On the Origins of Judaism

Philip R. Davies

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134945092
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

On the Origins of Judaism examines the formation of one of the oldest monotheistic religions. The book covers a diverse range of themes: the identity of those who produced and canonized the Hebrew Bible and subsequently shaped its interpretation; the significance and impact of Second Isaiah and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah; the roots of Jewish apocalyptic literature, and the possible origins of the Exodus story; the ethical systems of the Hebrew Bible and the Athenian tragedians; and the place of food and drink in the Qumran community. On the Origins of Judaism is the most comprehensive exploration of the roots of the Jewish faith and will be invaluable to students and scholars of biblical and religious studies.

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION

The problem that has occupied me for all of my scholarly life—and only now can I see it clearly—is the origin of Judaism. Ancient Judaism is the religious matrix of the three world religions of monotheism (or, if you prefer, monarchic theism) and one of the two parents, along with the classical Greco-Roman culture, that shaped Western civilization. Yet how it came into being is a mystery. Of course, it has its own canonized explanation, and a simple one: God created the world, chose Abraham and then Israel, rescued his people from slavery, revealed the law to Moses, gave them a land, guided them through the words he uttered to prophets, punished and forgave (in equal measure). But this account is, of course, itself part of the process of formation of Judaism and not an independent testimony to its real history. It explains only when interrogated. It may or may not give us much history (and we have few resources to verify or falsify it), but the tensions within its stories of the past—not least its varying definitions of “Israel”—betray competing and compromising interests (I have recently explored these in some detail in Davies, 2007a).

The scriptural canon of early Judaism was supplemented by the New Testament, the Talmud, and the Qur’an. Each of these writings defined one of the three “Abrahamic” religions: classical or rabbinic Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The first two grew alongside each other, the third arrived centuries later. Whilst Judaism retained the name of the mother, it is not for that reason typologically closer to its parent (Samaritanism, another often forgotten “Abrahamic religion,” is probably the closest): the loss of the Jerusalem temple caused Judaism to mutate into a geographically decentred religion without priesthood or sanctuary or sacrificial cult. Christianity, thanks partly to its merger with the imperial Roman cult, retained a priesthood, altars, “churches” (temples) and a quite elaborate cult. Islam, by contrast, has neither priest, nor cult, nor temple. Any rational outsider would conclude that these three religions worship the same deity, the one named Yhwh in the various collections of books that constitute the Jewish Bible and the various Christian Bibles, some of the contents of which are re-presented in the Qur’an—but more commonly just called “God.”

“Ancient Judaism” is the matrix of all these religions. It designates the rich complex of beliefs and practices that later crystallized into the three major forms (but also into others). Our understanding of this religious ferment has been revolutionized during my lifetime; most probably the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was the catalyst. These documents have been claimed for Christianity (in a proleptic sense, as being “apocalyptic” or “messianic” and opposed to the temple cult, all less than accurate descriptions) as well as for rabbinic Judaism (from their concern with obedience to the Mosaic Torah and their obsession with continual purity). Both claims have some substance, but the tussle between these claims (which has been generally quite amicable) has shown how easy it is to trace the roots of both religions back to the complex of ideas and practices that constitute “early Judaism.”

The Scrolls enabled scholars to work backwards towards the time of the Israelite and Judean kingdoms, via the province of Yehud, the successor to the kingdom of Judah and, with much less attention, via the Samaritan religion, the successor of the kingdom of Israel. Between the relatively illuminated history of these kingdoms and the much more illuminated world of the Greco-Roman era lies, if not a black hole, then a dark grey one. Of the crucial era in the development of early Judaism, from the fifth to the second centuries bce, we knew very, very little. What happened in Yehud and Samaria as the Persian empire gave way to Alexander’s Macedonians and Greeks, as Judah and Samaria fell under the Ptolemies, and perhaps were then reunited into a single domain, how “Judaism” and “Samaritanism” grew apart as separate cults—all this we can only approach by inference from canonized and uncanonized Jewish writings and scraps of information from other ancient writers. There are no narrative accounts from Judah or Samaria that cover the period between the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the second bce, and few extant external sources that take any interest in it—until we come to Josephus, upon whom we have to rely more than we would like.

As for the Jewish literature emanating from the entire Second Temple period, the term “postbiblical” (“intertestmental” is now out of use) conveys the impression that the uncanonized writings are chronologically later than the scriptural, and this perception has survived relatively intact, though it is incorrect (parts of Daniel are later than parts of 1 Enoch), but, more importantly, that they are typologically “later,” that they depend upon, or take for granted, a fixed scriptural canon. This perception is also mistaken, and, moreover, implies a single strand of evolution. But early Judaism almost certainly did not develop in a unilinear fashion (a state of affairs that makes relative chronology somewhat less important).

