egyptians. Moses leads the people and is given a new covenant from the Lord for the Israelites to follow. Ten Commandments are given to the people. Ark of the Covenant is created to house the two tablets delivered by Moses from God.

The Israelites continued on their way to Canaan, entering the Holy Land about 1500 B.C. Moses dies before they reached the Holy Land. Led by Joshua, the Israelites conquered Canaan and settled down to what the thought would be a peaceful history in the Promised Land.

Around 1300: Religious rituals developing. The idea of just worshiping one god had not yet become a part of the religious life. Earliest Israel was not monotheistic, but henotheistic because the Israelites did not deny the existence of other gods for other nations.

Around 1200: The Hebrew people start to gather together in a confederation of tribes in Canaan (the land of Israel) and present a united front and effect the areas politics. Their deity was Yahweh (Jehovah), the god of the patriarchs. Yahweh had redeemed the Israelites from Egypt and brought them into the promised land. Yahweh was credited with bringing the rainfall that guaranteed an abundant harvest. But if famine or drought, etc. hit the community the unfaithful and recalcitrant were blamed. The people were centered around agriculture and the land and their God was an integral part of their life and their livelihood. They developed sacrificial offerings of gratitude to their God to appease him.

Around 1000: Jerusalem becomes the centre of the Hebrew religion because the Ark of Covenant is now established there. The history of the Jews in the Promised Land was not to be peaceful. Struggles and jealousies broke out among the leaders of the Israelites, and although an attempt was made to bring about unity eventually the nation had become divided. The Hebrew people lost their sense of the Lord as the One God and saw him merely as a national god, like the gods of other nations, and they stopped living by the required standards.

Around 950: King Solomon builds the first temple of Jerusalem. Division into the Northern kingdom of Israel and the Southern kingdom of Judah occurred shortly after the death of Solomon in 922 BCE.

MONOTHEISM: Around 800 BCE- 70 CE

Around 800: According to the Scriptures, the angry Lord used the neighboring nations of Assyria and Babylonia as tools to punish the Hebrews.

722: One of the neighboring kingdoms overcome by the Assyrians and its people forced into exile in Assyria.

605: Judah is conquered by Babylonia and a great number of its inhabitants were taken into exile by the Babylonians.

586: A major turning point in Israelite religion: The exile of the Judeans. Judah falls to the Babylonians and the Temple razed. (Orthodox Jews date the Babylonian exile from 422 to 352 BCE.) The prophet Ezekiel believed that Yahweh had used the Babylonian Empire to punish the Israelites for their sins, and he therefore had the power to redeem them from captivity if they repented. A truly monotheistic religion is born with the God of Israel now being seen as the universal ruling God with the power over all nations.

538: Some Jews (the name now has established itself even of those who are of Israeli origin) are allowed to return to their lands by King Cyrus the Great of Persia and started to restore the temple in 536 BCE. Persians stop the reestablishment of a Judean monarchy allowing only a temple-state with the high priest as its chief administrator.

But under Persian rule the returned exiles were able to reunite and to feel a new sense of togetherness. The Torah, the original laws given by God to Moses, plus the writings of the prophets, became important to all the Jews again and helped to keep the people from turning to pagan gods.

515: The Temple of Jerusalem is completed for the second time. Some time around the middle of the 5th century King Artaxerxes of Persia declares the Torah to be the law of the Jews.

332: Alexander the Great invaded the area. From circa 300 to 63 BCE, Greek became the language of commerce and thus affected the culture of Judaism.

Second half 2nd century BCE: The Torah is translated into Greek.
There is a split in Judaism different groups had developed different beliefs and practices. Religious disagreements often went hand and hand with political rivalries, and soon three great parties emerged; the Suddacees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. The Pharisees like the Essenes, put forth their own traditions of biblical law, which were disputed by the Sadducees, an aristocratic priestly group who supported the Written Law as opposed to the Oral Law, which gave the rabbis the authority to interpret the Torah. All the religious factions of this period, particularly those opposed to the Temple administration, appealed to the authority of Scripture, to which each gave its own distinctive interpretation.

