The History of Judaism

This page covers history shared by every movement; the Branches page tells how the modern movements formed.

How did Judaism begin?

Tradition and historians tell Israel's earliest history differently, so both appear side by side. The tradition's account comes from the Torah, the first five books of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), and the books that follow.¹

How do scholars differ on the early accounts?

Scholars differ widely on how much history the early books contain. Philip Davies of the University of Sheffield writes that between those who keep as much biblical history as they can and those who doubt most of it, the vast majority of biblical scholars lie in a spectrum between the two⁷.⁷

Closer to the biblical account. James Hoffmeier, an archaeologist then at Wheaton College, argued that the Exodus tradition is authentic.⁸ Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem dates the fortified city of Khirbet Qeiyafa, which he excavated, to the early 10th century BCE, and argues that it was a Judean city that supports the biblical tradition about David.⁹

A later, literary origin. Davies argues that most of the Tanakh was written in the Persian period, after the exile, and that its picture of early Israel is ideal rather than real. Niels Peter Lemche, he notes, dates the books later still, to the Hellenistic period.⁷

How do Jewish movements view the Torah's origin?

The statements cited here address how the Torah was revealed, not the archaeological questions above. Orthodox Judaism holds the principle of Torah Min HaShamayim (Torah from heaven): the Torah is God's word, revealed to Moses at Sinai with the oral law.³ The Encyclopaedia Judaica reports that some widely recognized Orthodox authorities reject any approach that weakens this doctrine, though a few voices ask for less mechanical ones.¹⁰

Reform Judaism accepts historical criticism, Michael Meyer writes, and its 1999 principles call Torah God's ongoing revelation to the Jewish people.¹¹¹² Conservative thinkers hold several views on revelation, Pamela Nadell writes.¹³ Emet Ve-Emunah describes views from a personal encounter with God, in which some believe God spoke in actual words, to a continuing discovery of truths about God.¹⁴ Reconstructionist Judaism describes Judaism as a civilization in constant evolution: the religion of the Bible, it says, is not the same as Maimonides' Judaism.¹⁵

What are the key periods in Jewish history?

When	What happened
722 and 587 or 586 BCE	Assyria conquers the northern kingdom of Israel; Babylon conquers Judah and destroys Jerusalem and its Temple.15
538 BCE	Exiles begin to return under Persian rule, with leave to rebuild the Temple.1
70 CE	Rome destroys Jerusalem and the Second Temple.1
About 200 CE	The Mishnah is compiled.1
About 500 CE and after	The Babylonian Talmud takes shape; tradition credits Rav Ashi, and editing continued later.1617
About 1180 CE	Maimonides compiles the Mishneh Torah.18
1492	Jews are expelled from Spain.1
1700s	Hasidism arises in eastern Europe.1
1810s	The Reform movement begins in Germany.1
1933 to 1945	The Holocaust.19
14 May 1948	The State of Israel is proclaimed.20

How did the Second Temple period shape Judaism?

In the Second Temple period, from the return from exile to 70 CE, historians describe Scripture taking shape as a canon while Jewish groups divided over how to read it. The Orthodox Union holds that the Men of the Great Assembly determined the Tanakh's books.²¹ In 167 BCE the ruler Antiochus IV turned the Temple into a shrine for many gods, and a revolt led by Judah Maccabee retook it.¹

The Pharisees kept legal traditions not written in Scripture and extended purity rules beyond the Temple. Swartz writes that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the library of the Qumran community, which regarded itself as the true Israel. A revolt against Rome in 66 CE ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 CE.¹

How did rabbinic Judaism arise?

After 70 CE, Swartz writes, the rabbis, teachers who traced their heritage to the Pharisees, built a Judaism centered on Torah study, prayer, and the commandments in place of sacrifice. They considered their extrabiblical traditions to have been handed down as Torah from Sinai. Discussion of the Mishnah, a code of rabbinic law compiled about 200 CE, grew into two Talmuds, and the Babylonian became the main source of law and study for most Jews in the Middle Ages.¹

Tradition credits Rav Ashi and his colleagues with compiling the Babylonian Talmud around 500 CE.¹⁶ Historians describe a longer process. Stephen Wald writes that it took shape over many centuries, before and after Rav Ashi, and Swartz dates its redaction to the early sixth century CE.¹⁷¹

How did Jewish life change in the Middle Ages?

