Judaism

The religious doctrines and rites of the Jews, the descendants of Abraham. Judaism was but a temporary dispensation, and was to give way, at least the ceremonial part of it, at the coming of the Messiah. The principal sects among the Jews were the Pharisees, who placed religion in external ceremony; the Sadducees, who were remarkable for their incredulity; and the Essenes, who were distinguished for their austere sanctity. At present, the Jews have two sects; the Caraites, who admit no rule of religion but the law of Moses; and the Rabbinists, who add to the law the traditions of the Talmud.

See those articles, and books recommended under article JEWS, in this work.

the religious doctrines and rites of the Jews, the descendants of Abraham. With Abraham Judaism may be said in some sense, to have begun; but it was not till the promulgation of the law upon Mount Sinai, that the Jewish economy was established, and that to his posterity was committed a dispensation which was to distinguish them ever after from every other people on earth. The Mosiac dispensation consisted of three parts; the religious faith and worship of the Jews, their civil polity, and precepts for the regulation of their moral conduct. Their civil government, as well as their sacred polity, was of divine institution; and, on all important occasions, their public affairs were conducted by the Deity himself, or by persons bearing his commission. The laws of the Jews, religious and moral, civil, political, and ritual, that is, a complete system of pure Judaism, are contained in the books of the Old Testament, and chiefly in the five books of Moses. See GOVERNMENT OF THE HEBREWS.

The religion of the ancestors of the Jews, before the time of Moses, consisted in the worship of the one living and true God, under whose immediate direction they were; in the hope of a Redeemer; in a firm reliance on his promises under all difficulties and dangers; and in a thankful acknowledgment for all his blessings and deliverances. In that early age, we read of altars, pillars, and monuments raised, and sacrifices offered to God. They used circumcision as a seal of the covenant which God had made with Abraham. As to the mode and circumstances of divine worship, they were much at liberty till the time of Moses; but that legislator, by the direction and appointment of God himself, prescribed an instituted form of religion, and regulated ceremonies, feasts, days, priests, and sacrifices, with the utmost exactness. The rites and observances of their religion under the law were numerous, and its sanctions severe. Notwithstanding God’s prophets, and oracles, and ordinances, and the symbol of his presence, were among them, the Jews were ever very prone to idolatry, till the Babylonish furnace served to purify them from that corruption. After their seventy years’ captivity, many among them gave too much place to the Greek idolatries, but as a nation they were never again guilty of the crime. Their religious worship and character in our Saviour’s time had become formal and superstitious; and such it still continues to be, in a greater or less degree, at the present day. Ancient Judaism, compared with all religions except the Christian, was distinguished for its superior purity and spirituality; and the whole Mosaic ritual was of a typical nature. See JEWS.

It is natural that divergent views upon so complex a subject should exist. The following article is frankly written from the standpoint of Reform Judaism. For a presentation of the more conservative aspect of the subject see Religion; Theology. (Ἰουδαισμὸς):

By: Kaufmann Kohler

The religion of the Jewish people (II Macc. ii. 21, viii. 1, xiv. 38; Gal. i. 13 = , Esth. R. iii. 7; comp. , Esth. viii. 17); their system of beliefs and doctrines, rites and customs, as presented in their sacred literature and developed under the influence of the various civilizations with which they have come in contact, widening out into a world-religion affecting many nations and creeds. In reality the name "Judaism" should refer only to the religion of the people of Judea, that is, of the tribe of Judah, the name "Yehudi" (hence "Judean," "Jew") originally designating a member of that tribe. In the course of time, however, the term "Judaism" was applied to the entire Jewish history.

Definition.

A clear and concise definition of Judaism is very difficult to give, for the reason that it is not a religion pure and simple based upon accepted creeds, like Christianity or Buddhism, but is one inseparably connected with the Jewish nation as the depository and guardian of the truths held by it for mankind. Furthermore, it is as a law, or system of laws, given by God on Sinai that Judaism is chiefly represented in Scripture and tradition, the religious doctrines being only implicitly or occasionally stated; wherefore it is frequently asserted that Judaism is a theocracy (Josephus, "Contra Ap." ii. 16), a religious legislation for the Jewish people, but not a religion. The fact is that Judaism is too large and comprehensive a force in history to be defined by a single term or encompassed from one point of view.

Extending over thirty-five centuries of history and over well-nigh all the lands of the civilized globe, Judaism could not always retain the same form and character. Judaism in its formative period, that is, in the patriarchal and prophetic times, differed from exilic and post-exilic Judaism; and rabbinic or pharisaic Judaism again presents a phase quite different from Mosaic Judaism, to which the Sadducees, and afterward to some extent the Karaites, persistently clung. Similarly Judaism in the Diaspora, or Hellenistic Judaism, showed great divergences from that of Palestine. So, too, the mysticism of the Orient produced in Germany and France a different form of Judaism from that inculcated by the Arabic philosophy cultivated by the Jews of Spain. Again, many Jews of modern times more or less systematically discard that form of Judaism fixed by the codes and the casuistry of the Middle Ages, and incline toward a Judaism which they hold more in harmony with the requirements of an age of broader culture and larger aims. Far from having become 1900 years ago a stagnant or dried-up religion, as Christian theology declares, Judaism has ever remained "a river of God full of living waters," which, while running within the river-bed of a single nation, has continued to feed anew the great streams of human civilization. In this light Judaism is presented in the following columns as a historic power varying in various epochs. It is first necessary to state what are the main principles of Judaism in contradistinction to all other religions.

I. The Essence of Judaism: Unity of God.

(a) Judaism is above all the religion of pure monotheism, the proclamation, propagation, and preservation of which have been the life-purpose and task of the Jewish people. "God is One, and so should Israel be of all nations the one vouching for His pure worship" (Josephus, "Ant." iv. 8, § 5; Ber. 6a, with reference to I Chron. xvii. 20, 21; Deut. vi. 4, xxvi. 17-18; Sifre, Deut. 31; and Sabbath afternoon liturgy: "Attah eḥad"). Judaism is not the mere profession of belief in the unity of God which each Jew is enjoined to make every morning and evening by reciting the Shema' ("Ant." iv. 8, § 13; Sifre, Deut. 34; Ber. i. 1 et seq., ii.). It is the guardianship of the pure monotheistic faith; and this implied the intellectual and spiritual elaboration as well as the defense of the same throughout the centuries against all powers and systems of paganism or semipaganism, and amidst all the struggles and sufferings which such an unyielding and uncompromising attitude of a small minority entailed (see Jew. Encyc. vol. vi., s.v. God).Judaism did not begin as an abstract or absolute monotheism arrived at by philosophical speculation and dogmatic in its character. Its God was not selected out of many, and invested with certain attributes to suit the requirements of an age or of a class of thinkers. Judaism at the very outset was a declaration of war against all other gods (Ex. xx. 3). Yhwh, its Only One, from Sinai, spoke at the very birth-hour of Israel, His first-born, the words: "Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord" (Ex. xii. 12); and to Babylon went forth His word: "The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens." "They are vanity, the work of error" (Jer. x. 10, 15). "All the gods of the nations are things of nought ["elilim"; A. V. "idols"]: but the Lord made the heavens" (Ps. xcvi. 5). The contrast between the living God and everlasting King, the only true God, and the idols worshiped by brutish man (Isa. xliv. 9-19; Jer. x. 8-15; Ps. cxxxv. 16-18) was too striking to allow Judaism to regard heathenism and all its folly otherwise than with sarcastic contempt; while the heathen, on their side, were at a loss to comprehend the Jew worshiping an unseen God and without any images (Tacitus, "Historiæ," ii. 5, 9; Juvenal, xiv. 97). But idolatry, as well as idolaters, was consigned to relentless extermination by Judaism, not so much on account of its intrinsic error as because of the abominable rites connected with it, which led to the degradation and moral depravity of man (Ex. xx. 5; xxiii. 24, 33; Lev. xviii. 24-30; Deut. iv. 24, vii. 2-5, 23; ix. 3; xiv. 16; xx. 17-18). From the days of Moses (Num. xxv. 1) down to the time of Philo and the rabbinic schools (Philo, "De Humanitate"; Döllinger, "Heidenthum und Judenthum," 1857, pp. 682 et seq., 700-718; see also Jubilees, Book of; Sibyllines), pagan cults were steeped in vice and cruelty, rendering them "an abomination" unto "Israel's God, who hateth lewdness" (Sanh. 106a), wherefore rigid intolerancetoward every form or snare of idolatry became the characteristic feature of the rabbinical law (ib. vii. 6 et seq., x. 4; Maimonides, "Yad," 'Akkum, ii-vii.; ib. Melakim, vi. 4; see Worship, Idol-, Judaism brooks no compromise with polytheism or idolatrous heathenism. Indeed, it enjoins the Jew to give up his life rather than to act disloyally toward his pure monotheistic faith (Dan. iii.; I Macc. i. 63; II Mace. vii.; Sanh. 74a). As soon as the Jewish people were scattered among other nations, and thereby found the opportunity of drawing comparisons between other beliefs and their own, it was inevitable that they should be so impressed with the superiority of their faith as to look forward with perfect confidence to its ultimate triumph, like Abraham, conscious of their mission to proclaim the only God everywhere and to establish His kingdom throughout the earth (Isa. ii. 2, xv., xlvi., xlix.; Zech. viii. 23; Gen. R. xxxix.; see also Polemics and Polemical Literature); and this hope for the final victory of pure monotheistic truth over all pagan error found powerful utterance in the daily prayer of the Jew (see 'Alenu), and especially in the solemn New-Year liturgy (see Liturgy).

Universality of God.

However tribal or exclusive the idea of the God of Israel may have been originally, Judaism boldly assumes that its God was the God of man from the very beginning; the Creator of heaven and earth, and the Ruler of the world from eternity to eternity, who brought the Flood upon a wicked generation of men, and who established the earth in righteousness and justice (Gen. i.-x.). In the light of this presentation of facts, idolatry or the worship of other gods is but a rebellious breaking away from the Most High, the King of the Nations, the universal God, besides whom there is no other (Deut. v. 39; Jer. x. 7), and to whom alone all knees must bend in humble adoration (Isa. xlv. 23, lxvi. 23). Judaism, accordingly, has for its sole object the restoration of the pure worship of God throughout the earth (Zech. xiv. 9); the Sinaitic covenant, which rendered Israel "a kingdom of priests among the nations"—itself only a renewal of the covenant made with Abraham and his descendants for all time—having been concluded for the sole purpose of giving back to mankind its God of old, the God of the Noachian covenant, which included all men (Gen. ix. 17, xviii. 18-19; Ex. xix. 3-6; Isa. xlix. 6-8). Surely there is nothing clannish in the God of the Prophets and the Psalmist, who judges all men and nations alike with justice and righteousness (Amos i.-ii., ix. 7; Jer. xxvi.; Ezek. xl.; Ps. xcvi. 13, xcviii. 9; and elsewhere). Judaism's God has through the prophetic, world-wide view become the God of history, and through the Psalms and the prayers of the Ḥasidim the God of the human heart, "the Father," and the "Lover of souls" (Isa. lxiii. 16; see Wisdom, xi. 26, and Abba). Far from departing from this standpoint, Judaism in the time of the Synagogue took the decisive forward step of declaring the Holy Name (see Adonai) ineffable, so as to allow the God of Israel to be known only as "the Lord God." Henceforth without any definite name He stood forth as the world's God without peer.

Spirituality of God.

Judaism at all times protested most emphatically against any infringement of its pure monotheistic doctrine, whether by the dualism of the Gnostic (Sanh. 38a; Gen. R. i.; Eccl. R. iv. 8) or by the Trinitarianism of the Church (see Jew. Encyc. iv. 54, s.v. Christianity), never allowing such attributes as justice and pardoning love to divide the Godhead into different powers or personalities. Indeed, every contact with other systems of thought or belief served only to put Judaism on its guard lest the spirituality of God be marred by ascribing to Him human forms. Yet, far from being too transcendental, too remote from mortal man in his need (as Weber, "Jüdische Theologie," 1897, pp. 157 et seq., asserts), Judaism's God "is ever near, nearer than any other help or sympathy can be" (Yer. Ber. ix. 13a); "His very greatness consists in His condescension to man" (Meg. 31a; Lev. R. i., with reference to Ps. cxiii. 6). In fact, "God appears to each according to his capacity or temporary need" (Mek., Beshallaḥ, Shirah, iv.; see Schechter in "J. Q. R." vi. 417-427).

Judaism affirms that God is a spirit, above all limitations of form, the Absolute Being who calls Himself "I am who I am" ("Eheyeh asher Eheyeh"; Ex. iii. 14), the Source of all existence, above all things, independent of all conditions, and without any physical quality. Far, however, from excluding less philosophical views of the Deity, so ardent a Jew as R. Abraham b. David of Posquières contends against Maimonides that he who holds human conceptions of God, such as the cabalists did, is no less a Jew than he who insists on His absolute incorporeality (Haggahot to "Yad," Teshubah, iii. 7). Indeed, the daily prayers of the Jew, from "Adon 'Olam" to the "Shir ha-Yiḥud" of Samuel b. Kalonymus, show a wide range of thought, here of rationalistic and there of mystic character, combining in a singular manner transcendentalism and immanence or pantheism as in no other faith. While the ideas of the various ages and civilizations have thus ever expanded and deepened the conception of God, the principle of unity was ever jealously guarded lest "His glory be given to another" (Isa. xlii. 8; see God).

Ethical Monotheism.

But the most characteristic and essential distinction of Judaism from every other system of belief and thought consists in its ethical monotheism. Not sacrifice, but righteous conduct, is what God desires (Isa. i. 12-17; Amos v. 21-24; Hos. vi. 6; Micah vi. 6-8; Jer. vii. 22; Ps. xl. 7 [A. V. 6], 1. 8-13); the whole sacrificial cult being intended only for the spiritual need of man (Pesiḳ. vi. 57, 62; Num. R. xxi.; Lev. R. ii.). Religion's only object is to induce man to walk in the ways of God and to do right (Gen. xix. 19; Deut. x. 12), God Himself being the God of righteousness and holiness, the ideal of moral perfection (Ex. xx. 5-6, xxxiv. 7; Lev. xix. 1; Deut. vii. 9-10). While the pagan gods were "products of fear," it was precisely "the fear of God" which produced in Judaism the conscience, the knowledge of a God within, thus preventing man from sin (Gen. xlii. 18; Ex. xx. 20; Deut. x. 12; Job i. 1). Consequently thehistory of mankind from the beginning appeared as the work of a moral Ruler of the world, of "the King of the nations of whom all are in awe" (Jer. x. 7; Ps. lxv. 13, xcvi. 10; Dan. ii. 21), in whom power and justice, love and truth are united (Ps. lxxxix. 15 [A. V. 14]). As He spoke to Israel, "Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. xix. 1, Hebr.), so "He said unto man, Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding" (Job xxviii. 28; comp. Micah vi. 8; Isa. xxxiii. 15; Ps. xv., xxiv. 4: "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"). Quite characteristic of rabbinical Judaism is the fact that the names used for God are chiefly taken from His ethical attributes: "The world's Righteous One" ("Zaddiḳo shel 'olam," Gen. R. xlix.; Yoma 37a); "The Merciful One" ("Raḥmana"); and most frequently "The Holy One, blessed be He!" ("ha-Ḳadosh baruk hu"). Before Cain killed his brother, he said: "There is no divine judgment and no Judge" (Targ. Yer. to Gen. iv. 8). "The first question put to man at the Last Judgment will be: 'Didst thou deal honestly with thy fellow man?'" (Shab. 31a; see God).