But the writings known as 1 Enoch, which have been known in the West since the nineteenth century and more recently the Qumran Scrolls, have revealed unexpected possibilities of “early Jewish” belief and practice, including, in the case of the Scrolls, not just the phenomenon of sectarianism but also features such as physiognomy, astrology, dualism, and mysticism—apparently accompanied by a rigorous adherence to scriptural law. These writings have also transmitted a kind of Judaism, or even “kinds of Judaism” that we would not have deduced from the canonized literature at all. There is still a tendency to embrace many of the features in these works within the orbit of “sectarianism,” a relatively late and marginal feature. But such a view implies that there was a “mainstream” Judaism and that we know what that was. That, for instance, it is represented by the scriptural canon (and perhaps even delineated in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah). But the later stages of canonizing, including internal cross-referencing and, finally, closing its contents, are not a precondition of early Judaism but part of its development. How did some writings retain their status as canonical works (in the sense of being included in the closed canon) while others were not—though Greek-reading Jews apparently continued to regard other writings as scriptural, too? Who, in any case, had any authority to close the canon, and why was a need felt to do this, closed canons being the exception rather than the rule? There are several aspects of the formation and function of the scriptural canon that have not yet been understood; again, our evidence is mostly indirect and insufficient. Having worked on both canonized (especially Davies, 1998) and uncanonized “early Jewish” writings, I have found myself persuaded of generally later dates for the creation, and not just the completion, of the former, and earlier dates for some of the latter, to the point where I have found myself focusing on the areas of overlap, and these issues are especially prominent in the essays that follow.

One important respect in which the scriptural canon reflects the development of early Judaism is in the creation of “Israel.” The Scriptures tell the story of a nation of “Israel,” though on careful reading it can be seen that the texts represent different definitions. For example, we can see on the one hand a rejection of the people of Samaria (in 2 Kings 17 and in Ezra and Nehemiah), while in the books of Chronicles the “northern tribes” are included within an Israel governed from Jerusalem. We also find a kind of “Jewish penumbra” reflected in the land promised to Abraham, the territory assigned to David’s empire and the area covered by Ezra’s law—namely, between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, “Across the River.” In the second century we find much of Palestine annexed into the Hasmonean Judean kingdom. Whence this notion of a “greater Israel,” as we might call it? Whatever the answer, it signals a rift between “Judean” and “Jew,” one that may perhaps have already been developing. “Jew,” at any rate, becomes an ethnic term. But how was “Jewish” definition understood?

The problem of defining “early Judaism” means asking “who was a Jew?” It seems fairly clear that both Judaism and Christianity helped to define the other as religious systems, with increasing clarity from the fourth century as Christianity became the official religion of the empire and rabbinic Judaism completed its redefinition of Israel in its own terms of “dual torah.” I have been influenced by Neusner’s model of a rabbinic Judaism inspired by catastrophe, creating something new and coherent but less connected to the past than transcending it. I have come to believe that the scriptural literature also represents the creation of an idealized nation, and one also born out of a trauma involving a loss of identity. But it uses the past much more than rabbinic Judaism. It creates a nation to which the Jews belong, and not just a cult. This nationalism may have been dormant or even non-existent until the second century bce, but it exercised a decisive influence on the history of Judah and on Jews thereafter, until first the Jerusalem temple, then the land, was lost.

If Early Judaism—the best name we can give it, to distinguish it from classical, rabbinic Judaism, can be said to begin at any point, that point should probably be set in the sixth or perhaps fifth century. Its endpoint comes with the success of the rabbinate in securing its definition of Israel and of Judaism, in the fourth century ce or perhaps later. That period embraces much (most?) of the composition, and certainly the completion and canonizing of the Scriptures, the emergence and political conquest of Christianity. What still needs to be explored more rigorously, however, are the continuities with the Israelite and Judean monarchies, whose portrait in the Scriptures represents Early Judaism’s own cultural memory, a memory that stretched back the origins of “Israel” to the time before any kings ruled or any temple stood in Jerusalem, or even (and this was always being disputed) before the Torah was revealed to them.

