The Roots of Judaism and Christianity
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(i) Judaism:
The Jews are a people who trace their descent from the biblical Israelites and who
are united by the religion called Judaism. They are not a race; Jewish identity is a
mixture of ethnic, national, and religious elements. An individual may become part of the
Jewish people by conversion to Judaism; but a born Jew who rejects Judaism or adopts
another religion does not entirely lose his Jewish identity. In biblical times the Jews
were divided into 12 tribes: Reuben, Simeon (Levi), Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin,
Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim, and Manasseh.
The word Jew is derived from the kingdom of Judah, which included the tribes of
Benjamin and Judah. The name Israel referred to the people as a whole and to the northern
kingdom of 10 tribes. Today it is used as a collective name for all Jewry and since 1948
for the Jewish state. (Citizens of the state of Israel are called Israelis; not all of
them are Jews.) In the Bible, Hebrew is used by foreign peoples as a name for the
Israelites; today it is applied only to the hebrew language.
The origin of the Jews is recounted in the Hebrew Bible. Despite legendary and
miraculous elements in its early narratives, most scholars believe that the biblical
account is based on historic realities. According to the Book of Genesis, God ordered the
patriarch Abraham to leave his home in Mesopotamia and travel to a new land, which he
promised to Abraham's descendants as a perpetual inheritance. Although the historicity of
Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob is uncertain, the Israelite tribes
certainly came to Canaan from Mesopotamia. Later they, or some of them, settled in Egypt,
where they were reduced to slavery; they finally fled to freedom under the leadership of
an extraordinary man named Moses, probably about 1200 BC. After a period of desert
wandering, the tribes invaded Canaan at different points, and over a lengthy period of
time they gained control over parts of the country.
For a century or more the tribes, loosely united and sometimes feuding among
themselves, were hard pressed by Canaanite forces based in fortified strongholds and by
marauders from outside. At critical moments tribal chieftains rose to lead the people in
battle. But when the Philistines threatened the very existence of the Israelites, the
tribes formed a kingdom under the rule (1020-1000 BC) of Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin.
Saul died fighting the Philistines and was succeeded by David of the tribe of Judah.
David crushed the power of the Philistines and established a modest empire. He
conquered the fortress city of Jerusalem, which up to that time had been controlled by a
Canaanite tribe, and made it his capital. His son Solomon assumed the trappings of a
potentate and erected the Temple in Jerusalem, which became the central sanctuary of the
distinctive monotheistic Israelite religion and ultimately the spiritual center of world
Jewry.
The national union effected by David was shaky. The economically and culturally
advanced tribes of the north resented the rule of kings from pastoral Judah, and after
Solomon's death the kingdom was divided. The larger and richer northern kingdom was known
as Israel; Judah, with Benjamin, remained loyal to the family of David. Israel
experienced many dynastic changes and palace revolutions. Both Israel and Judah, located
between the empires of Egypt and Assyria, were caught in the struggle between the two
great powers. Assyria was the dominant empire during the period of the divided kingdom.
When Israel, with Egyptian encouragement, tried to throw off Assyrian rule, it was
destroyed and a large number of its inhabitants were deported (722 BC). Judah managed to
outlive the Assyrian Empire (destroyed c.610), but the Chaldean (Neo-Babylonian) Empire
that replaced it also insisted on control of Judah. When a new revolt broke out under
Egyptian influence, the Chaldeans under Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem and burned
the Temple (587 or 586 BC); the royalty, nobility, and skilled craftsmen were deported to
Babylonia.
Loss of state and Temple, however, did not lead to the disappearance of the Judeans,
as it did in the northern kingdom. The peasantry that remained on the land, the refugees
in Egypt, and the exiles in Babylonia retained a strong faith in their God and the hope
of ultimate restoration. This was largely due to the influence of the great prophets.
Their warnings of doom had been fulfilled; therefore, the hopeful message they began to
preach was believed. The universal prophetic teaching assured Jews that they could still
worship their God on alien soil and without a temple. Henceforth the Jewish people and
religion could take root in the dispersion as well as in the homeland.
Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylonia in 536 BC. Subsequently he permitted
the exiles to return to Judah and rebuild the Temple. (Many chose, however, to remain in
Mesopotamia, where the Jewish community existed without interruption for more than 2,500
years until the virtual elimination of Jewish presence in Iraq after World War II.)
Leadership of the reviving Judean center was provided largely by returning
exiles--notably Nehemiah, an important official of the Persian court, and Ezra, a learned
priest. They rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and consolidated spiritual life by a public
ceremony of allegiance to the Torah and by stringent rules against mixed marriage. In the
following centuries leadership was provided mainly by priests, who claimed descent from
Moses' brother Aaron; the high priest usually represented the people in dealings with the
foreign powers that successively ruled the land.
Alexander the Great conquered Palestine in 322; his successors, the Macedonian
rulers of Egypt (the Ptolemies) and Syria; vied for control of this strategically
important area; eventually the Syrians won. Hellenistic influences penetrated Jewish life
deeply, but when the Seleucid king Antichus IV tried to impose the worship of Greek gods
upon the Jews, a rebellion ensued (168 BC).
The popular revolt was led by the Maccabees, a provincial priestly family (also
called Hasmoneans). By 165 they recaptured the Temple, which had been converted into a
pagan shrine, and rededicated it to the God of Israel. Hostilities with Syria continued;
but Simon, the last of the Maccabean brothers, consolidated his power and was formally
recognized in 131 BC as ruler and high priest. His successors took the title of king and
for about a century ruled an independent commonwealth. Dynastic quarrels, however, gave
the Roman general Pompey the Great an excuse to intervene and make himself master of the
country in 63 BC.
In subsequent decades a family of Idumaean adventurers ingratiated themselves with
the successive Roman dictators; with Roman help, Herod the Great made himself ruler of
Judea, eventually (37 BC) with the title of king. Able but ruthless, he was hated by the
people, although he rebuilt the Temple with great magnificence. The Romans allowed
Herod's sons less authority and in 6 BC put the country formally under the control of
their own officials, known as procurators.
New spiritual forces emerged during the Maccabean and Herodian periods. The leadership of
hereditary priests was contested by laymen distinguished for their learning and piety,
who won the respect and support of the people. The priestly conservatives came to be
known as Sadducees, the more progressive lay party as the Pharisees. The latter came to
dominate the Sangedrin, which was the highest religious and legal authority of the
nation.
Burdoned by excessive taxation and outraged by acts of brutality, the Judeans became
more and more restive under Roman rule, all the more because they were confident that God
would ultimately vindicate them. Revolutionary groups such as the Zealots emerged calling
for armed revolt. The Sadducees were inclined to collaborate with the Romans; the
Pharisees advocated passive resistance but sought to avoid open war.
In AD 66 the moderates could no longer control the desperate populace, and rebellion
against Roman tyranny broke out. After bitter fighting the Romans captured Jerusalem and
burned the Temple in 70; at Masada the Zealots held out until 73, when most of the 1,000
surviving defenders killed themselves to defy capture by the Romans. As a result of the
revolt thousands of Jews were sold into slavery and thus were scattered widely in the
Roman world. The last vestiges of national autonomy were obliterated.
The Pharisaic leaders, shortly thereafter given the title of Rabbi, rallied the
people for a new undertaking--the reconstruction of religious and social life. Using the
institution of the Syanagogue as a center of worship and education, they adapted
religious practice to new conditions. Their assembly, the Sanhedrin, was reconvened at
Jabneh, and its head was recognized by the Romans and given the title of patriarch; the
Diaspora Jews accepted his authority and that of the Sanhedrin in matters of Jewish law.
Many Diaspora Jewish communities rebelled against Rome early in the 2d century;
however, their rebellions were crushed, with much bloodshed. Still more bitter was the
revolt of Palestinian Jewry led by Bar Kochba in 132; it was put down after three years
of savage fighting. For a time thereafter observance of basic Jewish practices was made a
capital crime, and Jews were banned from Jerusalem. Under the Antonine emperors (138-92),
however, milder policies were restored, and the work of the scholars was resumed,
particularly in Galilee, which became the seat of the partriarchate until its abolition
(c.429) by the Romans. There the sages called tannaim completed the redaction of the
Mishnah (oral law) under the direction of Judah Ha-Nasi.