Unity of the Cosmos.

(b) The unity of the world is a corollary of the unity of God. The many gods of heathendom divided the world into many parts and domains, and made it appear as the battle-ground of hostile powers. The One God of the Bible renders earth and heaven, light and darkness, life and death one—a universe ruled by everlasting wisdom and goodness, the work of one great Designer and Ruler who foresees in the beginning what will be in the end, who arranges everything according to His sublime purpose (Gen. i. 1-31; Isa. xlv. 5-7, xlvi. 9-10, lv. 8-9; Ps. civ. 24; Prov. iii. 19, 20; Job xxviii. 24-27, xxxviii.). Therefore God's covenant with the world which He created makes night and day and the seasons of the year maintain their order. He has given earth and heaven and everything therein their laws which they can not transgress (Gen. viii. 22; Jer. xxxiii. 20; Job xxxviii. 33; Ps. civ. 9, cxlviii. 6). At the same time God is ever present in the world watching and sustaining everything (Isa. xl. 28, xli. 4; Ps. civ. 27-30, cxxxix. 16, cxlv. 15-16; see Providence). Every single act of God is part of His wondrous work (Job v. 9, xxxviii.; Ps. lxxvii. 15 [A. V. 14], xcvi. 3). Accordingly all miracles are manifestations of His omnipotence (Gen. xviii. 14; Ex. ix. 16; Num. xvi. 30). The grand conception of an all-controlling Power and Wisdom creating order everywhere, and working after one great design, attainable only upon the basis of Jewish monotheism, finally paved the way for the idea of an empire of law in nature. How far this unity and immutability of the laws of nature, fixed by the will of the Creator, are compatible with miracle is a question the difficulty of which was felt by the rabbis of the Mishnah (Ab. v. 6; and Gen. R. v.). "God at Creation fixed the conditions for certain creatures under which they should change their nature" (the passage was misunderstood by Weber, l.c. p. 202, as well as by the medieval Jewish philosophers; see Miracles).

No Power of Evil.

At any rate, Judaism, while insisting upon the unity of God and His government of the world, recognizes alongside of God no principle of evil in creation. God has no counterpart either in the powers of darkness, as the deities of Egypt and Babylon had, or in the power of evil, such as Ahriman in the Zoroastrian religion is, whose demoniacal nature was transferred by the Gnostic and Christian systems to Satan. In the Jewish Scriptures Satan has his place among the angels of heaven, and is bound to execute the will of God, his master (Job i. 7); and though sin and death are occasionally ascribed to him (see Satan), he can seduce and harm only as far as God permits him, and in the end must work for good (B. B. 16a). "God is the Creator of light and darkness, the Maker of peace and of evil" (Isa. xlv. 7). Everything He made was found by Him to be very good (Gen. i. 31); "also death," says R. Meïr (Gen. R. ix.). "What the Merciful does is for the good" (Ber. 60b). Whatever evil befalls man has disciplinary value: it is intended for his higher welfare (Deut. viii. 5; Ps. xciv. 12; Ta'an. 21a: "Gam zu leṭobah").

Because the Lord saw that the world could not stand to be measured by strict justice, He mingled the quality of mercy with that of justice and created the world with both (Gen. R. xii.). In striking contrast to the pessimistic doctrine that the world is the product of mere chance and full of evil, the Midrash boldly states that the world was (or is) a process of selection and evolution: "God created worlds after worlds until He said, 'This at last pleases Me'" (Gen. R. ix.; see Optimism).

Man as the Son of God.

(c) Next to God's unity the most essential and characteristic doctrine of Judaism is that concerning God's relation to man. Heathenism degraded man by making him kneel before brutes and the works of his hand: Judaism declared man to be made in the image of God, the crown and culmination of God's creation, the appointed ruler of the earth, and vicegerent of God (Gen. i. 26, 28). In him as the end of Creation the earthly and the divine are singularly blended. This is the obvious meaning of the childlike Paradise story (Gen. ii.-iii.). The idea is summed up in the Psalmist's words: "Thou hast made him a little lower than godly beings [A. V. "angels"]" ("Elohim"; Ps. viii. 6 [A. V. 5]); "Thou hast made him ruler over the work of Thine hand" (ib. verse 7 [6]). This twofold nature of man, half animal, half deity, is frequently alluded to in Job (iv. 17-19, vii. 17, x. 9-12, xxv., xxxii. 8). The original meaning of "The Lord made man in the image of Elohim" is somewhat doubtful, though clearly some kind of "godly beings" is intended (Gen. i. 27, v. 1); the old translators have "angels"; see Book of Jubilees, xv. 27, and Mek., Beshallaḥ, vi.; Ex. R. xxx. 11, xxxii. 1; Gen. R. viii.; and Targ. Yer. to Gen. i. 27; Symmachus and Saadia translate: "God created him in a noble, upright stature" (see Geiger, "Urschrift," pp. 323, 324, 328). However this may be, R. Akiba, as spokesman for Judaism, takes it to signify that man is born free likeGod, able to choose between good and evil (Mek., l.c.). According to others (see Naḥmanides and Ibn Ezra, ad loc.), it is his intelligence which renders him "the image and likeness of God" (Gen. ii. 7; Isa. xlii. 5; Ps. civ. 29; Prov. xx. 27; Job xxxii. 8; Eccl. xii. 7). At any rate, it is the affinity of the human soul to God which is expressed in the words "image of God." The Rabbis say, "He is made for two worlds: the world that now is, and the world to come" (Gen. R. viii.; Tan., Emor, ed. Buber, p. 21).The body makes man cherish sensual desires, and thus incline to sin (Gen. vi. 3-5, viii. 21; see Yeẓer Hara'); but it by no means forces him to commit sin. Judaism refutes the idea of an inherent impurity in the flesh or in matter as opposed to the spirit. Nor does Judaism accept the doctrine of original sin. The Paradise story (Gen. iii.) asserts in parabolic form man's original state of innocence (see Original Sin). "The soul that Thou hast given me is pure, Thou hast created it, Thou hast fashioned it, and Thou hast breathed it into me, and Thou preservest it within me, and at the appointed time Thou wilt take it from me to return it within me in the future." These are the words recited by the Jew every morning in his prayer (Ber. 60b). The belief of some, borrowed from Plato, that the body is "a prison-house of the soul" (Wisdom, ix. 15; Josephus, "B. J." ii. 8, § 11), never took root in Judaism, though the idea that Adam's sin brought death into the world (Wisdom, i. 13-16, ii. 21-24) is occasionally voiced by the Rabbis (see Death). Judaism knows of no "law of sin in the body" of which Paul speaks (Rom. vii. 23-25). Some commentators have found the doctrine of original sin in Ps. li. 7 (see Ibn Ezra and Delitzsch, ad loc.); but the view receives in general no support from rabbinical literature (see Lev. R. xiv. 5), though R. Johanan speaks of "the poison of the serpent" ('Ab. Zarah 22b; comp. Shab. 55b; Naḥmanides on Num. xix. 2; Zohar i. 52; Eccl. R. vii. 13).

Man's Freedom of Will.

The fundamental principle of Judaism (see Maimonides, "Moreh," iii. 17) is that man is free; that is to say, the choice between good and evil has been left to man as a participant of God's spirit. "Sin lieth at the door, and unto thee shall be its desire; but thou shalt rule over it" (Gen. iv. 7, Hebr.) says God to Cain; and herein is laid down for all time the law of man's freedom of will. Accordingly Moses says in the name of God: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; . . . therefore choose life" (Deut. xxx. 15, 19); and Ben Sira, commenting upon this, says: "God hath made man from the beginning and left him in the hand of his counsel. . . . He hath set fire and water before thee; thou mayest stretch forth thy hand unto whichsoever thou wilt. Before man is life and death; and whichsoever he liketh, it shall be given him" (Ecclus. [Sirach] xv. 14-17). Similarly R. Akiba declares: "All is foreseen; but the mastery [that is, free will] is granted" (Ab. iii. 15). Another rabbinical saying is, "Everything is determined by Heaven save the fear of Heaven" (Ber. 33b). Freedom of will constitutes man's responsibility; and his heavenly prerogative would be impaired were there an inheritance of sin. "Every man shall be put to death for his own sin," says the Law (Deut. xxiv. 16). It is the principle for which the prophet Ezekiel fought (Ezek. xviii. 20). Accordingly the Rabbis say: "The wicked are under the power of their hearts; the righteous have their hearts in their power" (Gen. R. lxvii.). Also, "Man is constantly led along the way he wishes to go. If he wishes to pollute himself by sin, the gates of sin will be opened for him; if he strives for purity, the gates of purity will be opened to him" (Yoma 38a; Mak. 10b; Nid. 30b). Regarding the difficulty of reconciling free will with divine omniscience, see Free Will. Notwithstanding man's propensity to sin, caused by the Yeẓer Ha-Ra', "the leaven in the lump" (Ber. 17a; comp. I Cor. v. 7), and the universal experience of sinfulness (Eccl. vii. 20; Ex. R. xxxi.), rabbinical Judaism denies that sin is inherited from parents, pointing to Abraham the son of Terah, Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, and others as instances to the contrary (Tan., Ḥuḳḳat, ed. Buber, p. 4, with reference to Job xiv. 4), and insists on the possibility of sinlessness as manifested by various saints (Shab. 55b; Yoma 22b; Eccl. R. i. 8, iii. 2).

Sin and Repentance.

Sin, according to Jewish teaching, is simply erring from the right path, owing chiefly to the weakness of human nature (Num. xv. 26; I Kings viii. 46; Ps. xix. 13, lxxviii. 39, ciii. 14; Job iv. 17-21); only in the really wicked it is insolent rebellion against God and His order ("pesha'" or "resha'"; Isa. lvii. 20; Ps. i. 4-6, xxxvi. 2; and elsewhere). And there is no sin too great to be atoned for by repentance and reparation (Ezek. xviii. 23; Yer. Peah i. 16b; Ḳid. 40b). The whole conception, then, of mankind's depravity by sin has no place in Judaism, which holds forth the reintegrating power of repentance to Gentiles and Jews, to the ordinary and the most corrupt sinners alike (Pes. 119a; R. H. 17b; Sanh. 103a, 108a; Yoma 86a, b). "Before God created the world, He created repentance for man as one of his prerequisites" (Pes. 54a; Gen. R. xxi., xxii.; see Repentance; Sin).

Unity of Mankind.

(d) The doctrine by which Judaism exerted the greatest influence upon the history of the world is, however, that of the unity of the human family. The first eleven chapters of Genesis, whatever the origin of the narrative may be (see Babylonia and Genesis), teach that all the tribes of men have descended from one parent, Adam (= "man"), and that consequently the various races constitute one family. This doctrine is the logical consequence of the other, the unity of God. The theology of Judaism shaped its anthropology also. Childlike as the story of the confusion of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel may appear (Gen. xi. 1-9, probably based upon an old Babylonian myth relating to the battle of the giants with the celestial gods), the Jewish genius made it convey a great truth, namely: God dispersed men in order to cause the whole earth to be the habitation of the human race, and thus to found and establish the higher unity of man upon the greatest possible diversity. Accordingly the end of history is that the Lord shall "turnto the nations [A. V., incorrectly, "the people"] a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent" (Zeph. iii. 9; comp. Gen. ix. 1).Here is foreshadowed the world-plan of salvation, the Kingdom of God, an idea peculiar to Judaism. As Creation is centered upon man, so is the perfection of humanity, through the unfolding of all the powers of man in the world, the aim of the world-drama of history (Gen. i. 28; Isa. xlv. 18). "The world was created for man" (Ber. 6b). "Abraham, the true type of humanity, would have been the first-created man had God not seen the necessity of making him the restorer of a world corrupted by sin since Adam's day." "The Torah given to Israel on Sinai was originally intended for Adam as the first man; but, seeing that the six Noachian commandments—that is, the unwritten laws of humanity—were kept by him, God reserved the Torah for the descendants of Abraham" (Eccl. R. iii. 11; comp. Gen. R. xvi. 9, xxiv. 5). By their non-observance of the Noachian laws (Gen. R. xxiii., xxxviii.) the early generations of men all failed to fulfil the design of the Creator; Abraham was therefore selected to bring men back to the way of righteousness (Gen. xviii. 19; Josh. xxiv. 3), and thus to reunite the world by making the God of heaven God of the earth also (Gen. R. xxxix. 13, lix. 11).The Ten Words of Sinai, too, were intended for every nation; but when all the others refused to accept them and Israel alone merited the priesthood by promising "What the Lord sayeth we will do," the Owner of the whole earth rendered Israel "His peculiar treasure among the nations, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex. xix. 1-8, xxiv. 7; Mek., Yitro, Bahodesh, 5; Sifre, Deut. 343; Pesiḳ. R. xxi.). In fact, the Ten Words of Sinai were promulgated in seventy languages in order that they might be understood by all of the seventy nations (Shab. 88b). "Had Israel not accepted the Law, the world would have been turned into chaos" (Shab. 88a).

Israel's Mission.

