Origins of Judaism

The most widespread belief among archeological and historical scholars is that the origins of Judaism lie in the Persian province of Yehud. Judaism evolved from the ancient Israelite religion, developing new conceptions of the priesthood, a focus on Written Law and scripture and the prohibition of intermarriage with non-Jews.

During the Iron Age I period (12th to 11th centuries BCE), the religion of the Israelites branched out of the Canaanite religion and took the form of Yahwism. Yahwism was the national religion of the Kingdom of Israel and of the Kingdom of Judah. As distinct from other Canaanite religious traditions, Yahwism was monolatristic and focused on the particular worship of Yahweh, whom his worshippers conflated with El. Yahwists started to deny the existence of other gods, whether Canaanite or foreign, as Yahwism became more strictly monotheistic over time.

During the Babylonian captivity of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE (Iron Age II), certain circles within exiled Judeans in Babylon refined pre-existing ideas about Yahwism, such as the nature of divine election, law and covenants. Their ideas came to dominate the Jewish community in the following centuries.

From the 5th century BCE until 70 CE, Yahwism evolved into the various theological schools of Second Temple Judaism, besides Hellenistic Judaism in the diaspora. Second Temple Jewish eschatology has similarities with Zoroastrianism. The text of the Hebrew Bible was redacted into its extant form in this period and possibly formally canonized, as well. Textual evidence pointing to widespread observance of the Mosaic law among ordinary Jews first appears in the writings of Hecataeus of Abdera around 300 BCE, during the early Hellenistic period.

Rabbinic Judaism developed in late antiquity, during the 3rd to 6th centuries CE; the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud were compiled in this period. The oldest manuscripts of the Masoretic tradition come from the 10th and 11th centuries CE, in the form of the Aleppo Codex (of the later portions of the 10th century CE) and of the Leningrad Codex (dated to 1008–1009 CE). Due largely to censoring and the burning of manuscripts in medieval Europe, the oldest existing manuscripts of various rabbinic works are quite late. The oldest surviving complete manuscript copy of the Babylonian Talmud dates from 1342 CE.