In the 3d and 4th centuries scholarly activity in Palestine declined as a result of
bad economic conditions and oppression by Christian Rome. Meanwhile, two Babylonian
pupils of Judah ha -Nasi had returned home, bringing the Mishnah with them, and
established new centers of learning at Sura and Nehardea. A period of great scholarly
accomplishment followed, and leadership of world Jewry passed to the Babylonian schools.
The Babylonian Talmud became the standard legal work for Jews everywhere. Babylonian
Jewry enjoyed peace and prosperity under the Parthian and Sassanian rulers, with only
occasional episodes of persecution. In addition to the heads of the academies, the Jews
had a secular ruler, the exilarch.
This situation was not significantly changed by the Muslim conquest of the Persian
empire. At the end of the 6th century, the heads of the academies had adopted the title
of gaon (Hebrew, "excellency"), and the next four centuries are known as the gaonic
period; communities throughout the world turned to the Babylonian leaders for help in
understanding the Talmud and applying it to new problems. About 770 the sect of Karaites,
biblical literalists who rejected the Talmud, appeared in Babylonia. Despite the vigorous
opposition of the great Saadia Ben Joseph Gaon and other leaders, the Karaites continued
to flourish for centuries in various lands; today the sect has only a few small
remnants.
Jews had long been accustomed to living in neighborhoods of their own, for security
and for ready access to a synagogue. From the 16th century, however, they were
systematically compelled to live in walled enclosures, to be locked in at night and on
Christian holidays, and to wear a distinguishing badge when outside the walls. The Jewish
quarter of Venice (established 1516) was called the GHETTO, and this local name became a
general term for such segregated areas. Cut off from normal relations with non-Jews, few
Jews had any idea of the cultural revival of the Renaissance. Even in the field of
Jewish law they tended to a rigid conservatism.
In Poland and Lithuania, social conditions also had a segregatory effect. The Jews
continued to speak a German dialect, mixed with many Hebrew words and with borrowings
from Slavic languages--now known as Yiddish). Intellectual life was focused on study of
the Talmud, in which they achieved extraordinary mastery. They enjoyed a large measure of
self- government, centralized in the Council of the Four Lands.
Persecutions became more frequent, however, inspired by competition from the growing
Christian merchant class and by overly zealous churchmen. In 1648 a rebellion of Cossacks
and Tatars in the Ukraine--then under Polish rule--led to an invasion of Poland, in which
hundreds of thousands of Jews were massacred. Polish Jewry never recovered from this
blow. A little over a century later, Poland was partitioned (1772, 1793, 1795) among
Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and most of Polish Jewry found itself under the heartless
rule of the Russian tsars.
Some 18th-century liberals began to advocate an improvement of Jewish status; at the
same time Moses Mendelssohn and a few other Jews were urging their coreligionists to
acquire secular education and prepare themselves to participate in the national life of
their countries. Such trends were intensified by the French Revolution. The French
National Assembly granted (1791) Jews citizenship, and Napoleon I, although not free from
prejudice, extended these rights to Jews in the countries he conquered, and the ghettos
were abolished. After Napoleon's fall (1814-15), the German states revoked the rights he
had granted the Jews, but the struggle for emancipation continued.
Equal rights were achieved in the Netherlands, and more slowly in Great Britain. Germany
and Austria, even after 1870, discriminated against Jews in military and academic
appointments; in these countries much popular hostility continued, now called
Anti-Semetism and supposedly justified on racial rather than religious grounds. In the
American colonies the Jews had suffered relatively minor disabilities; with the founding
of the United States, Jews became full citizens-- although in a few states discriminatory
laws had to be fought.
Jews entered the life of the Western world with keen enthusiasm; they contributed
significantly to commercial, scientific, cultural, and social progress. But the old
structure of Jewish life was severely damaged: community controls became less effective,
and neglect of religious observance, mixed marriage, and conversion to Christianity
occurred. In response to such challenges, new modernist versions of Judaism were
formulated; these movements originated in Germany and had their greatest development in
North America.