Israel, then, has been chosen, like Israel's ancestor Abraham, the descendant of Shem (Gen. ix. 26-27), to be a blessing to all nations on earth (ib. xii. 3, xix. 18); and the name by which the Lord calls him at the Exodus (Ex. iv. 22), "My first-born son," betokens in the language of the time his mission to be that of the priest and teacher in the house-hold of the nations, leading the rest by his precept and example to the worship of the Only One (ib. xix. 6; Isa. lxi. 6). "A people dwelling in solitude and not counted among the nations" (Num. xxiii. 9; Deut. vii. 7), but watched over by divine providence with especial care (Deut. xxvii. 18-19, xxxii. 8-12), the standard-bearer of incomparable laws of wisdom and righteousness in the sight of the nations (ib. iv. 5-8), Israel has been created to declare God's praise to the world, to be "His witnesses" (LXX., "martyrs") testifying to His unity, "the light of the nations," and the "covenant of the people to establish the earth" (Isa. xliii. 10, 21; xlix. 6-8). "To Israel's house of God the nations shall flock to be taught of His ways and to learn to walk in His paths." This is to bring humanity back to its normal condition, peace and bliss on earth, because righteousness will then prevail everywhere and the whole "earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord" (Isa. ii. 2-4, ix. 6, xi. 4-9, lxv. 25; Micah iv. 1-4). Israel, who when redeemed from Egypt proclaimed God as King (Ex. xv. 19; Lev. R. ii. 4), received the truth of Sinai as a trust; he is never to rest until his God shall become king of the whole earth, until all men and nations shall bend the knee before Him (Zech. xiv. 9; Isa. xl. 5, xlv. 13, xlix. 19; Ps. xxii. 29 [A. V. 28], xlvii. 9 [8], lxxvii. 5 [4], xcvi.-xcix.). "Israel, who proclaims God's unity, is proclaimed by God as His unique people" (Mek., Beshallaḥ, Shirah, 3). Israel, as the people of the saints of the Most High, is to establish the kingdom of God to last forever (Dan. ii. 44, vii.). But as teacher and guardian of mankind's purest faith and loftiest hope, he is dealt with more severely by God for every transgression (Jer. ii. 21; Ezek. xx. 33-41; Amos iii. 2). Nay more, as the servant of God he has been chosen for continual martyrdom in the cause of truth and justice; he, therefore, is the "man of sorrows" whose affliction is to bring healing to the world and to lead many to righteousness (Isa. lii-liii.; see Servant of God).

Whether the expectation is that the universal kingdom of God on earth will be brought about by an ideal king from the house of David, the Messiah, as Isaiah and his followers depict the future of Israel (Isa. xi. 1 et seq.; Ezek. xxxiii. 24), or by the dispersed people of Israel itself, as the seer of the Exile (Isa. lvi.-lxvi.) indicates (see Messiah); whether or not the great day when all flesh shall worship the Lord will be preceded by a day of divine judgment when all the wicked "shall be stubble" (Mal. iii. 19, 21 [A. V. iv. 3]; see Day of the Lord; Eschatology; Gog and Magog), Judaism by its idea of a divine kingdom of truth and righteousness to be built on earth gave to mankind a hope and to history a goal for which to live and strive through the centuries. Other nations beheld in the world's process a continual decline from a golden age of happiness to an iron age of toil, until in a great catastrophe of conflagration and ruin the end of all things, of men and gods, is to be reached: Judaism points forward to a state of human perfection and bliss to be brought about by the complete unfolding of the divine in man or the revelation of God's full glory as the goal of history. And herein lies its great distinction also from Christianity. Judaism's scope lies not in the world beyond, the world of the spirit, of which man on earth can have no conception. Both the hope of resurrection and that of immortality, in some form or other familiar and indispensable to all tribes and creeds, seem evidently to have come to the Jews from without—the one from Persia or Babylonia, the other from Greece. Judaism itself rests on neither (see Eschatology; Immortality; Resurrection). Its sole aim and purpose is to render the world that now is a divine kingdom of truth and righteousness; and this gives it its eminently rational, ethical, and practical character.

II. Character of Judaism:

Judaism has a twofold character: (1) universal, and (2) particular or national. The one pertains to its religious truths destined for the world; the other, to its national obligationsconnected with its priestly mission. Upon the former more stress is laid by the Prophets and by most of the sacred poets, by the Alexandrian propagandists and the Palestinian haggadists, as well as by the medieval philosophers and the modern Reform school; whereas the Mosaic law, the Halakah, and the Talmudic and cabalistic schools dwell almost exclusively upon the latter.

(1) As a universal religion Judaism differs from all other religions in that it is not a creed or a system of beliefs upon the acceptance of which redemption or future salvation depends (see Articles of Faith). It is a system of human conduct, a law of righteousness which man should follow in order to live thereby (Lev. xviii. 5); that is, according to R. Meïr, the law of humanity, since "man" is spoken of and not Israel nor priest nor Levite (Sifra, Aḥare Mot; 'Ab. Zarah 3a; comp. Sanh. 59a, where the meaning of R. Meïr's words is altered). It is a law "for life and not for the depriving of man's life" (Sifra, l.c.). When, in answer to a heathen mocker, Hillel summed up the entire Law in the Golden Rule: "What is hateful to thee do not unto thy neighbor" (the Targumic translation of "Love thy neighbor as thyself"; Lev. xix. 18; Shab. 31b; see Ab. R. N., Recension B, xxvi., ed. Schechter, p. 53, where the answer is ascribed to R. Akiba instead; comp. Sifra, Ḳedoshim, iv.), he simply voiced the truth of which Abraham and Job are set up as types, and which is expressed by lawgiver (Deut. iv. 8) and prophet (Isa. i. 10-17, xxxiii. 15; Hos. vi. 6; Amos v. 21-24; Micah vi. 6-8; Zech. viii. 16-17), by the Psalmist (Ps. xv., xxiv., xxxiv. 13-15) and the Book of Wisdom, as well as by the Rabbis (Mek. 23b-24a). Whereas heathenism by its cults of Moloch and similar gods fostered cruelty, the Torah enjoined man "to walk in the ways of a righteous and merciful God, and be righteous and merciful like Him" (Deut. xi. 22; Sifre, Deut. 49; Mek., Beshallaḥ, Shirah); to love the stranger and protect the fatherless and the widow as He does (Deut. x. 17-20).

Justice to All.

Judaism is, above all, the law of justice. Whereas in heathendom, except in the case of some exalted philosopher like Plato, might was deified, and the oppressed, the slave, and the stranger found no protection in religion, the declaration is everywhere made throughout Scripture that injustice committed by man against man provokes the wrath of the world's Ruler and Judge (Ex. xxi. 22-23; Gen. vi. 13, xviii. 20; Deut. xxvii. 15-26; Amos i. 3-ii. 8; and elsewhere), and that righteousness and compassionate love are demanded for the oppressed, the slave, the poor, the fatherless and homeless, the stranger, and for the criminal as having a claim on the sympathy of his fellow men; even for the dumb creature compassion is required (Ex. xxii. 20-26, xxiii. 5-6; Deut. xxii. 6; xxiv. 6, 10-xxv. 4; Job xxxi.). This is the "Torah" of which Isaiah speaks (Isa. i. 10), the "commandment" put by God upon every human heart (Deut. xxx. 11-14). And this spirit of justice permeates the Talmudic literature also. "For righteousness is one of the pillars of the world" (Ab. i. 18). "Where right is suppressed war comes upon the world" (ib. iv. 8). "The execution of justice is one of the Noachian laws of humanity" (Sanh. 56b). "Justice is demanded alike for the Gentile and the Jew" (Mak. 24a; B. Ḳ. 113a; and other quotations in Baḥya b. Joseph's "Ḳad ha-Kemaḥ," ch. "Gezelah"). To have due regard for the honor of all fellow creatures ("kebod ḥaberiyyot"; Tos., B. Ḳ. vii. 10) is one of the leading principles of rabbinic law (Shab. 94b).

Purity and Truth.

Judaism furthermore is the law of purity. Heathenism by its orgiastic cults of Baal-peor, Astarte, and the like, fostered impurity and incest (Lev. xviii. 3, 24-30; Num. xxv. 1-9; Deut. iv. 3). The Torah warns against fornication, and teaches purity of heart and of action (Num. xv. 39; Deut. xxiii. 18-19, xxiv. 15; Prov. vii. 5-27; Job xxxi. 1), because God is too pure to tolerate unchastity in man or in woman (see Holiness; Purity). Judaism resents every act of lewdness as "nebalah" = "villainy" (Gen. xxxiv. 7, 31; Deut. xxii. 21; Judges xix. 24; II Sam. xiii. 12; see Folly), and most severely condemns lascivious talk (Isa. ix. 16; Shab. 33a).

Judaism is, moreover, the law of truth. Its God is the God of truth (Jer. x. 10). "The seal of the Holy One is truth" (Gen. R. lxxxi.; see Alpha and Omega). Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Job, and Ḳohelet wrestled with God in doubt until He revealed Himself to them in a higher form (Gen. xviii. 25; Ex. xxxii.-xxxiii.; Jer. xii. 1; Job xxxi. 35). And as the Prophets had perfect faith in God as the God of truth and therefore shrank from hypocrisy (Yer. Ber. vii. 11c), so did all the Jewish philosophers show perfect confidence in truth while boldly expressing their lofty views concerning the Deity and divesting God of every trace of Anthropomorphism and Anthropopathism and of every attribute infringing upon the spirituality and unity of God. It was, says the Talmud, the last will of Canaan that his children should not speak the truth and should love lasciviousness (Pes. 113b). "The Torah of Moses is truth" and "desires men to speak the truth and assent to the truth, even as God Himself assents to the truth when honestly spoken"; for "Upon truth rests the world" (B. B. 74a; Ps. xv. 2; Ab. R. N. xxxvii.; Ab. i. 18). This honest search for truth made Judaism, indeed, the world's great power for truth as well as for righteousness.

Judaism promotes and fosters education and culture. In contrast to such systems of faith as foster ignorance of the masses, it renders it a duty for the father to instruct his children and for the community to provide for the general instruction of old and young (see Education; Philosophy). It sanctifies labor, and makes the teaching of a trade whereby a livelihood may be earned a duty incumbent upon the father or upon the municipal authority (see Labor, Holiness of). It makes the systematic care of the poor a duty of the community with a view to the dignity and self-help of the recipient (See Charity). It denounces celibacy as unlawful, and enjoins each man to build a home and to contribute to the welfare of human society (see Marriage). The high priest in Israel was not allowed to officiate on the Day of Atonement unless he had a wifeliving with him (Yoma i. 1; comp. Ta'an. ii. 2). It enjoins love of country and loyalty to the government, no matter how unfriendly it be to the Jew (Jer. xxix. 7; Ab. iii. 2; Ket. 111a; see Patriotism).

Judaism is a religion of joy, and it desires that man should rejoice before God and gratefully enjoy all His gifts, at the same time filling other hearts with joy and thanksgiving. Especially are its Sabbath and festal days seasons of joy with no austerity about them. Judaism discourages asceticism (see Asceticism; Joy).

The Religion of Joy, Hope, and Love.

Judaism is a religion of hope. It teaches men to recognize in pain and sorrow dispensations of divine goodness. It is optimistic, because it does not defer hope merely to the world to come, but waits for the manifestation of God's plans of wisdom and goodness in the moral and spiritual advancement of man. While the present world is, in comparison to the future one, declared to be "like the vestibule wherein one prepares for the palace," it is nevertheless stated that "one hour devoted to repentance and good works in this world is more valuable than the entire life of the world to come" (Ab. iv. 16-17); for "to-day is the time for working out one's destiny, while to-morrow is the time for receiving compensation" ('Er. 22a).

As its highest aim and motive Judaism regards the love of God. Twice every day the Jew recites the Shema', which contains the words: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deut. vi. 5); this verse is understood to enjoin him to willingly surrender life and fortune whenever the cause of God demands it, while it at the same time urges him to make God beloved by all his fellow creatures through deeds of kindness, as Abraham did (Sifre, Deut. 32). This love of God implies the most unselfish devotion and the purest motive of action; that is, acting not from fear, but rather for God's sake alone (Sifre, Deut. 32, 48; Ab. ii. 12); doing good not in view of any reward in the world to come (Ab. i. 3), but for its own sake (see Schreiner, "Die Jüngsten Urtheile über das Judenthum," 1902, pp. 145-151); and it also implies the love of man (Deut. x. 12-19; see Love).

Judaism, finally, is a system of sanctification of life. It teaches that the whole of life is holy, because God is manifested in it: "Be holy, for the Lord your God is holy" (Lev. xix. 1, Hebr.). Even in the functions of animal life the presence of a holy God should be realized (Deut. xxiii. 15); and when the perfect state of humanity shall have been attained, every road will be a holy road free from impurity (Isa. xxxv. 8), and "In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holy unto the Lord" (Zech. xiv. 20, R. V.).

National Character of Judaism.

(2) The striking feature of Judaism, however, is that, while containing the highest spiritual and ethical truths for humanity, it is bound up with the Jewish nation. The One and Only God, Yhwh, is Israel's God in particular (Sifre, Deut. 31); and the separation of Israel from the rest of the nations in order to distinguish it as God's people is the express purpose of the Torah (Lev. xx. 24, 26), and the characteristic trait of Judaism from the time of Ezra (Ezra vi. 21; Neh. x. 21) and of the Scribes or Pharisees (see Pharisees). This national distinctness or aloofness of the Jew has brought him all the hostility, persecutions, and bitter attacks of a surrounding world from the days of Haman (Esth. iii. 8) and of Apion in Alexandria down to the most recent times (see Anti-Semitism; Apion). Even such historians as Mommsen ("Rümische Gesch." 1885, v. 487), Ed. Meyer ("Gesch. des Alterthums," iii. 167-236), Harnack ("Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christenthums," 1902, p. 16), and Bousset ("Wesen der Religion des Judenthums," 1903, pp. 128-157) see in Judaism only a national religion, in Israel's God a national God. Nay, it may be affirmed without exaggeration that a just and unprejudiced estimate of Judaism is found nowhere in modern Christian writings (see Schreiner, l.c.). The fact of the matter is that Judaism, while representing the guardianship of the universal religious truths for humanity, surrounded the Jewish people, as the priestly people of the world's Only God, with laws and rites of a specific national character in order to keep these very truths forever intact and at the same time to invest the guardians of them with the sanctity of the world's priesthood. "The people of Israel have from the beginning sworn fidelity to God and have recognized Him as the world's Ruler" (Ber. 6a; Ḥag. 3a); therefore have they been called "the sons of God" (Deut. xiv. 1; Ab. iii. 13). Yet their especial sonship of God implies that they should be faithful to Him unto death, and by continued self-surrender and martyrdom should glorify His name before the world throughout the ages (Sifra, Emor, iv., on Lev. xxii. 32-33; comp. Ps. xliv. 18-23; Dan. iii.; II Macc. vii.; and Ḳiddush ha-Shem).

The Jews a Separate People.