We have discovered new data in the last fifty years; but we have also broken much of the conceptual framework that connected Scripture and its “Israel,” “early Judaism” and “Christianity,” a framework maintained in both Christian and Jewish scholarship that held “early Judaism” to be a continuation or an intensification of legalistic Mosaism culminating in the “second torah” of the rabbis on one side and the abolition of torah on the other side. It is obvious now that this picture is wrong. The right picture, however, is something we are still working on. The gaps in our knowledge are still huge and consequently any critical reconstruction will be highly defective. It may be better for the present to offer partial narratives of aspects that we can perhaps discern and hope that the spaces between them will become clearer, if still remaining largely empty. That is a partial defence for what follows, still essentially a collection of separately conceived and undertaken essays. Two topics predominate: Chapters 3–5 deal mostly with “law,” or “torah,” and Chapters 7–8 with “apocalyptic.” The remaining chapters, however, explore further issues and despite the limitations of what follows, I hope that putting questions together is the best way of finding the answers, or perhaps, of finding better questions.

Chapter 2
EARLY JUDAISM(S)

A large amount of important work has been published on topics covered in this essay since this essay appeared in its original form. The following publications are among those worth mentioning.

On the material culture of the early Persian period in Judah (note 27) see now Carter (1999), Edelman (2005), Lipschits (2005), Lipschits and Oeming (2006) and Lipschits, Knoppers and Albertz (2007).

1 Enoch has been particularly widely discussed. The first volume of George Nickelsburg’s commentary has appeared and Gabriele Boccaccini has developed his thesis of Enochic Judaism further (1998), and also edited volumes from the ongoing “Enoch Seminar.”

On Ezra-Nehemiah, see also Grabbe (1998), and on the development of Nehemiah tradition in 2 Maccabees, Bergren (1997). Bedford (2001) has examined the Ezra-Nehemiah temple building stories and identified in them some of the anachronisms to which I have also drawn attention, including confrontation with Samaria. He also casts doubts on the “exilic” roots of Judean institutions in the Persian period. Hultgren (2007) has identified the “new covenant” of the Damascus Document with the covenant of Ezra and Nehemiah. The official edition of the Damascus Document (see notes 24 and 25) was published by Joseph Baumgarten (1996); see also the useful introduction by Hempel (2000).

On the Samaritans and rivalry between Gerizim and Jerusalem, see also Hjelm (2000 and 2004).

On the construction of the biblical definitions of Israel as “cultural memory,” updating and amending the conclusions of In Search of Ancient Israel, see Davies (2007). On Jewish ethnicity, see also Mendels (1992), and on Jewish cultural memory in the Hellenistic era, see Mendels (2004). On the development of Judaism in the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman period generally, the important books by Gruen (1998), Schwartz (2001) and Goodman (2007) should be mentioned.

Finally, a number of the topics covered below are treated in Etienne Nodet’s (1997) book, which takes as its starting point the discrepancy between Josephus and rabbinic accounts of the foundation of Judaism on the one hand, and biblical accounts on the other. Nodet’s explanations are on the whole slightly more radical, though they follow similar lines. In particular, he gives a substantial treatment to the Samaritan question and the significance of the “Maccabean crisis.” Very highly recommended also is Cohen’s (2000) account of the beginnings of Judaism There are several histories of the period: a systematic treatment of sources and synthesis is given in Grabbe (1991) and (1992); Cohen (1987) also approaches the topics very clearly and with the right kinds of questions.

Judaism and Judaisms

The Jews (Judaeans) of antiquity constituted an ethnos, an ethnic group. They were a named group, attached to a specific territory whose members shared a sense of common origins, claimed a common and distinctive history and destiny, possessed one or more characteristics (Cohen, 2000: 3).

This is an excellent definition, or rather description, as much for what it does not say as what it does. For the perception of Judaism in the Second Temple period has undergone a marked change in the last few decades. It is now frequently represented as a pluriform phenomenon; indeed, so much so that it has become commonplace to speak of the existence not only of various forms or types of Judaism but even of several “Judaisms” before rabbinic Judaism emerged as the authorized (though still not the only) form (Gnosticism, Hekhalot literature, Kabbalah and Hasidism attest to other streams within Judaism).

