What is Judaism? Good question. Some 3000 years ago there was no such thing. As best as we can tell from the Bible and the findings of archeology, nomads moved westward from Mesopotamia. One of these was Abraham (roughly 1300 BCE), bringing with him his culture from the east, and an ethic that he was to pass down for generations. If we are to believe the history of the Biblical narratives, God made a covenant with Abraham, his son Isaac, and Isaac's son Jacob to protect them and give them a homeland in return for obedience to His rules, probably designed to purify one's heart through one's actions. The Israelites, as Jacob's descendents came to be known, went down to Egypt in famine. With a change in rule, the Semites (those of non-Egyptian stock) became despised and feared.  They had come in mass numbers under the friendly, Semitic Hykso conquerors.

One must believe that there was a Moses and that he led the Israelites out of Egypt (though some might have remained in Canaan during the enslavement). Whether there were plagues and mighty portents and signs, is irrelevant. The people forged a communal memory of their exodus. They recalled the honeydew of the desert, a brilliant speech of Moses during a thunderstorm at a mighty mountain. Moses gave his authority to Joshua.

About 1200 BCE the Israelites entered the land of Canaan under Joshua. Joshua led the armies in many successful battles against the inhabitants of the land. It seems that at this point, the story of the forefathers and the teachings of Moses remained oral. Only a few law codes and some poetry had been written down, or at least preserved. The entire land was not conquered and some of the settlements were rearranged from the original plan. The Israelites settled in the destroyed cities and built a new agricultural economy. They generally worshipped the local gods (Baalim) along with their personal deity of Yahweh (pronunciation uncertain. usually: The Lord).

After many years of hardships caused by the attacks and migrations of other peoples, the farmers decided they would like a national leader rather than just a tribal chief. They wanted a king like the nations around them. Previously, they had considered Yahweh to be their king and that he chose momentary military leaders as he saw fit. Now they wanted security against the growing foreign forces of the Philistines.

An inspired man, the prophet Samuel, who had grown up serving in a local sanctuary at Shilo tried to dissuade the people, but in the end they prevailed upon him. Reluctantly, he appointed the handsome Benjaminite farmer Saul as king. Saul brought many military victories and honor to the Israelites and expanded their now united territory but had a falling out with Samuel on some theological premises.

There are different stories as to how David became involved in the royal court, but this little Judaite shepherd boy, eventually a warrior and statesman, won great acclaim. He became part of the king's household and eventually took it over with Samuel's blessing after an unfortunate battle in which Saul and much of his family were killed.

David became corrupted by power and took many wives and murdered and adultered as kings then were wont to do. As an Israelite king, we should have expected better of him with his strong ethical grounding and separation from the heinous practices of idol worshippers. The royal intrigue cost him the lives of many of his vying sons and led him to the premature appointment of his son Solomon as ruler, child of the widow of Uriah whom David had killed off. 

We must note here, that David is the focus of messianic hopes, and yet his line begins with the levirate whoring of Judah's daughter-in-law Tamar and his descendent Boaz's marrying Ruth of the forbidden Moabite peoples, themselves descendents of Lot's incestuous union with his daughter. And David's son of Solomon, the son of a marriage begun in adultery and murder, is the chosen heir. God, scriptures tell us, gave David an everlasting promise to uphold his throne. God also never forgave his sin with Bathsheva, Solomon's mother. Perhaps David was a good man who made mistakes that history forgave. We may never know.

Solomon enslaved many of his subjects and imposed harsh taxes in order to built the glorious house of God, the first temple. His son Rehabam increased the yoke on the people. The northern tribes whom had never been entirely satisfied with Judaite (southern) rule, broke off under Jeroboam whom southern authors accused of idol worship and complete abandonment of God. Scripture also credits God with picking Jeroboam to lead the 10 northern tribes, leaving Rehabam with Judah and Benjamin . (The geography doesn't quite work out). 

In any case, scriptures describe most of the remaining kings as terrifying sinners, their chief crime being including pagan elements in worship of Yahweh (not to diminish the murderous policies which even 'good' kings were guilty of). The northern tribes were destroyed by the Assyrian empire northeast of them, the elite removed and replaced by a foreign people. Some refugee priests seem to have brought their traditions down to the southern kingdom in the form of much of Deuteronomy. Various oral traditions and histories began to be organized and put into writing, were compiled, and eventually resulted in the Torah and the Prophets.  Those who remained in the north are probably the ancestors of the Samaritans who carry on their unique traditions till today. The southern kingdom soon fell to the might of the new Babylonian empire. The upper classes were again removed and exiled to Babylonia (6th century BCE) where they seemed to be treated fairly well except that some 'sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept' in mourning for their homeland. How could they worship Yahweh in a strange land when so many of their laws, customs, and language were tied to Judah?

When Persia took over the Babylonian empire, these Judaite exiles were allowed to return to Judah to live and rebuild, though it was mostly the poor and scribes who returned (5th century BCE). They brought with them their traditions, their books, and their new beliefs. They spurned the natives of Judah and Israel as not following the true path, which the returning exiles had. Cyrus canonized the Judaite Torah, the five books of Moses, as the Law of the Judaites-- whom we will now call Jews (Yehudim in Hebrew). Other forms of the Israelite religion, all characterized by sticking to the traditions in the Torah, have not survived down to today with great following though their ideas still circulate.