The Sinaitic covenant which rendered Israel "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex. xix. 6) became, the Rabbis say, "a source of hatred to the nations" (Shab. 89a: a play upon words, "Sinai"—"Sin'ah"), because it separated it from them by statutes and ordinances such as the dietary and the Levitical purity laws and others intended to prevent idolatrous practises. Like the priest in the Temple, whose garments and mode of life distinguished him from the rest in order to invest him with the spirit of greater sanctity and purity (I Chron. xxiii. 13), so Israel was for all time to be impressed with its priestly mission by all those ceremonies which form so prominent a feature in its religious life (see Ceremonies; Circumcision; Commandments; Dietary Laws). Particularly the Mosaic and, later on, the Pharisaic laws had for their object the separation of the Jewish people from all those influences prevalent in heathendom which led to idolatry and impurity; wherefore not only intermarriage, but also participation in any meal or other festive gathering which could possibly be connected with idol-worship was prohibited (see Worship, Idol-; Intermarriage; Jubilees, Book of.) This persistent avoidance of association with the Gentiles on the part of the Pharisees, which in the time of the Maccabees was termed ἀμξία = "keepingapart from the surrounding nations" (comp. II Macc. xiv. 38), became the chief cause of the accusation of a "hatred of mankind" which was brought against the Jews by the Greeks and Romans, and which has ever since been reiterated by the anti-Semites (see Schürer, "Gesch." iii. 3, 416).

In reality these very laws of seclusion fitted the Jew for his herculean task of battling for the truth against a world of falsehood, and enabled him to resist the temptations and to brave the persecutions of the nations and the ages. They imbued him with a spirit of loyalty unparalleled in human history; they inculcated in him the principle of abstinence, enabling him to endure privation and torture; and filled him with that noble pride which alone upheld him amidst the taunts and sneers of high and low. They brought out those traits of manhood which characterized Abraham, who, according to the Rabbis, was called '"Ibri " (Hebrew) because his maxim was: "Let all the world stand on the one side ["'eber eḥad"]—I side with God and shall win in the end" (Gen. R. xlvi.). But these laws also fostered a conception of the sanctity of life unknown to other creeds or races. By investing the commonest act and event with religious obligations, they made the whole of life earnest and holy with duty. Instead of being "a yoke of servitude," as Schürer and others have it, they "filled the home and the festal seasons with higher joy" (see Schechter and Abrahams in "J. Q. R." iii. 762 et seq., xi. 626 et seq.).

III. Judaism in Its Relation to the Gentile World:

Notwithstanding its unmitigated severity against heathenism with its folly and vice, and against every mode of compromise therewith, Judaism does not, like other creeds, consign the non-believer to eternal doom. It judges men not by their creed, but by their deeds, demanding righteous actions and pure motives, since "fear of God" signifies fear of Him who looketh into the heart (Sifra, Aḥare Mot, iii. 2). It declares through R. Joshua b. Hananiah, whose opinion is generally accepted, that "the righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come"; the Shammaite R. Eliezer in consigning all heathen to Gehenna bases his argument on the Scriptural verse Ps. ix. 18 (A. V. 17), into which he reads, "The wicked are turned to Sheol because all heathen forget God"—not as R. Joshua does, "all those heathen that forget God" (Sanh. 105a). It is the moral depravity ascribed to the heathen, owing to his unchaste and violent habits, which is the cause of all the harsh haggadic expressions—such as "the people that resemble the ass" (Ket. 111a)—and halakic injunctions found in the Talmud against the heathen (Gentile or 'Akkum; see Jubilees, Book of). The latter is always under grave suspicion (see 'Ab. Zarah ii. 1; Yeb. 98a), yet, no sooner does he solemnly discard idolatry than his association is invited and he has a claim on protection (Giṭ. 45a).

Its Attitude Toward Proselytism.

On the contrary, Judaism waits for "the righteous nation that keeps the faith" (Isa. xxvi. 2), and opens wide "its gates that the righteous from among the heathen world may enter" (Ps. cxviii. 20; Sifra, Aḥare Mot, xiii.), calling the Gentiles that serve God in righteousness "priests of the Lord" ("Otiot de-R. Akiba," letter "Zayin"). It declares that the Holy Spirit may rest upon the righteous heathen as well as upon the Jew (Tanna debe Eliyahu R. ix.). It pays due homage to the wise among the heathen (Ber. 58a; Soṭah 35b; Bek. 8b; Gen. R. lxv.). It recognizes the existence of prophets among the heathen (B. B. 15b: "Fifteen prophets God sent to the heathen world up to the time of Moses: Balaam and his father, Job and his four friends," etc.; comp. Lev. R. i. 12, ii. 8; Tanna debe Eliyahu R. xxvi.; ib. Zuṭa xi., etc.). The assertion made by Max Müller, Kuenen, and others, that Judaism is not a missionary religion, rests on insufficient knowledge. There existed an extensive proselyte propaganda literature, especially in Alexandria (see Didache; Propaganda); and, according to the Midrash, "the heathen world is saved by the merit of the one proselyte who is annually won" (Gen. R. xxviii.; comp. Matt. xxiii. 15; Jellinek, "B. H." vi., Introduction, xlvi.). Abraham and Sarah are represented as devoting their lives to making proselytes (Gen. R. xxxix.); and as the Psalmist accords to the proselytes—"those that fear God"—a special place (Ps. cxv. 11), so does the daily prayer of the Jew in the "Shemoneh 'Esreh" contain a special blessing for the proselytes ("Gere ha-Ẓedeḳ"). Only in later centuries, when the Church interfered through apostates and by edicts, was the proselyte declared to be a plague instead of a desired accession to the house of Israel (Isa. xiv. 1); the ancient Halakah endeavored to encourage the heathen to come under the wings of the Shekinah (Yeb. 47a, b; Mas. Gerim; Lev. R. ii.). In order to facilitate the admission of Gentiles, Judaism created two classes: (1) "proselytes of righteousness," who had to bring the "sacrifices of righteousness" while submitting to the Abrahamic rite in order to become full members of the house of Israel; and (2) "proselytes of the gate" ("gere toshab"), who accepted only the seven Noachian laws (ten and thirty are also mentioned) of humanity. Occasionally the necessity of undergoing circumcision is made a matter of controversy also in the case of the full proselyte (see Circumcision). But proselytism as a system of obtaining large numbers is deprecated by Judaism.

However, the Messianic age is regarded as the one when "the fulness of the heathen world" will join Judaism (Isa. xiv. 1; Zech. viii. 23; 'Ab. Zarah 3a). Especially characteristic of the cosmopolitan spirit of Judaism is the fact that the seventy bullocks brought as sacrifice during the Sukkot festival at the Temple were taken to be peace-offerings on behalf of the supposed seventy nations representing the heathen world (Suk. 55b), a view shared by Philo ("De Monarchia," ii. 6; idem, "De Septenario," p. 26; see Treitel in "Monatsschrift," 1903, pp. 493-495). Throughout the entire ethical literature of the Jews, from Tanna debe Eliyahu R. down to the various Ethical Wills of the Rabbis, there is voiced regarding the non-Jewish world a broadly human spirit which stands in strange contrast to the narrowness with which Judaism is viewed by Christian writers, even those of high rank (see Zunz, "Z. G." pp. 122-157). The same cosmopolitan attitude was taken by Judaism whenever its representativeswere called upon to act as intermediaries between Moslem and Christian; and the parable of the three rings, put by Lessing into the mouth of Nathan der Weise, was actually of Jewish origin (see Wünsche in "Lessing-Mendelssohn Gedenkbuch," 1879, pp. 329 et seq.).

IV. Judaism as Law:

Owing to the Paulinian antithesis of law and faith or love (see Löwy, "Die Paulinische Lehre von Gesetz," in "Monatsschrift," 1903, pp. 332 et seq., 417 et seq.), the Torah, the basis and center of Judaism since Ezra, has been persistently placed in a false light by non-Jewish writers, undue stress being laid upon "the burden of the Law." In reality, the word "Torah" signifies both "law" and "doctrine"; and Judaism stands for both while antagonizing Paul's conception of faith as a blind dogmatic belief which fetters the mind. It prefers the bondage of the Law to the bondage of the spirit. It looks upon the divine commandments as a source of spiritual joy ("simḥah shel miẓwah") and as a token of God's special protection (Ber. 31a), for which it enjoins the Jew to offer Benedictions and to display zeal and enthusiastic love (Ab. v. 20). "God has given the children of Israel so many commandments in order to increase their merit [Mak. iii. 16] or to purify them" (Tan., Shemini, ed. Buber, p. 12). Every morning after having taken upon himself the yoke of God's kingdom, the Israelite has to take upon himself the yoke of the divine commandments also (Ber. ii. 2); and there is no greater joy for the true Israelite than to be "burdened with commandments" (Ber. 17a). "Even the commonest of Jews are full of merit on account of the many commandments they fulfil" (ib. 57a.)

The Law was accordingly a privilege which was granted to Israel because of God's special favor. Instead of blind faith, Judaism required good works for the protection of man against the spirit of sin (ib. 32b). The Law was to impress the life of the Jew with the holiness of duty. It spiritualized the whole of life. It trained the Jewish people to exercise self-control and moderation, and it sanctified the home. It rendered the commonest functions of life holy by prescribing for them special commandments. In this sense were the 613 commandments regarded by Judaism.

Purpose of the Law.

Some of these are understood to be divine marks of distinction to separate Israel from the other nations—statutes ("ḥukkot") which are designated as unreasonable by the heathen world, such as laws concerning diet, dress, and the like (Sifra, Aḥare Mot, xiii.). Others are called "'eduyot" (testimony), in view of their having been given to make Israel testify to God's miraculous guidance, such as the festive seasons of the year; while still others are "signs" ("ot"), being tokens of the covenant between God and Israel, such as circumcision, the Sabbath (Gen. xvii. 11; Ex. xxxi. 13), the Passover (Ex. xii. 13, xiii. 9), and, according to the rabbinical interpretation, the tefillin (Deut. vi. 8, xi. 18).

Of sacraments, in the sense of mysterious rites by which a person is brought into a lifelong bodily relationship to God, Judaism has none. The Sabbath and circumcision have been erroneously called thus by Frankel (in his "Zeitschrift," 1844, p. 67): they are institutions of Judaism of an essential and, according to the generally accepted opinion, vital character; but they do not give any Jew the character of an adherent of the faith (see Ceremony; Commandments). At the same time the Sabbath and the festival seasons, with the ceremonies connected with them, have at all times been the most significant expressions of Jewish sentiment, and must be regarded as the most important factors of religious life both in the Synagogue and in the home (see Ab, Ninth of; Atonement, Day of; Ḥanukkah; New-Year; Passover; Purim; Sabbath; Shabuot; and Sukkot).

While the immutability of the Torah, that is, the law of Moses, both the written and the oral Law, is declared by Maimonides to be one of the cardinal doctrines of Judaism, there are views expressed in the Talmud that the commandments will be abrogated in the world to come (Nid. 61b). It is especially the dietary laws that will, it is said, be no longer in force in the Messianic time (Midr. Teh. on Ps. cxlvi. 4).

Orthodox and Reform Judaism.

On the question whether the laws concerning sacrifice and Levitical purity have ceased to be integral parts of Judaism, Reform and Orthodox Judaism are at issue (on this and other points of difference between the two extreme parties of Judaism see Reform Judaism). Between the two stands the so-called "Breslau school," with Zacharias Frankel as head, whose watchword was "Positive Historical Judaism," and whose principle was "Reform tempered with Conservatism." While no longer adhering to the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch (see Grätz in "Gesch." ii. 299-318, and Schechter in "J. Q. R." iii. 760-761) and the divine character of tradition (see Frankel, "Darke ha-Mishnah"), it assigns the power and authority for reforms in Judaism only to the Jewish community as a whole, or to what Schechter calls "catholic Israel." The latter author desires "a strong authority," one which, "drawing inspiration from the past, understands also how to reconcile us [the Jews] with the present and to prepare us [them] for the future" ("J. Q. R." iv. 470). Grätz goes so far as to reduce Judaism to two fundamental principles: (1) "the religious element, which is mere negative monotheism in the widest acceptation of the term," and (2) the ethical, which offers the ideal for the moral life: "Be ye holy even as I am holy"; at the same time declaring that "prophets and Talmudists did not regard sacrifice or ritual as the fundamental and determining thing in Judaism" (Grätz, i. 9). This leads to a final statement of the principles and forces of Judaism.

V. Historic Principles and Forces of Judaism:

The Shema', "the proclamation of God's unity, requires an undivided Israel" (Mek., Yitro, Baḥodesh, i.). "One God, One Israel, and One Temple" is the principle twice stated in Josephus ("Ant." iv. 8, § 5; "Contra Ap." ii. 28); "One God, One Israel, and One Torah" is the principle upon which Orthodox Judaism rests. "It was an evil day for Israel when the controversies between the schools of Shammai and Hillel began, and the one Torah appearedto have become two Torot" (Sanh. 88b; where the plural "Torot" occurs, it refers to the written and oral law; Yoma 28b, with reference to Gen. xxvi. 5; comp. Shab. 31a). This Torah, both written and oral, was known to and practised in all its details by the Patriarchs (Yoma 28b; Gen. R. lxiv.; comp. Jubilees, Book of, and "Attah Eḥad" in the liturgy). "Whosoever denies that the whole Law, written as well as oral, was given by God to Moses on Sinai is a heretic" (Sanh. 99a; Sifra, Behar, i. 1).

Chain of Tradition.

The trustworthiness of the divine behest until the final codification of the Law, from this point of view, rests upon the continuous chain of tradition from Moses down to the men of the Great Synagogue (Ab. i. 1), and afterward upon the successive ordination of the Rabbis by the elders with the laying on of hands (probably originally under the influence of the Holy Spirit; see Semikah). Accordingly the stability and the immutability of the Law remained from the Orthodox standpoint one of the cardinal principles of Judaism (see M. Friedländer, "The Jewish Religion," 1891; Samson Raphael Hirsch, "Horeb," 1837).

Independent research, however, discerns evolution and progress to have been at work in the various Mosaic legislations (Ex. xx. 22-xxiii. 19; Deut. xii.-xxi. 13; and Leviticus together with Num. xv., xviii.-xix. 22), in the prophetic and priestly as well as in the soferic activities, and it necessarily sees in revelation and inspiration as well as in tradition a spiritual force working from within rather than a heavenly communication coming from without. From this point of view, ethical monotheism presents itself as the product not of the Semitic race, which may at best have created predisposition for prophetic inspiration and for a conception of the Deity as a personality with certain moral relations to man, but solely of the Jewish genius, whose purer and tenderer conception of life demanded a pure and holy God in sharp contrast to the cruel and lascivious gods of the other Semitic races (see M. Joël, "Religiös-Philosophische Zeitfragen," 1876, pp. 82-83).

The Prophetic Spirit.