This new profile has emerged from research in different areas. The idea of a single or “normative” Judaism, which held the field earlier this century, persists in some quarters, but has been steadily undermined. The rediscovery and subsequent re-evaluation of Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic literature that flourished early in this century led to a dichotomy between “rabbinic” and “apocalyptic” Judaism which for a long time absorbed the attention of scholarship, especially a New Testament scholarship which was seeking to define the precise relationship between Jesus, the early Church, and their Jewish background (Collins’ The Apocalyptic Imagination [1984] is subtitled An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity). Among Old Testament/Hebrew Bible scholars, the thesis of Plöger, reformulated by Hanson, that two streams of Judaism developed from the early “post-exilic” period, has been quite influential. These scholars represented the dichotomy as one between “theocratic” and “prophetic” groups or “streams,” in which rabbinic Judaism’s supposed emphasis on legalism placed it on the “theocratic” and “non-eschatological” side. It was necessary to this kind of analysis that the eschatological/prophetic/apocalyptic stream was peripheral, and that the other element was therefore dominant, sociologically “central,” normative. There is also a detectable bias in both authors in favour of the (“Christian” and especially Protestant) non-hierocratic, eschatological “stream.”

More recent developments have disposed of this dichotomy. First of all, the relationship between the rabbinic literature and the Judaism(s) of the first century ce has been redefined: rabbinic Judaism is now treated by the majority of scholars as a post-Second Temple phenomenon that cannot be understood merely as a continuation of Second Temple period Judaism and which, moreover, as a system of thought and practice, has its own distinction and coherent programme. I refer in particular to the work of Jacob Neusner and his “Judaism of the Two Torahs.” Neusner also opted to speak of Second Temple “Judaisms” (see, e.g., Green, 1987). The abuse of both Pharisaism and rabbinic sources in the study of first-century Judaism was also critiqued by Sanders (1977, esp. 33–75). Sanders also described a “common Judaism” (1992), though his assumption that shared Jewish practices in Palestine implied shared religious ideas is not necessarily justified, any more than observing the first day of the week, Christmas and Easter amounts to a “common Christianity”; but the question of common practice will be addressed at the end of this essay. There is currently no consensus as to the nature, role or importance of the Pharisees—or, indeed, their relationship to rabbis.

Second, the Dead Sea Scrolls, whether they are to be integrated into a single sectarian ideology or contain substantial amounts of literature from various sources within Judaism, have widened the range of ideas and practices recognizable as “Jewish.” In contrast to the situation twenty years ago in Qumran scholarship, there exists no consensus on this point at present. Whether the Scrolls express one or more Judaisms is not important, though it is universally conceded that the range of ideas present in the Scrolls can hardly be the exclusive property of one sect, whatever sect it might have been (and there is now no agreement on this, either).The combination of cultic, legal, eschatological and apocalyptic elements in this archive has demonstrated clearly that the Judaism of the period cannot be easily sociologically (or ideologically) divided by means of these categories.

Third, if further evidence of great diversity were needed, the vast amount of so-called “pseudepigrapha” dating from this period provides a ready store of examples. Although a surge of interest in these writings can be witnessed in the first two decades of the twentieth century, it is only more recently that these writings have been used in the light of a new understanding of the plurality of early Jewish belief and practice rather than being assigned to one or other of the various distinct “parties” into which, following Josephus, it had been usual to divide Palestinian Judaism.

The outcome of these three developments is the now widely shared (though admittedly not unanimous) perception that what is called “Judaism” in the period before the fall of the Second Temple (and in effect a good deal later) was in reality a set of cultural and religious options. Sometimes these overlapped, sometimes they competed, and they ranged from what sociologists might nowadays call “civic religion” to quite exclusive sects.

Whether or not “common Judaism” is a useful term, the idea of a “common denominator” of Judaism, philosophically as well as historically, needs to be addressed. The replacement of the concept of “Judaism” by the concept of “Judaisms” solves one problem only to create another, perhaps an even more fundamental one—namely what it was that made any Judaism a “Judaism.” On this question a good deal is taken for granted in modern (as in older) scholarship and some disagreement is also evident. The nature of the problem can be illustrated by two recent books on Judaism in the Second Temple period. One is Boccaccini’s account (1991) of what he calls “Middle Judaism,” which affirms that “Judaism is to be seen not as an ideologically homogeneous unit but…as a set of different ideological systems in competition with one another” (13–14) and which cha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Dedication
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Early Judaism(s)
• 3. Scripture and Early Judaism(s)
• 4. “Law” and Early Judaism(s)
• 5. Deuteronomy and the Origin of Judaism
• 6. The God of Cyrus and the God of Israel
• 7. Jewish Apocalyptic
• 8. Enoch and Genesis
• 9. Eating and Drinking in the Qumran Texts
• 10. Eating and Drinking in the Roman Empire
• Bibliography
• Index of References
• Index of Authors