The Pharisees were the lineal forerunners of the rabbinic movement after AD 70. It was they who defined what came to be the basic concepts of Judaism: the righteousness of God and the freedom of man; individual immortality; judgment after death; paradise, purgatory, and hell; resurrection of the dead; and the kingdom of God.

The Essenes were monastics living a life according to the Torah: prayer, obedience, poverty, purity, and submission to God's will. They practiced the traditional rites which prepared the soul for the Last Judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and the kingdom of God. Teachers called scribes arose from this group.

168: Antiochus bans Judais.

166: Judas Macccabaeus leads the Maccabean revolt that began as a civil war between Jewish Hellenizers and offended nativists; it ended as a successful war for Judean political independence from Syria.

163: Judas Macccabaeus succeeds in the religious fight for freedom for the Jews. He continues to fight for creating an independent kingdom. This political and cultural turmoil had a major impact on religion. The earliest apocalyptic writings were composed during this period. The revelations interpreted the wars as part of a cosmic conflict between the forces of good and evil that would end with the ultimate victory of God’s legions. Bodily resurrection at the time of God’s Last Judgment was promised for the first time to those righteous Jews who had been slain in the conflict. (In earlier Judaism, immortality consisted solely in the survival of the individual’s children and people and in a shadowy afterlife in the netherworld.)

The Maccabean victories inaugurated an 80-year period of Judean political independence, but religious turmoil persisted. Members of the Hasmonaean priestly family that led the revolt proclaimed themselves hereditary kings and high priests, although they were not of the ancient high priestly lineage. This, together with their Hellenistic monarchical trappings, prompted fierce opposition from groups such as the Qumra'n community known to modern scholars from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Led by dissident priests, this sect believed that the Jerusalem Temple had been profaned by the Hasmonaeans and saw itself as a purified Temple exiled in the wilderness.

160: Judas Macccabaeus is killed, and the era of the Maccabean revolt comes to an end.

63: The Romans overcome the Greeks and take Jerusalem. Roman suppression of the Jews begins with crucifixions, deportations, and slavery by the thousands.

Around 30-40 CE: The prophets in their writings deepened the belief in One God that had arisen with Moses on Sinai. It was with the prophets that the concept of a Messiah first arose in Israel. The Messiah to whom they looked at this time was a king who would not be divine but who would be called the Son of God and Who would unite Israel and lead it to the kingdom of God.

Many anticipated the arrival of the Messiah who would drive the Roman invaders out and restore independence. A man named Jesus of Nazareth began to achieve fame for his preaching and his miracles. He was hailed by many as the Messiah and was killed for his unorthodox practices. Jews as a whole did not accept the crucified Christ as the fulfillment of messanic prophecy. A new religious system emerges from his mission, at first Jesus-Judaism, later Christianity as Paul breaks with tradition and spread the religion to the Gentiles (non-Jews).

66: The Jews began a war against Rome that was to go on until A.D. 135 when they would be defeated and forced into exile in Galilee and Babylonia.

70: Many mini-revolts led to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem for the second time, and the revolt is suppressed. The event was considered the beginning of a new period of suffering important to the Jews as they began to date events from that time.

The Jewish Christians are wiped out or scattered throughout the known world. As the exile went on, the teaching of the scholars was put into writing. The resulting work, the Talmud ("teaching") was achieved. St. Paul, one of the most famous Christian saints, was a Talmudist.

The movement started by Paul flourishes and quickly evolves into the religion of Christianity. Jews are prohibited from setting foot in Jerusalem as it is turned into a military colony, and thus their religion is no longer centered there.