It was the prophetic spirit of the Jewish nation embodied in Abraham (not the Midianite, as Budde thinks, nor some Babylonian tribe, as the Assyriologists would have it) which transformed Yhwh, an original tribal deity localized on Sinai and connected with the celestial phenomena of nature, into the God of holiness, "a power not ourselves that maketh for righteousness," the moral governor of the world. Yet this spirit works throughout the Biblical time only in and through a few individuals in each age; again and again the people lapse into idolatry from lack of power to soar to the heights of prophetic vision. Only in the small Judean kingdom with the help of the Deuteronomic Book of the Law the beginning is made, and finally through Ezra the foundation is laid for the realization of the plan of "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."

But while thus the people were won, and the former propensity to idolatry, the "yeẓer ha-ra'," was banished forever by the power of the men of the Great Synagogue (Yoma 69b), the light of prophetic universalism became dim. Still it found its utterance in the Synagogue with its liturgy, in the Psalms, in the Books of Jonah and Job, in the Books of Wisdom, and most singularly in the hafṭarah read on Sabbath and holy days often to voice the prophetic view concerning sacrifice and ritual in direct antagonism to the Mosaic precepts. Here, too, "the Holy Spirit" was at work (see Inspiration; Synagogue). It created Pharisaism in opposition to Sadducean insistence upon the letter of the Law; and the day when the injunction "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" was abrogated, and the rationalistic interpretation of the Scribes was substituted therefor, was celebrated as a triumph of reason (Megillat Ta'an. iv. 1). While the legalists beheld God's majesty confined to "the four ells of the Halakah" (Ber. 8a), the Haggadah unfolded the spirit of freedom and progress; and when mysticism in the East threatened to benumb the spirit, philosophy under Arabian influence succeeded in enlarging the mental horizon of Judaism anew.

Thus Judaism presents two streams or currents of thought ever running parallel to each other: the one conservative, the other progressive and liberal; the one accentuating the national and ritualistic, the other the cosmopolitan and spiritual, elements; mysticism here and rationalism there, these together forming the centripetal and centrifugal forces of Judaism to keep it in continuous progress upon its God-appointed track.

Judaism, parent of both Christianity and Islam, holds forth the pledge and promise of the unity of the two ("Yad," Melakim, xi. 4; "Cuzari," iv. 23; see Jew. Encyc. iv. 56, s.v. Christianity), as it often stood as mediator between Church and Mosque during the Middle Ages (see Disputations and Judah ha-Levi). In order to be able to "unite all mankind into one bond" (New-Year's liturgy and Gen. R. lxxx viii.), it must form "one bond" (Lev. R. xxx.). It must, to use Isaiah's words, constitute a tree ever pruned while "the holy seed is the substance thereof" (Isa. vi. 13); its watchword being: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts" (Zech. iv. 6).

For Karaitic Judaism see Karaites.

Bibliography:

M. Friedländer, The Jewish Religion, London, 1891;

Geiger, Das Judenthum und Seine Geschichte, Breslau, 1865;

idem, Nachgelassene Schriften, i.-v.;

M. Güdemann, Was 1st Judenthum? Vienna, 1902;

Morris Joseph, Judaism as Creed and Life, London, 1903;

Jost, Gesch. des Judenthums und Seiner Sekten, Leipsic, 1857-59;

Judaism at the World's Parliament of Religions, Cincinnati, 1894;

Margolis, The Theological Aspect of Reform Judaism, in Year Book of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1903, pp. 185-338;

Claude Monteflore, Hibbert Lectures, London, 1892;

idem, Liberal Judaism, ib. 1903;

Felix Perles, Bousset's Religion des Judenthums im Neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, Kritisch Untersucht, Berlin, 1903;

Schechter, Studies in Judaism, Philadelphia, 1896;

Schreiner, Die Jüngsten Urtheile über das Judenthum, Berlin, 1902;

Stein, Schrift des Lebens, Mannheim, 1872;

Toy, Judaism and Christianity, Boston, 1890;

Weber, Jüdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud; special articles by Abrahams, Grätz, Claude Monteflore, Schechter, and Oswald J. Simon, in J. Q. R. i.-xvii.;

Kohler, The Spiritual Forces of Judaism, Judaism and Reform, The Spirit of Judaism, in the Menorah Monthly, 1894, 1895, 1897;

L. Löw, in Gesammelte Schriften, 1889, i.;

Z. Frankel, in his Zeitschrift, 1844.

JUDAISM.—See Israel, II. §§ 5, 6.