In Russia hopes of improvement were soon abandoned; the government engaged in open
war against Jews. Under Nicholas I (r. 1825-55), 12-year-old Jewish boys were drafted
into the army for terms of more than 30 years (whereas other Russians were drafted at 18
for 25 years); and Jewish conscripts were treated with the utmost brutality to make them
convert to Christianity.
After 1804, Jews were allowed to reside only in Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine;
Russia proper was closed to them. This Pale of settlement was later made smaller. From
1881 on, anti-Jewish riots, tolerated and sometimes instigated by the government, sent
thousands fleeing to Western Europe and the Americas. Because Russia refused to honor the
passports of American Jews, the United States abrogated a trade treaty in 1913.
In response to these policies, new trends appeared in Russian Jewry. A movement of
Jewish nationalism expressed itself in a revival of Hebrew as a secular language and in a
few attempts at colonization in Palestine. A Jewish socialist movement, the Bund,
appeared in urban centers, stressing the Yiddish language and folk culture.
The violent outburst of hatred that accompanied the Dreyfus Aaair in France inspired
Theodor Herzl to launch the movement of Zionism, which sought to establish a Jewish
state. Its chief support came from East European Jews; elsewhere Herzl's proposals were
considered impractical and a threat to newly won civil status.
During World War I, East European Jews suffered heavily from troops on both sides.
American Jewry now found itself for the first time the leading element in the world
Jewish community, bearing the major responsibility for relief and reconstruction of the
ravaged centers. The peace treaties guaranteed equal rights to minorities in the newly
constituted or reconstituted countries, but these agreements were not consistently upheld
with regard to Jewish minorities, and colonization in Palestine expanded considerably.
In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Great Britain announced its support for a Jewish
national home; this purpose, approved by the Allied governments, was embodied in the
mandate for Palestine that Britain assumed after the war. British agents had secretly
made contradictory promises to Arab leaders, however, and growing Arab nationalism
expressed itself in anti- Jewish riots in Palestine in 1920-21 and 1929. In the latter
year leading non-Zionist Jews, convinced that Palestine alone offered hope for
impoverished and oppressed millions (since Western nations had rigidly restricted
immigration), joined with the Zionists to form the Jewish Agency to assist and direct
Jewish settlement and development in Palestine.
The Communist Revolution of 1917 did not end the sufferings of the Jewish population
in Russia. Much of the fighting in the Civil War of 1918-20 took place in the Ukraine,
where the White Russian armies conducted savage pogroms in which thousands of Jews were
massacred. Although discriminatory decrees were abolished and anti-Semitism was banned as
counterrevolutionary under the Soviet system, Judaism suffered the same disabilities as
other religious groups. After the fall of Leon Trotsky, the old anti-Semitism was revived
as a government policy.
In Germany the Weimar Republic for the first time abolished all official
discrimination against Jews. The republic was unpopular, however, and anti-Semitism was
popular. Calculated use of anti-Semitism as an instrument was a major factor in the rise
to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933, whereupon the German Jews were immediately
disfranchised, robbed of possessions, deprived of employment, barred from the schools,
and subjected to physical violence and constant humiliation. Once World War II occupied
the attention of the democracies, Hitler and his supporters attempted "the final
solution," the complete extermination of the Jews. About 6 million Jews --almost a third
of their total number--were massacred, starved, or systematically gassed in concentration
camps. In addition to destroying so many individual lives, the Holocaust eradicated the
communities of Central and Eastern Europe, which had been the chief centers of learning
and piety for nearly a thousand years.
The Western democracies all but closed their doors to refugees. Britain meanwhile
had gradually abandoned the Balfour Declaration, reducing the number of Jews admitted to
Palestine in order to placate the Arabs. After repeated outbreaks of violence,
investigations, and abortive British plans, Britain announced that it was giving up the
mandate, and the United Nations adopted a resolution calling for the partition of
Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas.
On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed. Since then Israel has fought
five wars against Arab coalitions to establish and preserve its independence. A peace
treaty (Mar. 26, 1979) between Israel and Egypt was not accepted by the other Arab
states.