LONG DIASPORA and TRADITIONAL JUDAISM: 70 CE- 1800

Separated from the Holy Land, the Jews dispersed, or scattered elsewhere (called the Diaspora). The prophets concluded that the Jews themselves were responsible for their own misfortune because of their sinfulness, but at the same time they assured the people of God's forgiveness. The message centered on turning the Jews outer dependence on a Temple, land or their sacrifices to the message that their God would be with them wherever they went and to turn from any outer circumstance.

1st century: Because the Jews no longer have a chance of practicing their religion close to their ritual centre, many chose instead to settle in other parts of the Roman Empire and the religion becomes decentralized with no new converts sought. The destruction of the temple marked a crucial turning point in the history of Israel, because the existence of the temple had ensured the continuity of Jewish traditions, traditions that had hardly changed since their beginning. Now the local synagogue and the rabbinic study house becomes the new center of Jewish life, and authority shifts from the centralized priesthood to local scholars and teachers, giving rise to Rabbinic Judaism.

Because the Jewish people had lost control of their political destiny, the rabbis emphasized communal and spiritual life.

Around 200: The heads of the Babylonian Jewish scholars attempted to standardize Jewish oral traditions of law, custom, and liturgy in accordance with their own practices, which they set forth in their replies (responsa) to inquiries from Diaspora communities. Because the Torah was the only direct communication from God, it gained great prominence. Where the Torah did not deal with a situation, the Oral Law and the teachings of the schools became the authorities. The resulting work, the Babylonian Talmud, is virtually unknown by non-Jews and became the most authoritative rabbinic document.

4th century: The Romans abolished the partriarchate, the central authority of Judaism, in Jerusalem and now there was not a central authority capable of ruling on religious matters for all of Israel. According to the traditional law, only the Messiah could re-establish the central authority, and thus the hope for the Messiah increased in intensity.

6th-7th century: Judaism was revitalized both spiritually and economically by the rise of Islam and the Arab conquest of the Middle East. Islam arose as a religion powerfully inspired by Judaism. The followers of Islam worshiped the God of Abraham and many Jews were converted to Islam. Islam's greatest early successes were in cities that had powerful Jewish communities. The spread of the Islamic empire, from India to the Atlantic Ocean and from Arabia to the Pyrenees, also helped to spread the Talmud and other writings to the communities of the Diaspora. A wealthy Jewish middle class arose because many Jews prospered in the Islam communities because they were generally accepted and were free to engage in industry and commerce.

With greater freedom and acceptance under the reign of Islam, some Jews began to question the necessity of continuing to follow the law of the Talmud.

9th - 12th century: In the tenth century, the Islamic empire began to break up. The Arabs began to treat the Jews as second-class citizens, although they never persecuted the Jews as the Christians had. When the Christian Crusaders had conquered the Holy Land, the Jews were forced to emigrate from it–either because they were unwilling to live under the oppression of the Christians or because they were expelled. The Jews migrated west, to Spain, where a sizable Jewish community already existed, and to England, France, and Germany where some Jews had already settled to engage in commerce and industry.

While externally the Jews were dealing with oppression, internally Judaism was continually being revitalized by mystical and ethical-pietistic movements. The most notable philosophical interpretations of Judaism were put forth by Babylonian gaon Saadia ben Joseph in the 9th century, the 12th-century German Hasidic, or “pietist,” movement and the 13th-century Spanish Kabbalah.

Strains of mysticism had appeared before the Jewish history. The mystical tradition is known as the Kabbala. The Kabbalah contains elements of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, that describes the dynamic nature of the godhead and offers a powerful symbolic interpretation of the Torah and the commandments. The Kabbala stressed the doctrine of the transmigration of souls–the belief that at death the soul passes from one body into another–a doctrine that is completely foreign to the talmudic tradition. Since its beginning it has complemented the Bible and the Talmud without contradicting them but was only known by the elite scholars until it became a major popular movement after the expulsion of the Jews from Catholic Spain in 1492.