Catholic Encyclopedia on CD-ROMContains 11,632 articles. Browse off-line, ad-free, printer-friendly.Get it here for only $29.95I. JUDAISM BEFORE THE CHRISTIAN ERAUpon the return from Babylon (538 B.C.), Juda was conscious of having inherited the religion of pre-Exile Israel. It was that religion which had prompted the exiles to return to the land promised by Yahweh to their ancestors, and they were now determined to maintain it in its purity. From the Captivity they had learned that in His justice, God had punished their sins by delivering them into the power of pagan nations, as the Prophets of old had repeatedly announced; and that in His love for the people of His choice, the same God had brought them back, as Isaias (40-46) had particularly foretold. Thence they naturally drew the conclusion that, cost what it may, they must prove faithful to Yahweh, so as to avert a like punishment in the future. The same conclusion was also brought home to them, when some time after the completion of the Temple, Esdras solemnly read the Law in their hearing. This reading placed distinctly before their minds the unique position of their race among the nations of the world. The Creator of heaven and earth, in His mercy towards fallen man (Genesis 1-3), had made a covenant with their father Abraham, in virtue of which his seed, and in his seed all the peoples of the earth, should be blessed (Genesis 12, 18; II Esdras 9). From that time forth, He had watched over them with jealous care. The other nations, once fallen into idolatry, He had allowed to grovel amid their impure rites; but He had dealt differently with the Israelites whom he wished to be unto Him "a priestly kingdom and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6). Their repeated falls into idolatry He had not left unpunished, but He kept alive among them the revealed religion which ever represented God as the true and adequate object of their devotion, trust, gratitude, of their obedience and service.All the past misfortunes of their race were thus distinctly seen as so many chastisements intended by God to recall His ungrateful people to the observance of the Law, whereby they would secure the holiness necessary for the blameless discharge of their priestly mission to the rest of the world. They, therefore, pledged renewed faithfulness to the Law, leaving it to God to bring about the glorious day when all the earth, with Jerusalem as its centre, would recognize and worship Yahweh; they broke every tie with the surrounding nationalities, and formed a community wholly sacred unto the Lord, chiefly concerned with the preservation of His faith and worship by a strict compliance with all the ritual prescriptions of the Law. On the one hand, this religious attitude of the Judean Jews secured the preservation of Monotheism among them. History proves that the Persians and the Macedonians respected their religious freedom and even to some extent favoured the worship of Yahweh. It remains true, however, that in the time of the Machabees, the children of Israel escaped being throughly hellenized only through their attachment to the Law. Owing to this attachment, the fierce persecutions which they then underwent, confirmed instead of rooting out their belief in the true God. On the other hand, the rigour with which the letter of the Law became enforced gave rise to a narrow "legalism". The mere external compliance with ritual observances gradually superseded the higher claims of conscience; the Prophet was replaced by the "scribe", the casuistic interpreter of the Law; and Israel, in its sacred isolation, looked down upon the rest of mankind. A similarly narrow spirit animated the Babylonian Jews, for it was from Babylon that Esdras, "a ready scribe in the Law of Moses", had come to revive the Law in Jerusalem, and their existence in the midst of heathen populations made it all the more imperative for them to cling tenaciously to the creed and worship of Yahweh.Apparently, things went on smoothly with the priestly community of Juda as long as the Persian supremacy lasted. It was the policy of ancient Asiatic empires to grant to each province its autonomy, and the Judean Jews availed themselves of this to live up to the requirements of the Mosaic Law under the headship of their high-priests and the guidance of their scribes. The sacred ordinances of the Law were no burden to them, and gladly did they even increase the weight by additional interpretations of its text. Nor was this happy condition materially interfered with under Alexander the Great and his immediate successors in Syria and in Egypt. In fact, the first contact of the Judean Jews with hellenistic civilization seemed to open to them a wider field for their theocratic influence, by giving rise to a Western Dispersion with Alexandria and Antioch as its chief local centres and Jerusalem as its metropolis. However much the Jews living among the Greeks mingled with the latter for business pursuits, learned the Greek language, or even became acquainted with hellenistic philosophy, they remained Jews to the core. The Law as read and explained in their local synagogues regulated their every act, kept them from all defilement with idolatrous worship, and maintained intact their religious traditions. With regard to creed, worship, and morality, the Jews felt themselves far superior to their pagan fellow-citizens, and the works of their leading writers of the time were in the main those of apologists bent on convincing pagans of this superiority and on attracting them to the service of the sole living God. In fact, through this intercourse between Judaism and Hellenism in the Græco-Roman world, the Jewish religion won the allegiance of a certain number of Gentile men and women, while the Jewish beliefs themselves gained in clearness and precision through the efforts then made to render them acceptable to Western minds.Much less happy results followed on the contact of Jewish Monotheism with Greek Polytheism on Palestinian soil. There, worldly and ambitious high-priests not only accepted, but even promoted, Greek culture and heathenism in Jerusalem itself; and, as already stated, the Greek rulers of the early Machabean Age proved violent persecutors of Yahweh worship. The chief question confronting the Palestinian Jews was not, therefore, the extension of Judaism among the nations, but its very preservation among the children of Israel. No wonder then that Judaism assumed there an attitude of direct antagonism to everything hellenistic, that the Mosaic observances were gradually enforced with extreme rigour, and that the oral Law, or rulings of the Elders relative to such observances appeared in the eyes of pious Judean Jews of no less importance than the Mosaic Law itself. No wonder, too, that in opposition to the lukewarmness for the oral Law evinced by the priestly aristocracy -- the Sadducees as they were called -- there arose in Juda a powerful party resolved to maintain at any cost the Jewish separation -- hence their name of Pharisees -- from the contamination of the Gentiles by the most scrupulous compliance, not only with the Law of Moses, but also with the "Traditions of the Elders". The former of these leading parties was pre-eminently concerned with the maintenance of the status quo in politics, and in the main sceptical with regard to such prominent beliefs or expectations of the time as the existence of angels, the resurrection of the dead, the reference of the oral Law to Moses, and the future Redemption of Israel. The latter party strenuously maintained these positions. Its extreme wing was made up of Zealots always ready to welcome any false Messias who promised deliverance from the hated foreign yoke; while its rank and file earnestly prepared by the "works of the Law" for the Messianic Age variously described by the Prophets of old, the apocalyptic writings and the apocryphal Psalms of the time, and generally expected as an era of earthly felicity and legal righteousness in the Kingdom of God. The rise of the Essenes is also ascribed to this period. II. JUDAISM AND EARLY CHRISTIANITYAt the beginning of our era, Judaism was in external appearance thoroughly prepared for the advent of the Kingdom of God. Its great centre was Jerusalem, the "Holy City", whither repaired in hundreds of thousands Jews of every part of the world, anxious to celebrate the yearly festivals in the "City of the Great King". The Temple was in the eyes of them all the worthy House of the Lord, both by the magnificence of its structure and by the wonderful appointment of its service. The Jewish priesthood was not only numerous, but also most exact in the offering of the daily, weekly, monthly, and other, sacrifices, which it was its privilege to perform before Yahweh. The high-priest, a person most sacred, stood at the head of the hierarchy, and acted as final arbiter of all religious controversies. The Sanhedrin of Jerusalem, or supreme tribunal of Judaism, watched zealously over the strict fulfilment of the Law and issued decrees readily obeyed by the Jews dispersed throughout the world. In the Holy Land, and far and wide beyond its boundaries, besides local Sanhedrins, there were synagogues supplying the ordinary religious and educational needs of the people, and wielding the power of excommunication against breakers of the Law, oral and written. A learned class, that of the Scribes, not only read and interpreted the text of the Law in the synagogue meetings, but sedulously proclaimed the "Traditions of the Elders", the collection of which formed a "fence to the Law", because whoever observed them was sure not to trespass in any way against the Law itself. Legal righteousness was the watchword of Judaism, and its attainment by separation from Gentiles and sinners, by purifications, fasts, almsgiving, etc., in a word by the fulfilment of traditional enactments which applied the Law to each and every walk of life and to all imaginable circumstances, was the one concern of pious Jews wherever found. Plainly, the Pharisees and the scribes who belonged to their party had generally won the day. In Palestine, in particular, the people blindly followed their leadership, confident that the present rule of pagan Rome would speedily come to an end at the appearance of the Messias, expected as a mighty deliverer of the faithful "children of the kingdom’. Meantime, it behooved the sons of Abraham to emulate the "righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees" whereby they would secure admittance into the Messianic world-wide empire, of which Jerusalem would be the capital, and of which every Jewish member would be superior in things temporal as well as spiritual to the rest of the world then rallied to the worship of the one true God.In reality, the Jews were far from prepared for the fulfilment of the promises which the almighty had repeatedly made to their race. This was first shown to them, when a voice, that of John, the son of Zachary and the herald of the Messias, was heard in the wilderness of Juda. It summoned, but with little success, all the Jews to a genuine sorrow for sin, which was indeed foreign to their hearts, but which could alone, despite their title of "children of Abraham", fit them for the kingdom near at hand. This was next shown to them by Jesus, the Messias Himself, Who, at the very beginning of His public life, repeated John’s summons to repentance (Mark 1:15), and Who, throughout His ministry, endeavoured to correct the errors of Judaism of the day concerning the kingdom which He had come to found among men. With authority truly Divine He bade His hearers not to be satisfied with the outward righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees if they wished to enter into that kingdom, but to aim at the inner perfection which alone could lift up men’s moral nature and render them worthy worshipers of their heavenly Father. The Kingdom of God, He plainly declared, had come upon His contemporaries, since Satan, God’s enemy and man’s, was under their eyes cast out by Himself and by His chosen disciples (Mark 12:20; Luke 10:18). The kingdom which the Jews should expect is the Kingdom of God in its modest, secret, and as it were, insignificant origin. It is subject to the laws of organic growth as all living things are, and hence its planting and early developments do not attract much attenti0on; but it is not so with its further extension, destined as it is to pervade and transform the world.This kingdom is indeed rejected by those who had the first claim to its possession and seemingly were the best qualified for entering into it; but all those, both Jews and Gentiles, who earnestly avail themselves of the invitation of the Gospel will be admitted. This is really a new Kingdom of God to be transferred to a new nation and governed by a new set of rulers, although it is no less truly the continuation of the Kingdom of God under the Old Covenant. Once this kingdom is organized upon earth, its king, the true son and lord of David, goes to a far country, relying upon His representatives to be more faithful than the rulers of the old kingdom. Upon the king’s return, this kingdom of grace will be transferred into a kingdom of glory. The duration of the kingdom on earth will outlive the ruin of the Holy City and of its Temple; it will be coextensive with the preaching of the Gospel to all nations, and this, when accomplished, will be the sign of the near approach of the kingdom of glory. In thus describing God’s kingdom, Jesus justly treated as vain the hopes of His Jewish contemporaries that they should become masters of the world in the event of a conflict with Rome; He also set aside the fabric of legalism which their leaders regarded as to be perpetuated in the Messianic kingdom, but which in reality they should have considered as either useless or positively harmful now that the time had come to extend "salvation out of the Jews" to the nations at large; plainly, the legal sacrifices and ordinances had no longer any reason of being, since they had been instituted to prevent Israel from forsaking the true God, and since Monotheism was now firmly established in Israel; plainly, too, the "traditions of the Elders" should not be tolerated any longer, since they had gradually led the Jews to disregard some of the most essential precepts of the moral law embodied in the decalogue.Jesus did not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets, that is those sacred writings which He, no less than His Jewish contemporaries, distinctly recognized as inspired by the Holy Spirit; His mission, on the contrary, was to secure their fulfilment. Indeed, He would have destroyed the Law, if He had sided with the Scribes and the Pharisees who had raised a fence to the Law, which actually encroached upon the sacred territory of the Law itself; but He fulfilled it by proclaiming the new Law of perfect love of God and man, whereby all the precepts of the Old Law were brought to completion. Again, He would have destroyed the Prophets, if like the same Scribes and Pharisees, He had pictured an image of God’s kingdom and God’s Messias solely by means of the glorious features contained in the prophetical writings; but He fulfilled them by drawing a picture which took into account both glorious and inglorious delineations of the Prophets of old, setting both in their right order and perspective. The Kingdom of God as described and founded by Jesus has an historical name. It is the Christian Church, which was able silently to leaven the Roman Empire, which has outlived the ruin of the Jewish Temple and its worship, and which, in the course of centuries, has extended to the confines of the world the knowledge and the worship of the God of Abraham, while Judaism has remained the barren fig-tree which Jesus condemned during His mortal life.The death and resurrection of Jesus fulfilled the ancient types and prophecies concerning Him (cf. Luke 24:26, 27), and the visible bestowal of the Holy Ghost upon His assembled followers on Pentecost Day gave them the light to realize this fulfilment (Acts 3:15) and the courage to proclaim it even in the hearing of those Jewish authorities who thought that they had by the stigma of the Cross put an end forever to the Messianic claims of the Nazarene. From this moment the Church which Jesus had silently organized during His mortal life with Peter as its head and the other Apostles as his fellow-rulers, took the independent attitude which it has maintained ever since. Conscious of their Divine mission, its leaders boldly charged the Jewish rulers with the death of Jesus, and freely "taught and preached Christ Jesus", disregarding the threats and injunctions of men whom they considered as in mad revolt against God and His Christ (Acts 4). They solemnly proclaimed the necessity of faith in Christ for justification and salvation, and that of baptism for membership in the religious community which grew rapidly under their guidance, and which recognized the risen Son of God as its Divinely constituted "Lord and Christ", "Prince and Saviour", in a real, although invisible, manner, during the present order of things. According to them, these are plainly Messianic times as proved by the realization of Joel’s prophecy concerning the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh, so that the Jews "first" and next the Gentiles are now called to receive the Divine blessing so long promised in Abraham’s Seed for all nations. Much as in these early days the infant Church was Jewish in external appearance, it even then caused Judaism to feel threatened in its whole system of civil and religious life (Acts 6:13-14). Hence followed a severe persecution against the Christians, in which Saul (Paul) took and active part, and in the course of which he was converted miraculously.At his conversion Paul found the Church spread far and wide by the very persecution meant to annihilate it, and officially pursuing its differentiation from Judaism by the reception into its fold of Samaritans who rejected the Temple worship in Jerusalem, of the Ethiopian eunuch, that is, of a class of men distinctly excluded from the Judaic community by the Deuteronomic Law, and especially of the uncircumcised Cornelius and his Gentile household with whom Peter himself broke bread in direct opposition to legal traditions. When, therefore, Paul, now become an ardent Apostle of Christ, openly maintained the freedom of Gentile converts from the Law as understood and enforced by the Jews and even by certain Judeo-Christians, he was in thorough agreement with the official leaders of the Church at Jerusalem, and it is well known that the same official leaders positively approved his course of action in this regard (Acts 15; Galatians 2). The real difference between him and them consisted in his fearlessness in preaching Christian freedom and in vindicating by his Epistles the necessity and efficiency of faith in Christ for justification and salvation independently of the "works of the Law", that is, the great principles acknowledged and acted upon before him in this Christian Church. The result of his polemics was the sharp setting forth of the relation existing between Judaism and Christianity; in Christ’s kingdom, only believing Jews and Gentiles recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (cf. Matthew 8:11); they are coheirs of the promise made to the father of all the faithful when he was as yet uncircumcised; the Law and the Prophets are fulfilled in Christ and His body, the Church; the Gospel must be preached to all nations, and then the consummation shall come. The result of his consuming zeal for the salvation of souls redeemed by the blood of Christ was the formation of religious communities bound together by the same faith, hope, and charity as the churches of Palestine, sharing in the same sacred mysteries, governed by pastors likewise vested with Christ’s authority, and forming a vast Church organism vivified by the same Holy Spirit and clearly distinct from Judaism. Thus the small mustard seed planted by Jesus in Judea had grown into a great tree fully able to near the storms of persecution and heresy (see EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS; EBIONITES; GNOSTICISM). III. JUDAISM SINCE A.D. 70While Christianity thus asserted itself as the new Kingdom of God, the Jewish theocracy, guided by leaders unable "to know the signs of the times", was hastening to its total destruction. The Romans came, and in A.D. 70 put an end forever to the Jewish Temple, priesthood, sacrifices, and nation, whereby it should have become clear to the Jews that their national worship was rejected of God. In point of fact, Judaism, shorn of these its essential features, soon"assumed an entirely new aspect. All the parties and sects of a former generation vanished; Pharisees and Sadducees ceased to quarrel with each other; the Temple was supplanted by the synagogue, sacrifices by the prayer, the priest by any one who was able to read, teach, and interpret both the written and the oral law. The Sanhedrin lost its juridical qualification, and became a consistory to advise people in regard to the religious duties. Judaism became a science, a philosophy, and ceased to be a political institution" (Schindler, "Dissolving Views in the History of Judaism").This new system, treated at first as simply provisional because of the surviving hope of restoring the Jewish commonwealth, had soon to be accepted as definitive through the crushing of Bar-Cochba’s revolt by Hadrian. Then it was that Rabbinical or Talmudical Judaism fully asserted its authority over the two great groups of Jewish families east and west of the Euphrates respectively. For several centuries, under either the "Patriarchs of the West" or the "Princes of the Captivity", the Mishna "Oral Teaching" completed by Rabbi Juda I, committed ultimately to writing in the form of the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, and expounded by generations of teachers in the schools of Palestine and Babylonia, held undisputed sway over the minds and consciences of the Jews.In fact, this long acceptation of the Talmud by the Jewish race, before its centre was shifted from the East to the West, so impressed this Second Law (Mishna) upon the hearts of the Jews that down to the present day Judaism has remained essentially Talmudical both in its theory and in its practice. It is indeed true that as early as the eighth century of our era the authority of the Talmud was denied in favour of Biblical supremacy by the sect of the Karaites, and that it has oftentimes since been questioned by other Jewish sects such as Judghanits, Kabbalist, Sabbatians, Chassidim (old and new), Frankist, etc. Nevertheless, these sects have all but disappeared and the supremacy of the Talmud is generally recognized. The most important religious division of Judaism at the present day is that between "Orthodox" and "Reform" Jews, with many subdivisions to which these names are more or less loosely applied. Orthodox Judaism included the greater part of the Jewish race. It distinctly admits the absolutely binding force of the oral Law as finally fixed in the "Shulhan Aruk" by Joseph Caro (sixteenth century). Its beliefs are set forth in the following thirteen articles, first compiled by Maimonides in the eleventh century: I believe with a true and perfect faith that God is the creator (whose name be blessed), governor, and maker of all creatures; and that he has wrought all things, worketh, and shall work forever. I believe with perfect faith that the creator (whose name be blessed) is one; that there is no unity like unto his in any way; and that he alone was, is, and will be our God. I believe with a perfect faith that the creator (whose name be blessed) is incorporeal, that he has not any corporeal qualities, and that nothing can be compared unto him. I believe with a perfect faith that the creator (whose name be blessed) was the first, and will be the last. I believe with a perfect faith that the creator (whose name be blessed) is to be worshipped and none else. I believe with perfect faith that all the words of the prophets are true. I believe with perfect faith that the prophecies of Moses our master (may he rest in peace) were true; that he was the father and chief of all prophets, both of those before him and those after him. I believe with perfect faith that the Law, at present in our hands, is the same that was given to our master Moses (peace be with him). I believe with perfect faith that this Law will not be changed, and that no other Law will be revealed by the creator (blessed be his name). I believe with a perfect faith that God (whose name be blessed) knows all the deeds of the sons of men and all their thoughts; as it is said: "He who hath formed their hearts altogether, he knoweth all their deeds". I believe with a perfect faith that God (whose name be blessed) rewards those who keep his commandments, and punishes those who transgress them. I believe with a perfect faith that the Messias will come; and although he tarries I wait nevertheless every fay for his coming. I believe with a perfect faith that there will be a resurrection of the dead, at the time when it shall please the creator (blessed be his name). With regard to the future life, Orthodox Jews believe, like the Universalists, in the ultimate salvation of all men; and like the Catholics, in the offering up of prayers for the souls of their departed friends. Their Divine worship does not admit of sacrifices; it consists in the reading of the Scriptures and in prayer. While they do not insist on attendance at the synagogue, they enjoin all to say their prayers at home or in any place they chance to be, three times a day; they repeat also blessings and particular praises to God at meals and on other occasions. In their morning devotions they use their phylacteries and a praying scarf (talith), except on Saturdays, when they use the talith only. The following are their principal festivals: Passover, on 14 Nisan, and lasting eight days. On the evening before the feast, the first-born of every family observes a fast in remembrance of God’s kindness to the nation. During the feast unleavened bread is exclusively used; the first two and last days are observed as strict holidays. Since the paschal lamb has ceased, it is customary after the paschal meal to break and partake as Aphikomon, or after-dish, of half of an unleavened bread cake which has been broken and put aside at the beginning of the supper. Pentecost, or the feast of Weeks, falling seven weeks after the Passover and kept, at present, for two days only. Trumpets, on 1 and 2 Tishri, of which the first is called New Years’s feast. On the second day they blow the horn and pray that God will bring them to Jerusalem. Tabernacles, on 15 Tishri, lasting nine days, the first and last two days being observed as feast days. On the first day they carry branches around the altar or pulpit singing psalms; on the seventh day, they carry copies of the Torah out of the ark to the altar, all the congregation joining in the procession seven times around the altar and singing Ps. xxix. On the ninth day they repeat several prayers in honour of the Law, bless God for having given them His servant Moses, and read the section of the Scriptures which records his death. Purim, on 14 and 15 Adar (Feb.-March), in commemoration of the deliverance recorded in the Book of Esther; the whole Book of Esther is read several times during the celebration. Dedication, a feast commemorative of the victory over Antiochus Epiphanes and lasting eight days. Atonement Day, celebrated on 10 Tishri, although the Jews have neither Temple nor priesthood. They observe a strict fast for twenty-four hours, and strive in various ways to evince the sincerity of their repentance (see JEWISH CALENDAR). Reform Judaism, which traces back its origin to Mendelssohn’s time, is chiefly prevalent in Germany and the United States. It has very lax views of biblical inspiration and bends Jewish beliefs and practices so as to adapt them to environment. It is a sort of Unitarianism coupled with some Jewish peculiarities. It disregards the belief of the coming of a personal Messias, the obligatory character of circumcision, ancient Oriental customs in synagogue services, the dietary laws which but few reform Jews observe out of custom or veneration for the past, the second days of the holy days, all minor feasts and fast-days of the year (except Hanukha and Purim), while it uses sermons in the vernacular and adds in some places Sunday services to those held on the historical Sabbath Day, etc. Nominally, for all, the Sabbath is the day of rest; but only a small number even of the Orthodox Jews keep their places of business closed on that day, owing to the commercial demands of modern life and the police regulations usually enforced in Christian lands concerning the ordinary Sunday rest. Intermarriage with non-Jews is generally discountenanced even by Reform Jewish rabbis, and as a fact, has never been frequent, except of late in Australia. Of late, the use of Hebrew has been revived particularly in Palestine Jewish colonies, and a number of Jewish journals and reviews are published in that tongue in the East and in certain countries of Europe. Yiddish, or Judeo-German, is by far more prevalent, and is used in the large cities of Europe and North America for weekly and daily papers.The Yeshibas, or high schools of Talmudic learning, where the time was exclusively devoted to the study of rabbinical jurisprudence and Talmudic law, have been partly replaced by seminaries with a more modern curriculum of studies. In 1893 Gratz College, thus named from its founder, was started in Philadelphia for training religious school-teachers. Young Men’s’s Hebrew Associations, begun in 1874, now exist in nearly all the large cities of the United States. Of wider import still is the development of the Sabbath schools which are generally attached to Jewish congregations in the same country. The recent Zionist movement claims a passing notice. Since 1896 the scheme for securing in Palestine a legal home for the oppressed Hebrews has rapidly taken a firm hold of the Jewish race. To many, Zionism appears as calculated to bring about the realization of the old Jewish hope of restoration to Palestine. To others, it seems to be the only means of obviating the impossibility felt by various peoples of assimilating their Jewish population and at the same time of allowing it the amount of freedom which the Jews consider necessary for the preservation of their individual character. By others again, it is regarded as the practical answer to the anti-Semitic agitation which has prevailed intensely through Western Europe since 1880, and to the lack of social equality, which Jews repeatedly find denied them, even in countries where they possess civil rights and attain to high political and professional positions. Since 1897 Zionism holds annual international congresses, counts numerous societies and clubs, and since 1898 has a Jewish Colonial Trust. There is no Jewish Church as such, and each congregation is a law to itself. Owing to this, the ancient distinction between the Sephardim and the Askenazim continues among the Jews. As of yore, the Sephardim, or descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, readily organize themselves into separate congregations. Even now, they are easily distinguished from the Askenazim (German or Polish Jews) by their names, their more Oriental pronunciation of Hebrew, and their peculiarities in synagogue services. IV. JUDAISM AND CHURCH LEGISLATIONThe principal items of Church legislation relative to Judaism have been set forth in connection with the history of the Jews. There remains only to add a few remarks which will explain the apparent severity of certain measures enacted by either popes or councils concerning the Jews, or account for the fact that popular hatred of them so often defeated the beneficent efforts of the Roman pontiffs in their regard.Church legislation against Jewish holding of Christian slaves can be easily understood: as members of Christ, the children of the Church should evidently not be subjected to the power of His enemies, and thereby incur a special danger for their faith; but more particularly, as stated by a recent Jewish writer:"There was good reason for the solicitude of the Church and for its desire to prevent Jews from retaining Christian slaves in their houses. The Talmud and all later Jewish codes forbade a Jew from retaining in his home a slave who was uncircumcised" (Abrahams, "Jewish Life in the Middle Ages").The obligation of wearing a distinguishing badge was of course obnoxious to the Jews. At the same time, Church authorities deemed its injunction necessary to prevent effectively moral offences between Jews and Christian women. The decrees forbidding the Jews from appearing in public at Eastertide may be justified on the ground that some of them mocked at the Christian processions at that time; those against baptized Jews retaining distinctly Jewish customs find their ready explanation in the necessity for the Church to maintain the purity of the Faith in its members, while those forbidding the Jews from molesting converts to Christianity are no less naturally explained by the desire of doing away with a manifest obstacle to future conversions.It was for the laudable reason of protecting social morality and securing the maintenance of the Christian Faith, that canonical decrees were framed and repeatedly enforced against free and constant intercourse between Christians and Jews, against, for instance, bathing, living, etc., with Jews. To some extent, likewise, these were the reasons for the institution of the Ghetto or confinement of the Jews to a special quarter, for the prohibition of the Jews from exercising medicine, or other professions. The inhibition of intermarriage between Jews and Christians, which is yet in vigour, is clearly justified by reason of the obvious danger for the faith of the Christian party and for the spiritual welfare of the children born of such alliances. With regard to the special legislation against printing, circulating, etc., the Talmud, there was the particular grievance that the Talmud contained at the time scurrilous attacks upon Jesus and the Christians (cf. Pick, "The Personality of Jesus in the Talmud" in the "Monist", Jan., 1910), and the permanent reason that"that extraordinary compilation, with much that is grave and noble, contains also so many puerilities, immoral precepts, and anti-social maxims, that Christian courts may well have deemed it right to resort to stringent measures to prevent Christians from being seduced into adhesion to a system so preposterous" (Catholic Dictionary, 484).History proves indeed that Church authorities exercised at times considerable pressure upon the Jews to promote their conversion; but it also proves that the same authorities generally deprecated the use of violence for the purpose. It bears witness, in particular, to the untiring and energetic efforts of the Roman pontiffs in behalf of the Jews especially when, threatened or actually pressed by persecution they appealed to the Holy See for protection. It chronicles the numerous protestations of the popes against mob violence against the Jewish race, and thus directs the attention of the student of history to the real cause of the Jewish persecutions, viz., the popular hatred against the children of Israel. Nay more, it discloses the principal causes of that hatred, among which the following may be mentioned: The deep and wide racial difference between Jews and Christians which was, moreover, emphasized by the ritual and dietary laws of Talmudic Judaism; the mutual religious antipathy which prompted the Jewish masses to look upon the Christians as idolaters, and the Christians to regard the Jews as the murderers of the Divine Saviour of mankind, and to believe readily the accusation of the use of Christian blood in the celebration of the Jewish Passover, the desecration of the Holy Eucharist, etc.; the trade rivalry which caused Christians to accuse the Jews of sharp practice, and to resent their clipping of the coinage, their usury, etc.; the patriotic susceptibilities of the particular nations in the midst of which the Jews have usually formed a foreign element, and to the respective interests of which their devotion has not always been beyond suspicion. In view of these and other more or less local, more or less justified, reasons, one can readily understand how the popular hatred of the Jews has too often defeated the beneficent efforts of the Church, and notably of its supreme pontiffs, in regard to them.----------------------------------- Jewish Religion. NATHAN, Religion, Natural and Revealed (New York, 1875); TROY, Judaism and Christianity (Boston, 1890); MENDELSSOn, Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence of the Talmud (Baltimore, 1891); LEVIN, Die Reform des Judenthums (Berlin, 1895); HIRSCH, Nineteen Letters, tr. (New York, 1899); FRIEDLANDER, The Jewish Religion (2nd ed., New York, 1900); LAZARUS, Ethics of Judaism, tr. (Philadelphia, 1901); MORRIS JOSEPH, Judaism as Creed and Life (New York, 1903); SCHREINER, Die jüngsten Urtheile über das Judenthum (Berlin, 1902); MONTEFIORE, Liberal Judaism (New York, 1903); LEVY, La Famille dans l’Antiquité (Paris, 1905); SCHECHTER, Studies in Judaism (New York, 1896); IDEM, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York, 1909).FRANCIS E. GIGOT Transcribed by Bob Mathewson The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

