The Origins of Judaism Reappraised

Abstract

This chapter explores when it would have been most likely for the Torah to have been adopted as authoritative law among the Judean masses. It begins by investigating the likelihood that this might have occurred as early as the Persian period, an idea that many scholars take for granted. As it will be shown that there are good reasons to think that at this time many Judeans knew nothing of the existence of anything resembling the Pentateuch, or at the very least were not adhering to its laws, the chapter proceeds by assessing the likelihood that Judaism may have emerged in the subsequent Early Hellenistic period. The chapter concludes with a cautious assessment of the proposition that the Torah came to be widely known to the masses and regarded as authoritative law only in the Late Hellenistic period, following the cataclysmic events surrounding the Hasmonean revolt toward the middle of the second century BCE.