13-14th century: Jews were forced to live in special districts known from the sixteenth century on a ghettos, and denied all occupations except trade, craftsmanship, and money-lending. Eventually, Jews were banished from England in 1290, from France in 1394, and from Spain in 1492 when the Spanish Inquisition reached its height. Thousands of Jews were were either murdered or expelled from the country and their main center of Kabbalistic studies was destroyed.

In reaction to this anit-Semitism, the Jews devoted all their energies to bring about the end of the exile. Jews all over Europe turned to the Kabbala for their release and freedom from exile and persecution. The Kabbalist movement was the last great spiritual movement to sweep through Judaism.

15th century: Due to geographical differences, the Jews in the Iiberian peninsula and North Africa start orienting themselves in a different direction than the Jews of northern, central and eastern Europe. Rabbinic Judaism encountered Greek philosophy as recovered and interpreted by Islamic commentators. Rabbinic intellectuals began to cultivate philosophy to defend Judaism against the polemics of Islamic theologians and to demonstrate to other Jews the rationality of their revealed faith and law. Thus Judaism developes two distinctive cultures, Sephardic (centered in Moorish Spain) and Ashkenazic (in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire).

Philosophy and systematic legal codification were distinctly Sephardic activities and were opposed by the Ashkenazim, who preferred intensive study of the Babylonian Talmud.

Around 1700: The last original religious expression of Judaism in exile arose in the eighteenth century–Hasidism. It gained great popularity in all the Jewish communities of eastern Europe. The Hasidim formed their own communities and continued to popularize the basic themes of the Kabbala while at the same time reinterpreting them in order to make them more available to the masses.

MODERN JUDAISM AND ZIONISM: Around 1800- 1948

Around 1800: A process of enlightenment takes place among Ashkenazi Jews, resulting in Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism.

The discovery of the New World, the economic and political revolutions in Europe, and the split within the Christian Church brought about by the Protestant Reformation all combined to make the world outside the ghettos much more open to the Jews. In 1791, France became the first nation in Europe to grant equal rights to Jews, and France's lead was followed by Germany in 1848, England in 1858, Austria-Hungary in 1867, Italy in 1870, and Russia in 1917.

The Jewish reform movement began in Germany, also the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation. Confronted with Christian society, greater equal rights and lacking the protective walls of the ghetto, the Jews felt less need of the practices and traditions and they were made aware of important alternatives to their convictions and beliefs. Changes in dress, language, jobs, and names took place within the Jewish community as the Jews attempted to fit into the larger society.

After 1840, it spread from Germany to England and France and finally to America, which proved the ideal place for it to prosper.

From the beginning of the reform movement, the traditionalists within the Jewish community had attacked the new tendencies. The traditionalist resisted in every way, denouncing reformers to the Jewish authorities, refusing to bury their dead, etc. Resistance was so strong in the Jewish communities in Poland, Russia, and Near East, and Prussia that Reform Judaism never gained a foothold there.

The conflict between reform and counter-reform movements threatened to destroy Judaism. Many Jews chose neither and simply assimilated themselves into the dominant culture.

1940: Greater problems then the inner turmoil began with the near annihilation of the race in Germany and eastern Europe. Organized persecutions of Jews in German controlled areas start. Adolph Hitler and the German Nazi party drew on centuries of anti-Semitism, and upon their own beliefs for racial purity.

1942: The Holocaust continues with an attempted extermination of all Jews, and other inferior groups due to racial intolerance, in Europe by the Nazi party. Over the next 3 years, some 5.7 million Jews were killed.

1945: End of World War II. The Jews build sympathy toward their plight from Europeans and North Americans, and greater support for their own country in Palestine.

STATE OF ISRAEL: The Zionist movement was a response within all Jewish traditions to centuries of persecution. Their initial goal was create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The state of Israel was formed in 1948. With the establishment of the state of Israel, the Jews get their home country and a place for protection for all citizens. It is defined as a Jewish state. Organized immigration starts, allowing Jews from Africa, Asia and Europe in particular to settle in the new state.

Back to top