Although the USSR voted for the UN partition resolution in 1947, it later became
markedly anti-Israel in its policies. A resurgence of Jewish self-consciousness, however,
occurred within Soviet Jewry despite deprivation of religious education and other
discriminations. Over the years a number of Soviet Jews emigrated to Israel and the
United States, although official restrictions caused a decline in emigration in the 1980s
until 1987, when new legislation provided a liberal emigration policy.
Since World War II the Jews of the United States have achieved a degree of
acceptance without parallel in Jewish history, and Jews play a significant role in
intellectual and cultural life. The elimination of social barriers has led to a high rate
of mixed marriage. During the same period there has been a growth in synagogue
affiliation and support for Israel.
Recent estimates put the total number of Jews at about 17.5 million, of whom almost
7 million reside in the United States, more than 2 million in the republics of the former
USSR, and over 4.3 million in Israel. France, Great Britain, and Argentina also have
significant Jewish populations. The once- substantial communities in North Africa and the
Middle East have been reduced to small fragments. Most of these Oriental Jews have
settled in Israel. Thousands of Ethiopian Jews, for example, were airlifted to Israel in
1984-85 and 1991. Israel's Jewish population increased significantly in the early 1990s,
when it received hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the disintegrating Soviet
Union.
(ii) Christianity:
Christianity is the religion of about a billion people whose belief system centers
on the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. To Christians, Jesus of Nazareth was and is
the Messiah or Christ promised by God in the prophecies of the Old Testament; by his
life, death, and resurrection he freed those who believe in him from their sinful state
and made them recipients of God's saving grace. Many also await the second coming of
christ, which they believe will complete God's plan of salvation. The Christian Bible, or
Holy Scripture, includes the Old Testament and also the New Testament, a collection of
early Christian writings proclaiming Jesus as lord and savior. Arising in the Jewish
milieu of 1st-century Palestine, Christianity quickly spread through the Mediterranean
world and in the 4th century became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Christians have tended to separate into rival groups, but the main body of the
Christian church was united under the Roman emperors. During the Middle Ages, when all of
Europe became Christianized, this main church was divided into a Latin (Western European)
and a Greek (Byzantine or Orthodox) branch. The Western church was in turn divided by the
Reformation of the 16th century into the Roman Catholic church and a large number of
smaller Protestant churches: Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist), Anglican, and sectarian.
These divisions have continued and multiplied, but in the 20th century many Christians
joined in the ecumenical movement to work for church unity. This resulted in the
formation of the world council of churches. Christianity, a strongly proselytizing
religion, exists in all parts of the world.
Certain basic doctrines drawn from Scripture (especially from the Gospels and the
letters of Saint Paul), interpreted by the fathers of the church and the first four
ecumenical councils, historically have been accepted by all three of the major
traditions. According to this body of teaching, the original human beings rebelled
against God, and from that time until the coming of Christ the world was ruled by sin.
The hope of a final reconciliation was kept alive by God's covenant with the Jews, the
chosen people from whom the savior sprang. This savior, Jesus Christ, partly vanquished
sin and Satan. Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, preached
the coming of God's Kingdom but was rejected by the Jewish leaders, who delivered him to
the Romans to be crucified. On the third day after his death God raised him up again. He
appeared to his disciples, commanding them to spread the good news of salvation from sin
and death to all people. This, according to Christian belief, is the mission of Christ's
church.
Christians are monotheists (believers in one God). The early church, however,
developed the characteristic Christian doctrine of the Trinity, in which God is thought
of as Creator (Father), Redeemer (Son), and Sustainer (Holy Spirit), but one God in
essence.
Christianity inherited and modified the Jewish belief that the world would be
transformed by the coming of the Reign of God. The Christians held that the bodies of
those who had died would rise again, reanimated, and that the righteous would be
triumphant, the wicked punished. This belief, along with Jesus' promise of "eternal
life," developed into a doctrine of eternal rewards (heaven) and punishments (hell) after
death. A source of doctrinal uncertainty was whether salvation depended on God's election
in advance of a believer's faith, or even in a decision of God before the disobedience
and fall of the first man and woman.