Under Ezra the scribe the temple was rebuilt with the twigs of the surrounding countryside, nothing compared to the mighty cedars of Lebanon the first temple had. Those who remembered the first temple cried in sorrow to see its  lost glory.  The rest cried in joy that the Jews could resume communications with their god and atone for their sins through animal sacrifice and generally fulfill the injunctions of their Torah.

After the scribes finished describing the exploits of Ezra and Nehemiah, they recounted Israelite history with a distinctly pro-Davidic, pro-Judaen angle.  Jews continued writing.  The final books which the Jews categorize as the 'Writings' were canonized at the turn of the first century CE.  There ends Biblical history. After that, reliable and comprehensive Jewish history is much harder to come by till the early Middle Ages. Alexander the Great of Macedonia took over the Mediterranean world (4th century BCE), spreading Greek culture. A local Greco-Syrian king, Antiochus tired of the slow rate of Jewish assimilation and tried to speed it up with disabling ritual injunctions such as the prohibition to observe the Sabbath or from performing circumcisions. A small group of extremists under Judah the Maccabbee revolted against the harsh decrees and won back rights to the Temple, though his group installed a non-Aaronic line to the priesthood.  It is perhaps because of this that later rabbis transformed the holiday commemorating the military victory into a more temple-centric miracle.  Jews began fragmenting into various groups and writing sectarian books. Accounts of the wars, wisdom literature, ritual literature were written. The canonical books of Daniel and Job as well as the apocryphal Wisdom of Ben Sirah and Maccabbees were written during these times. Apocalyptic works foretelling the end of days and a divine judgment began showing up.

As Judaism became increasingly text-based, the method of applying those texts to everyday life became a flash point. The more elite and priestly classes tended to interpret the texts more literally and strictly. They were much more Temple-focused than the poorer clases, and in an elitist way called themselves Zadokites, descendents of the Aaronite high priest Zadok. The Pharisees called them Tzaddukim (Sadducees), meaning fools (?).

The poorer classes and non-priestly elite tended to be Pharisees (Early Hasideans), interpreting the scriptures homiletically. They also incorporated many folk superstitions such as angelology into their form of Judaism. Within the Pharisaic sect there were many ascetic movements (Haverim) who removed themselves from general society in their strict observance of the priestly purity laws. The name Pharisee is actually a Sadducee jab at their separation (Perisha) from general society.

Around the 3rd century BCE we first learn the names of some Pharisaic teachers. Previously they had been anonymously referred to as Soferim (scribes) in rabbinic literature. After the great Hillel and Shammai, of around 30 BCE, the Pharisees begin referring to themselves as rabbis (masters, Heb. pl. Rabbanim) and the structure for modern-day Rabbinic Judaism was fully laid.

The Romans conquered Judah and renamed it Palestine, the name of the Hebrew's ancient enemy the Philistines (Pelishtim), to spite them. The Romans tolerated the Jews' refusal to worship the Emperor as a God, but nonetheless taxed them harshly. Jewish resentment of foreign occupation was growing. Many foresaw the end of oppression and the removal of foreign rule; some claimed to be the anointed one, the Messiah (Heb. Mashiah), who would bring redemption to the world.

A particular Jew probably from one of the ascetic Pharisaic sects such as the Essences, lived in this time period. He might have even learned from the great master Hillel as he quoted one of his teachings. His name was Yeshua, an Aramaic (Chaldeean) corruption of the Hebrew Yehoshua, or Joshua, which in Greek is written Yesous. This imperfect transcription has been corrupted into English as Jesus.

In Jewish history, he was of minor import until the Christian sect, as the followers of Jesus were known, became a rivaling force and was eventually accepted by the Roman Empire. The word Christian is an anglicization of the Greek word for messiah whom the Christians believed Jesus to be. Some Jews accepted Jesus as the Messiah and were his earliest followers. At first, their identity as Jews didn't really change at all, as they generally continued in their observance of Mosaic law, only allowing that the Messiah had come, died, and would soon return to bring about the kingdom of Heaven. 

Other members of the Pharisaic sect, fearing losing more Jews to messianism, instituted a number of ordinances. They defined the messianic age as being when foreign rule was ended. They removed the Ten Commandments from the daily prayers to emphasize the importance of the entire canon. They added a benediction to the daily prayers requesting the quick destruction of heretics and sectarians with a formula that would not allow a Judeo-Christian to pray. They taught that if the Messiah were to come and one was planting a tree, he should first plant the tree and then greet the Messiah. And many more, with the result being that the Jewish stream to messianism was stopped. Frictions between the two groups increased and they split apart completely by the middle of the 2nd century CE. Judaism retained its responses to these early conflicts up until modern times. Christianity removed from itself the burden of much of the particularly Jewish Law while retaining only the universalistic Judaic ethics.

More on the Temple, the Canon, and Talmud forthcoming.