By the ninth century a majority of Jews lived in the Diaspora, under Muslim or Christian rule. Muslim rulers gave Jews the status of a protected but subordinate minority (dhimmi), and Christian rulers at times welcomed Jewish communities and at times persecuted them. Jewish culture flourished under both, with philosophy and poetry in the Muslim world and new methods of Talmud study in Christian Europe.¹

In the 12th century the Almohads, who ruled North Africa and Muslim Spain, were intolerant toward the Jewish minority of the Maghreb, writes Michael Laskier. Under the ruler al-Mansur (1184 to 1199), many of those Jews were forced to convert to Islam.²² Massacres by crusading armies and mobs in the 11th and 12th centuries, along with expulsions, scarred the Jews of northern Europe.¹ Moses Maimonides (1135 or 1138 to 1204 CE) wrote the Mishneh Torah, a code of Jewish law.²³¹

Tradition attributes the Zohar, a central work of Kabbalah (Jewish mystical tradition), to Shimon bar Yochai, a rabbinic teacher. Gershom Scholem argued that Moses de Leon wrote it in late 13th-century Spain, and Swartz adds that he may have had help from close associates.²⁴¹ The spread map shows where Jewish communities lived over time.

How did the modern movements arise?

In 18th-century eastern Europe, Israel ben Eliezer (1700 to 1760), known as the Baal Shem Tov, inspired Hasidism. This revival movement taught that every act, from prayer to eating, could join a person to God, and it spread under leaders called tsaddiqim.¹

In western Europe, states gradually gave Jews the rights of citizens, at the cost of Jewish communal self-rule. The Reform movement began in Germany in the 1810s. Swartz writes that it sought a Judaism that would make sense to Jews entering modern European society. Many early Reformers held that the Talmud and Jewish law were no longer binding.¹

Orthodox Jews see their observance as the authentic carrier of Jewish tradition since ancient times. Historians describe Orthodoxy as taking shape as a movement in the early 19th century, in response to Reform, keeping full observance while allowing modern work and dress.³¹ Zacharias Frankel (1801 to 1875) proposed a middle path, Historical Judaism, whose approach the Conservative movement in the United States later took up.¹²⁵ Mordecai Kaplan (1881 to 1983), a Conservative leader, placed Jewish peoplehood at the center of Judaism; the movement he founded, Reconstructionism, became a separate American movement.¹²⁶

In response to modern nationalism and rising antisemitism, the Zionist movement formed in the late 19th century around a return to the Land of Israel, with religious and secular wings. Swartz writes that it drew on principles central to Judaism, such as peoplehood and the hope for return in the messianic era.¹

How did the Holocaust and the State of Israel shape Judaism?

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators carried out the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews. The Holocaust is also called the Shoah, the Hebrew word for "catastrophe."¹⁹ It destroyed many Hasidic communities, leading yeshivas (academies of Talmud study), and much of Europe's Jewish culture.¹ The Strongest Case page gives Jewish thinkers' answers to the questions the Holocaust raises.

On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, after a 1947 United Nations plan to divide British-ruled Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.²⁰ The U.S. State Department's history records that the Palestinian Arabs refused to recognize the plan. They regarded it as favorable to the Jews and unfair to the Arab population that would remain in Jewish territory. War followed, and armistice lines were agreed in 1949.²⁷

The United Nations records that over half of the Palestinian Arab population fled or were expelled during the war.²⁸ Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education describes the flight and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries as nearly total, with about 260,000 going to Israel in the first years.²⁹

Swartz writes that most Jewish movements in Israel and North America see Israel's founding as religiously meaningful.¹ Some Haredi leaders, Pew's survey of Israel reports, opposed a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah.³⁰