Although Christians today tend to emphasize what unites them rather than what
divides them, substantial differences in faith exist among the various churches. Those in
the Protestant tradition insist on Scripture as the sole source of God's revelation. The
Roman Catholics and Orthodox give greater importance to the tradition of the church in
defining the content of faith, believing it to be divinely guided in its understanding of
scriptural revelation. They stress the role of ecumenical councils in the formulation of
doctrine, and in Roman Catholicism the pope, or bishop of Rome, is regarded as the final
authority in matters of belief.
Christian societies have exhibited great variety in ethos, from mutual love,
acceptance, and pacifism on the one hand, to strict authoritarianism and forcible
repression of dissent on the other. Justification for all of these has been found in
various passages in the Bible. A prominent feature of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox
churches is Monasticism.
Christians also vary widely in worship. Early Christian worship centered on two principal
rites or sacraments: Baptism, a ceremonial washing that initiated converts into the
church; and the eucharist, a sacred meal preceded by prayers, chants, and Scripture
readings, in which the participants were mysteriously united with Christ. As time went
on, the Eucharist, or Mass, became surrounded by an increasingly elaborate ritual in the
Latin, the Greek, and other Eastern churches, and in the Middle Ages Christians came to
venerate saints--especially the Virgin Mary--and holy images. In the West, seven
sacraments were recognized. The Protestant reformers retained 2 sacraments--baptism and
the Eucharist--rejecting the others, along with devotion to saints and images, as
unscriptural. They simplified worship and emphasized preaching. Since the 19th century
there has been a certain amount of reconvergence in worship among ecumenically minded
Protestants and Roman Catholics, with each side adopting some of the other's practices.
For example, the Catholic Mass is now in the vernacular. Among other groups in both
traditions, however, the divergence remains great.
In most Christian churches Sunday, the day of Christ's resurrection, is observed as a
time of rest and worship. The resurrection is more particularly commemorated at Easter, a
festival in the early spring. Another major Christian festival is Christmas, which
commemorates the birth of Jesus.
The age of Christian antiquity extends from the beginning of the Christian era
(dated from the approximate time of Jesus' birth) through the fall of the western half of
the Roman Empire in the 5th century.
After Jesus was crucified, his followers, strengthened by the conviction that he had
risen from the dead and that they were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, formed
the first Christian community in Jerusalem. By the middle of the 1st century,
missionaries were spreading the new religion among the peoples of Egypt, Syria, Anatolia,
Greece, and Italy. Chief among these was Saint Paul, who laid the foundations of
Christian theology and played a key role in the transformation of Christianity from a
Jewish sect to a world religion. The original Christians, being Jews, observed the
dietary and ritualistic laws of the Torah and required non-Jewish converts to do the
same. Paul and others favored eliminating obligation, thus making Christianity more
attractive to Gentiles. The separation from Judaism was completed by the destruction of
the church of Jerusalem by the Romans during the Jewish Revolt of AD 66-70.
After that Christianity took on a predominantly Gentile character and began to
develop in a number of different forms. At first the Christian community looked forward
to the imminent return of Christ in glory and the establishment of the Kingdom. This hope
carried on in the 2d century by Montanism, an ascetic movement emphasizing the action of
the Holy Spirit. Gnosticism, which rose to prominence about the same time, also stressed
the Spirit, but it disparaged the Old Testament and interpreted the crucifixion and
resurrection of Jesus in a spiritual sense. The main body of the church condemned these
movements as heretical and, when the Second Coming failed to occur, organized itself as a
permanent institution under the leadership of its bishops.
Because of their refusal to recognize the divinity of the Roman emperor or pay homage to
any god except their own, the Christians were subjected to a number of persecutions by
the Roman authorities. The most savage of these were the one under Emperor Decius
(249-51) and that instigated by Diocletian (303-13). Many Christians welcomed martyrdom
as an opportunity to share in the sufferings of Christ, and Christianity continued to
grow despite all attempts to suppress it. Out of the experience of persecution a
controversy grew over whether those who had denied their faith under press
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