jōō´dā́-iz´m. See ISRAEL, RELIGION OF.

Judaism is the religion and culture of the Jewish people from the time after their return from exile in 538 BC to the present. The name “Judaism” comes from “Judah,” the southern kingdom of ancient Israel. The word “Jew” is a shortened form of “Judean,” meaning a person from Judah.

The Period of the Second Temple (515 BC–AD 70)

Historical Survey

The united kingdom of Israel, led by Saul, David, and Solomon, ended soon after Solomon's death. Around 930 BC, Rehoboam, Solomon's son, caused a revolt by imposing very high taxes on the 10 northern tribes (1 Kings 12). From then on, Israel (or Samaria, the northern kingdom) and Judah (the southern kingdom) existed separately.

The Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom in 722 BC, exiling many upper-class captives to Assyria. These captives likely intermarried with locals and faded from history. Judah remained independent until 597 BC, when the Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar, took control.

The temple was destroyed in 586 BC, and many people were exiled to Babylonia, starting a two-generation exile. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Persian defeated the Babylonians. The next year, he allowed all captives to return to their homelands (2 Chronicles 36:22–23; Ezra 1).

Over the next century, at least four groups of Jewish exiles returned to Judea from Mesopotamia, led by Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. However, many Jews chose to stay in Mesopotamia. The dedication of the Second Temple in spring 515 BC marked the formal end of the 70-year exile (Jeremiah 29:10) and resulted from the encouragement of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah.

In Judea, governors ruled the Jewish people under the Persian king's authority. One early governor was Zerubbabel (Haggai 1:1; 2:1–2), a descendant of David (1 Chronicles 3:10–19). He shared authority with the high priest Jeshua, son of Jehozadak, though their exact roles are unclear. Palestine was part of one of the 20 provinces of the Persian Empire, which lasted from 539 to 331 BC, until the Greeks, led by Alexander the Great, conquered it.

Little is known about Palestine's history during most of the Persian period. When Alexander died in 323 BC, his empire was divided among his generals. Egypt and Palestine went to Ptolemy I. The Ptolemies allowed the Jews in Palestine some freedom to manage their own affairs. After the battle of Paneion in 198 BC, the Seleucid Empire, founded by Seleucus I, another of Alexander’s generals, took control of Palestine.

The Seleucid Empire covered a vast area with a diverse population, stretching from Asia Minor and Palestine in the west to the borders of India in the east. Antiochus IV, also known as Epiphanes, became the Seleucid ruler in 175 BC. He tried to unify his large empire by spreading the Greek language and culture. This policy suppressed local cultures and religions, with the Jewish state in Palestine suffering greatly.

In 167 BC, Antiochus IV dedicated the temple in Jerusalem to Olympian Zeus, sacrificed a pig on the altar, destroyed Jewish Scripture scrolls, and banned circumcision. This oppression led to a revolt led by an elderly priest named Mattathias and his sons. The Seleucids were pushed back, and in 164 BC, Mattathias's son, Judas the Maccabee (a name meaning “the hammer”), recaptured the temple.

This Jewish victory is celebrated annually as the festival of Hanukkah, meaning "dedication." Judas and his brothers, known as the Maccabees or Hasmoneans (since Mattathias belonged to the house of Hasmon), and their descendants ruled Judea from 164 to 63 BC. In 63 BC, the Roman general Pompey conquered Palestine, making it subject to Roman rule.

Hyrcanus, a Hasmonean, was the high priest after the Romans conquered Judea. However, Antipater, an Idumean, held the real power. Antipater's sons, Phasael and Herod, governed Jerusalem and Galilee, respectively. After Antipater's assassination in 43 BC, Herod, later known as Herod the Great, used his Roman connections to become king of Judea. The Roman Senate appointed him, and he ruled from 37 to 4 BC. When Herod died, the emperor Augustus divided Palestine among Herod's three sons.

Herod Archelaus became the ethnarch of Judea, Idumea, and Samaria from 4 BC to AD 6. An ethnarch is a ruler over a subject nation, ranking below a king but above a tetrarch, a ruler of a smaller territory under Roman authority.

Herod Antipas was the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea from 4 BC to AD 39.

Herod Philip was the tetrarch of Batanea, Trachonitis, and other small states from 4 BC to AD 34.

After Herod's sons died or were deposed, Roman governors ruled these territories. For a short time, from AD 41 to 44, Herod Agrippa I, Herod the Great's grandson, ruled nearly the same territory as his grandfather. After his death (described in Acts 12:20–23), Roman governors took over his territories. The greed and incompetence of these governors led the Jewish people to rebel.

The unsuccessful Jewish revolt from AD 66 to 73 resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple by the tenth Roman legion under Titus in AD 70. The revolt ended in AD 73 when over 900 Jews, besieged at the desert fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea, chose mass suicide over capture by the Romans. These tragic events permanently ended the sacrificial worship carried out by priests in the Jerusalem temple.

Social and Religious Developments

The Babylonian conquest of Judea and the destruction of the Solomonic temple in 586 BC caused major social and religious changes for the Jewish people. The end of temple rituals deeply affected the Israelite religion, as the Jerusalem temple was the only legitimate place for many rituals in the law of Moses, especially sacrifices. Even the three annual pilgrimage festivals, Succoth (Tabernacles), Pesach (Passover), and Shavuoth (Weeks), could not be observed by devout Jews who stayed in Judea after 586 BC.

After 538 BC, while many exiles returned to Judea, others chose to stay in their new homes. For those who stayed, the temple rituals, even when restored in 516 BC, no longer played a major role in their religious lives.

During the time of exile and the early period after exile, the unique Jewish institution of the synagogue (a Greek word meaning “gathering place”) began to develop. The synagogue became very popular and useful for Jewish communities outside Palestine. After the Second Temple was dedicated, synagogues appeared throughout Palestine, including many in Jerusalem. By the end of the Second Temple period, the synagogue served three main roles in Jewish life:

• as a house of prayer,

• as a house of study, and

• as a place for gathering.

Worship in first-century AD synagogues is shown in Luke 4:16–30 and Acts 13:13–42. The service focused on reading a selection from the Torah (Law of Moses), followed by one from the Haphtorah (Prophets). These readings were followed by a sermon based on Scripture. Other parts of first-century AD synagogue worship included reciting:

• the Shema (“Hear, O Israel”), a mix of biblical passages including Deuteronomy 6:4–9; 11:13–21 and Numbers 15:37–41; and

• the Shemoneh Esreh (Eighteen Benedictions), called the Amidah (“standing”) because it was recited while standing.

Jews also wore fringes on their clothes to follow Numbers 15:38–39 (Matthew 23:5), and phylacteries on their foreheads and left arms. Phylacteries, also called tefillin, are small boxes containing the Scripture portions recited in the Shema; they were used to literally follow the command in Deuteronomy 6:8. Archaeologists have found first-century phylacteries in the ruins of Masada.

Outside of Palestine, Mesopotamia became the second most important center for Judaism. The Babylonian Jewish community was known as the Golah, meaning "captivity," and its leader was called the Resh Galuta or Exilarch, both meaning "leader of the captivity."

By the end of the exile, the descendants of the original captives had forgotten Hebrew. They adopted Aramaic, the international language of the ancient Near East and a language closely related to Hebrew, as their first language. Even in Palestine, Aramaic was the main language spoken.

When Scripture was read in Hebrew during synagogue services, most people could not understand it. To solve this, a methurgeman (translator) would orally translate short sections of Scripture. Eventually, these targums (translations) were written down, starting in the second century AD.

By the first century AD, estimates suggested there were four to seven million Jews in the Greco-Roman world. This was perhaps three to four times the population of Palestine. Jews living outside Palestine were known as the Diaspora, meaning "scattering."

After Alexander the Great and his successors dominated the Mediterranean, Greek became the common language in the region. Mesopotamian Jews spoke Aramaic instead of Hebrew, and Jews in the Greco-Roman world began to speak Greek.

By the middle of the third century BC, Greek-speaking Jews started translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. This translation, called the Septuagint (meaning "seventy," based on a legend that seventy Jewish scholars translated it simultaneously), included a more extensive canon (the collection of books recognized as Scripture) than Palestinian Judaism recognized.

Major Groups in Palestinian Judaism

In the second century BC, many major groups within Palestinian Judaism emerged.

The Hasidim, meaning "pious," were part of a religious group that helped the Hasmoneans revolt against the Seleucids (1 Maccabees 2:42; 7:13). However, they later opposed the Hasmoneans when they claimed the priesthood. The Pharisees and Essenes may have originated from this group.

The Sadducees might have been linked to Zadok, a high priest appointed by David. Zadok's descendants were seen as the only legitimate priestly line, preferred over the Levites in Ezekiel 40–48. The Sadducees were a wealthy, aristocratic class that controlled the high priesthood. They did not believe in angels, spirits, life after death, or resurrection (Acts 23:8). They also rejected the oral law developed by the Pharisees. The Sadducees left no writings and disappeared with the temple's destruction in AD 70.

The Pharisees, meaning "separated ones," first appeared in historical records near the end of the second century BC. They were mainly involved in politics. They stood up for common people against the harsh Hasmonean ruler, Alexander Janneus, who ruled from 103 to 76 BC and executed many Pharisees in retaliation.

By the first century AD, religious matters appear to have become their main concern. They were known for strictly following the law of Moses as traditionally interpreted. They avoided contact that they believed could make them ritually unclean.

Pharisees moved in groups called Haberim, meaning "associates," to stay away from those who were less religious. The Pharisees wanted to obey the Torah faithfully. They taught oral traditions, which were passed on by speaking and not by writing. These traditions explained how to apply the Torah's commands in daily life. The Pharisees believed that the traditions came from Moses. Some of the traditions were protective rules, meant to keep people from breaking the commands of the Torah.

