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Summary of contents

The purpose of this book is to give the reader a general overview of the history and evolution of Judaism. It will not only provide the reader with a better understanding of the events surrounding the Exodus from Egypt, but a greater appreciation for the Bible as a source of historical information. Even the New Testament will be put into clearer perspective, and the events that lead to the evolution of Christianity and the present form of Judaism from their roots in the Hebrew Bible will become clearer.

The event that launched the Israelites as a nation was the Exodus from Egypt. The Exodus occurred about 3300 years ago and represented both the beginning of the existence of Israel as a nation and acceptance by the Israelites of a religion given to them by Moses. This religion is described in the first five books of the Bible, known in Hebrew as the Torah. Creating a nation that would live according to the Law of Moses was the primary objective of the leaders of the Exodus.

The Exodus was not an isolated incident, but part of a historical process. According to the Bible the Israelites lived in Egypt for 430 years before the Exodus, and Moses was raised as part of the Egyptian royal family. To understand why the Exodus took place and where the religion Moses gave the Israelites originated, we must start by studying Egyptian history in the years leading up to the Exodus. This will also provide us with an understanding of why the Mosaic religion (the religion given to the Israelites by Moses) contained the principles and beliefs that it did.

After explaining how and why the Exodus took place, this book goes on to explore how the Mosaic religion evolved after Moses' death. The Israelites invaded the land of Canaan but did not gain control over the entire country until the reign of King David. The golden age of the Israelite Kingdom occurred during the reigns of David and Solomon. After the death of King Solomon most of the tribes of Israel split with the rulers in Jerusalem, established a separate northern Kingdom of Israel and abandoned the Mosaic religion. Only the remaining Kingdom of Judah continued to practice the Mosaic religion. Inhabitants of this kingdom were known as Jews and the religion they practiced later became known as Judaism. Throughout this entire period there do not appear to have been fundamental changes in the religious concepts given to the Israelites by Moses.

Major changes occurred in the way the Jewish religion was interpreted and practiced after the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah in 587 BC and the exile of the population of Jerusalem to Babylonia. After this national disaster and the destruction of a central religious authority, new interpretations of Judaism began to emerge that were quite different than those originally intended by Moses. These new interpretations were the result of the adoption of foreign religious concepts by some Jews who tried to incorporate them into Judaism.

The greatest and most profound foreign influence on Judaism, which has survived into modern times, was the influence of the Persian religion Zoroastrianism. Babylonia was conquered by the Persians in 539 BC, and the land of Israel became part of the Persian Empire. The Persian emperor permitted a group of Jewish exiles under the leadership of Nehemia to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple in 517 BC, 70 years after the beginning of the Babylonian exile.

This group of returnees had not yet been strongly influenced by Persian religious beliefs and tended to practice the Mosaic religion in much the same way as their ancestors. However, Jews in other parts of the Persian Empire were strongly influenced by Persian beliefs and began to reinterpret the Mosaic religion in terms of Persian religious concepts.

Those Jews who supported the traditional interpretation of the Mosaic religion became known as Sadducees, or followers of the high priest Saddok. Jews who interpreted the Law of Moses in terms of Persian religious concepts became known as Pharisees. The specific form of the belief in life after death and the concept of reward or punishment after death for behavior during life accepted by the Pharisees appear to have been taken directly from Zoroastrianism.

While outside influences were responsible for creating and modifying the Jewish religion, Judaism also had a major influence on the development of other monotheistic religions. Christianity originated as a Jewish sect and the form and content of Islam were strongly influenced by both Judaism and Christianity.

Less well known is the influence of Judaism on the ancient religion of the Cherokee Indians and the creation of a Jewish empire in Europe during the Middle Ages that was comparable in size and power to the Byzantine and Islamic empires of the time. Jews of Eastern European origin, who represented most of the world's Jewish population by the beginning of the twentieth century, are descendents of the population of this empire. In this book we will investigate why this empire declined and disappeared while the Christian and Moslem empires evolved into independent countries with Christianity and Islam as the official state religions.

This book provides the reader with a perspective on Jewish history that will enable him or her to organize information from other sources and make sense of a very complex subject. While some of the material presented here may be well known to religious scholars and historians, most of the information in this book will be new to the general public. References are provided for those who wish to delve further into any of the topics discussed in the book