This oral law interpreted and expanded the 613 commands in the law of Moses and was eventually written down as the Mishnah, meaning "teaching," in the late second century AD. Paul (Acts 22:3; 23:6; 26:5; Philippians 3:5) and many other early Christians converted from Pharisaism (Acts 15:5). Pharisaic Judaism survived the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and evolved into rabbinic Judaism, which has influenced Jewish religious life from the second century AD to today.

The Essenes were a Jewish religious group that began in the second century BC. Like the Pharisees, the Essenes focused on staying ritually pure by following the law of Moses. They lived and worked in Jewish society and tried to influence others through their simple and selfless lifestyle. Some Essenes also lived in their own communities, returning there each night after work.

There were many religious groups within Judaism. One such group, possibly loosely connected to the Essenes, formed a community on the western shore of the Dead Sea. This group saw itself as the true Israel. They kept themselves ritually pure as they prepared for God’s final intervention.

Many documents written by this sect were found in caves near the Dead Sea, where they were hidden before the Romans destroyed the settlement. These documents, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, have given us detailed information about this religious sect and its beliefs.

The Zealots were a Jewish group possibly linked to the Sicarii, known as "dagger men." This group of political activists was active from AD 6 to 66. They considered God their only ruler and tried to overthrow the Romans and their allies through violence, including assassination. They played a role in starting the Jewish revolt of AD 66–73 and died when Jerusalem fell in AD 70.

In first-century AD Palestine, social class and status were based on ritual purity rules. The upper class included religious leaders like the Sadducees, scribes, Pharisees, and Jerusalem priests. The Sanhedrin, a decision-making group, came from these classes. There was no real middle class. The lower class mainly consisted of the Am Ha Arez ("people of the land"). These were Jews who lacked education and did not strictly follow the commandments they knew. The Pharisees generally viewed the Am Ha Arez negatively, as shown in John 7:49: “But this crowd that does not know the law—they are under a curse”.

Another social class existed, often called "untouchables." This group included Samaritans, tax collectors, prostitutes, shepherds, lepers, Gentiles, and Jews who behaved like Gentiles (such as the prodigal son in Luke 15:11–32). Ritual purity rules usually stopped any social interaction between the upper class and the untouchables and made interactions with the Am Ha Arez undesirable. Given this context, the Pharisees' shock at Jesus associating with tax collectors and sinners is understandable (Mark 2:15–17).

This religious rule for deciding social class and status caused tension between Jerusalem and rural Palestine, especially Galilee, during the last two centuries of the Second Temple period. People in Jerusalem saw Galilee as a place where people did not know the Torah well (John 1:46). Jerusalem was mainly a religious center, with the temple as its main industry.

In the first century AD, Jerusalem's population was estimated at 25,000 to 40,000. Most were artisans and craftsmen working on the temple (which was still unfinished before its destruction; see John 2:20) or priests and Levites involved in temple rituals. Jews were expected to travel to Jerusalem for three annual pilgrimage festivals, but this was hard for rural Palestinian farmers.

The law of Moses required tithes only on land produce, not on wages or traded goods. Rural farmers, therefore, faced most of this tax and naturally resented urban artisans, merchants, and priests who did not have to tithe. Many farmers were tempted not to tithe their produce. Untithed produce was not kosher, so religiously strict groups like the Pharisees avoided it.

Besides the first and second tithes (the second had to be spent near Jerusalem), Roman taxes took 10 to 15 percent of a person's income. Combined, religious and Roman taxes created a heavy burden of 25 to 30 percent. It is easy to understand why the Jews revolted against the Romans in AD 66.

Throughout the first century AD, minor revolts in Palestine happened often. Many occurred during the three annual pilgrimage festivals in Jerusalem, when the population grew from 25,000–40,000 to over 500,000. These festivals were prime times for uprisings, and the Romans were very watchful. Jesus was executed during one such Passover festival because he was suspected of being a political revolutionary (Mark 15:26).

The Second Temple period was when apocalypticism rose and fell in Judaism. Apocalypticism, from a Greek word meaning "revelation," was a type of eschatology, which means "account of final events." According to this view, the ideal conditions on earth could only return if God intervened dramatically to destroy evil, especially foreign oppressors, and rescue his faithful people and show that they were in the right, like Israel.

Apocalyptic visionaries wrote many documents, called apocalypses, to interpret current events and predict God's coming. Since people believed prophecy had ended, these writers used the names of ancient Israelite figures like Moses, Abraham, Enoch, and Ezra instead of their own. Key expectations of Jewish apocalypticism included:

• the arrival of a Messiah,

• a great period of suffering,

• the resurrection of the just, and

• the judgment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous.

Apocalyptic beliefs likely motivated most, if not all, Jewish revolts against the Romans.

Some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures were still being written at the start of the Second Temple period. The last three prophetic books (Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi) were written from the late sixth century to the mid-fifth century BC. Later rabbis believed that the Spirit of God left Israel when these prophets stopped their work. The Chronicler finishes his work by mentioning the decree of Cyrus, which was written in 538 BC, and both Ezra-Nehemiah and Esther seem to have been written in the fifth century BC.

During the Second Temple period, Jewish people completed writings that became sacred and authoritative. Before Jerusalem's destruction in 586 BC, people did not consistently follow the law of Moses. Second Kings 22 describes the discovery of a book of the law in the temple. The classical prophets also did not always receive proper recognition. After 586 BC, the Torah became central to Jewish life and thought. It replaced many aspects of the temple rituals even before the temple's final destruction in AD 70.

The Jewish Scriptures are divided into three parts, known as "Tanak":

1. Torah ("Law" or "Revelation")

2. Nebi’im ("Prophets")

3. Kethubim ("Writings")

The Law and the Prophets were widely accepted as authoritative by the second century BC. The introduction to the Greek translation of Sirach also refers to other writings passed down from their ancestors, though these did not necessarily form a clearly defined collection. The boundaries of the section later called the Writings appear to have remained unsettled longer. Later Jewish tradition records rabbinic discussions about the sacred status of certain books, such as Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs.

It was once common to say that a council at Jamnia (Yavneh) around AD 90 fixed the list of sacred books, but most scholars no longer accept this claim. By the end of the first century AD, evidence points to a collection close to the present Hebrew Bible, though the status of some books continued to be discussed. Scholars debate when its boundaries became firmly established.

The Law includes five books:

• Genesis,

• Exodus,

• Leviticus,

• Numbers, and

• Deuteronomy.

The Prophets have two parts:

• the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings), and

• the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12 Minor Prophets).

The Writings include:

• Chronicles,

• Ezra-Nehemiah,

• Esther,

• Job,

• Psalms,

• Proverbs,

• Ecclesiastes,

• Song of Songs,

• Lamentations,

• Ruth, and

• Daniel.

The Hebrew Bible contains 24 books. Its contents are the same as the Protestant Old Testament of 39 books, but Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, and the Twelve are each counted as one book. The Greek translation tradition included additional books whose status in Judaism was not fixed. Some of these are in the Catholic Old Testament of 46 books, where they are called deuterocanonical. Protestants call them the Apocrypha. Orthodox canons include still more.

The Talmudic Period (AD 73–425)

Historical Survey

According to Jewish legend, when the Romans were about to conquer Jerusalem during the revolt of AD 66–73, a prominent Pharisee named Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai pretended to be dead. His followers were allowed to carry him out of the besieged city in a coffin. However, it is more likely that he got permission from the Romans to move his school from Jerusalem to Jamnia, on the coast of Palestine.

The sacrificial worship carried out by priests in the Jerusalem temple had disappeared, so rabbinic academies like Rabbi Johanan's took on the huge task of rebuilding Judaism. The older Sanhedrin was reestablished as the Beth Din (meaning “Court of Law”), and Gamaliel II, a grandson of Gamaliel I who had led the old Sanhedrin, became its leader with the title Nasi (meaning “prince”) or Patriarch. The patriarchate continued until AD 425, when Emperor Theodosius II ended the office after the death of the last patriarch, Gamaliel VI.

Jewish life in Babylonia flourished under Persian rule, centered on the rabbinic academies at Sura and Pumbedita. The Babylonian Talmud was shaped in these academies between the third and sixth centuries AD. From the late sixth to the eleventh century, the academies were led by scholars called Gaonim (singular Gaon, "excellency"), who interpreted the Talmud and answered legal questions from Jewish communities across the world. This period is known as the Gaonic age.

In AD 115, Jewish communities in the eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene, revolted against Roman Emperor Trajan. Roman legions suppressed these revolts.

In AD 132, when Emperor Hadrian planned to build the new city of Aelia Capitolina on old Jerusalem's site, the Jews revolted again. They were led by Simeon Bar Koziba, a self-proclaimed messiah, called Bar-Kochba ("Son of a Star") by his followers, referring to a messianic passage in Numbers 24:17. The famous rabbinic scholar Akiba supported Bar-Kochba. Although initially successful, the Romans, led by Julius Severus, crushed this revolt in 135. Soon after, Hadrian banned all Jews from the new Aelia Capitolina.

Social and Religious Developments

During this time, generations of rabbinical scholarship led to the creation of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. The rabbinic sages saw themselves as continuing the work of Israel’s ancient prophets, who had passed on the teaching of the law of Moses. They clearly distinguished between their legal interpretations of the law of Moses, called Halakah (meaning "walking" or a guide for life), and the commands in the Torah, called Mitzvah (meaning "commandment").

The oral law, developed over generations of rabbinic discussion, was finally compiled and written down by the patriarch Judah ha-Nasi, who lived around AD 135 to 220, in the late second century AD, becoming known as the Mishnah ("teaching"). This is a topical collection of rabbinic discussions on subjects like:

• the Sabbath,

• firstfruits,

• sacrifices, and

• women.

The Mishnah became the foundation for further rabbinic discussion in both Palestine and Babylonia. The decisions of sages after the Mishnah's writing were compiled around AD 450 in Palestine and around 500 in Babylonia. This second stage beyond the Mishnah is called the Gemara (meaning "completion" or "repetition").

The Mishnah and the Babylonian Gemara form the Babylonian Talmud, while the Mishnah with the Jerusalem or Palestinian Gemara makes up the Jerusalem Talmud. Another type of rabbinic literature is the Midrashim ("interpretations"), which follow the order of a biblical book or consist of sermons on specific biblical texts. The Targums, which are paraphrased translations of Scripture into Aramaic, began to be written down in the late second century AD.

After the temple was destroyed, rabbinic Judaism focused on the Torah's religious importance and made scholarship central to Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism gradually influenced Jewish communities outside Israel, led initially by Rabbi Johanan, until a form of rabbinic orthodoxy appeared in the second century.

Christianity was a major ideological opponent of rabbinic Judaism. To remove Jewish Christians from their community, the rabbis added a benediction to the eighteen usually recited at synagogue services. This 19th benediction was a curse on the minim (Christians and other heretics), which Jewish Christians could not recite. This action clearly separated Judaism from Christianity in the late first century.

See also Dead Sea Scrolls; Essenes; Diaspora of the Jews; First Jewish Revolt; History of Israel; Jew; Judaeus Philo; Oral Tradition; Pharisees; Postexilic Period; Sanhedrin; Talmud; Torah; Tradition; Tribe of Judah.

Aquifer Open Bible Dictionary © 2026 Mission Mutual, an adaptation of the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Derived from “Judah” (the southern kingdom of the divided monarchy) the term refers to the religion and culture of the Jews from the time of the exile (586 B.C.) onwards.

The exile and the beginnings of Judaism

The people of Judah become known as Jews

EZR 4:12; ; NEH 4:2; ; EST 3:6; ; JER 32:12; ; MAT 2:2; ; JHN 2:6

Jewish communities were formed in many places

JER 44:1; ; EZR 2:1 many stayed in Babylon; ; JHN 7:35; ; ACT 2:8–2:11

Far from the Jerusalem temple, the exiles had difficulty in knowing how to worship

PSA 137:4 See also HOS 3:4 This prophecy to Israel also expresses the dilemma of the Jerusalem exiles.

New forms of religion after the exile, probably beginning in Babylon

Emphasis on the Scriptures

NEH 7:73–8:3

Synagogue worship

LUK 4:16–4:17 Unable to sacrifice in the temple, the exiles would have focused their worship on the Scriptures, a practice which developed into synagogue worship.

Carefully observing the law

Ezra went from Babylon to Jerusalem with the express intention of seeing that God's law was observed: EZR 7:11, EZR 7:14, EZR 7:25

The temple and sacrifice

The returning exiles recommence the sacrifices

EZR 3:1–3:6

The temple rebuilt

EZR 3:8, EZR 6:14–6:15

The temple as a focus for pilgrims

JHN 12:20; ; ACT 2:5 They had probably come for Passover and were staying until Pentecost; ; ACT 8:27

The temple regarded with great reverence

MAT 26:59–26:61 parallel MRK 14:57–14:58; ; ACT 6:13, ACT 21:27–21:29

Studying and obeying the law

Studying Scripture

JHN 5:39

Total obedience essential

MAT 23:23; ; JAS 2:10

Human rules added to God's law

MAT 23:16–23:18; ; MRK 7:1–7:13 parallel MAT 15:1–15:9

High regard for the Sabbath and traditional rules associated with it

MAT 12:1–12:2 parallels MRK 2:23–2:24, LUK 6:1–6:2

Groups within NT Judaism

Pharisees

MRK 7:3–7:4 The Pharisees stressed the fulfilment of the law by individuals. See also LUK 11:38, LUK 18:10–18:12; ACT 26:5

Sadducees

ACT 5:17 A powerful minority group, politically astute whilst theologically conservative, they saw temple worship as the chief purpose of the law. See also MAT 3:7; MRK 12:18 parallels MAT 22:23, LUK 20:27

Teachers of the law (scribes)

They preserved, copied, taught and administered the law: MAT 17:10; ; MRK 9:14; ; LUK 2:46; ; ACT 4:5

Zealots

LUK 6:15 They favoured a “holy war” to drive out the Romans.

Non-Jewish converts

MAT 23:15; ; ACT 2:11, ACT 6:5, ACT 13:43

Judaism and Christianity

Conflict between Jesus Christ and the Jewish authorities

MRK 14:1 See also JHN 11:45–11:50

Conflict between the first Christians and Judaism

JHN 16:2; ; ACT 4:1–4:3, ACT 5:17–5:18; ; GAL 1:13–1:14

Conflict produced by Jewish influence among the first Christians

ACT 15:5 See also ACT 15:1–15:2; GAL 2:11–2:16 Judaism gave birth to Christianity. After an initial uneasy co-existence a total break finally ensued.

Dictionary of Bible Themes © 1999 Martin H. Manser. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.