Abstract
History has made us to understand that the beginning of Judaism can be traced to the Israelites’ Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who lived up to 1900BCE. After Jacob went to Egypt, an African country, with his twelve sons who later became symbolic representation of Israel’s twelve tribes genealogical arrangements and with his seventy grand children, the Jews experienced a great multiplication which is as a result of the fulfillment of promises made to Abraham, their progenitor during his initial call (Gen. 12:1-7, Gen. 15:1-3, Gen. 17:1-9). However, the actual beginning of Judaism as a religion has been opened to rigorous academic debates over the years. Ideas like Judaism as a religion started with Abraham during his call or with Moses at Mount Sinai at the great revelation in about 1400BCE or when God gave the Ten Commandments to the Israelites are prevailing issues. These have been carefully examined within the context of Israelites’ historical development, the biblical narratives and archaeological discoveries from the Middle Ancient Near East studies. This has helped to find out that Judaic monotheism evolved as an off shoot of contacts with religious traditions from Egypt in Africa by Moses, the Law giver and an “Egyptian Prince” under the influence of the religious reform led by Pharaoh Akhenaten.
Highlights
Most Jewish people, whether observant or not, know the clarion call; Shema Yisreal, Adonai Elohenu; Adonai Echad ‘’ that is;’’ hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is One’’ (Deut.6 verse 4.)K.JV).Whatever else may be in question, we agree that in the Jewish religion, there is only one God especially as suggested by African Scholars like Abe (2005.p34) and some biblical narratives apart from the popular verse quoted above
From the Biblical narratives, it appears that real Judaic monotheism did not appear until the days of the Prophets in the eight century BCE
The biblical narratives make us to know that Judah was polytheistic as well until the reign of Hezekiah, who made a failed attempt to impose monotheism in the 7th century BCE but only a small group was constantly at odds with the powerful king of Judah
Summary
Most Jewish people, whether observant or not, know the clarion call; Shema Yisreal, Adonai Elohenu; Adonai Echad ‘’ that is;’’ hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is One’’ (Deut. verse 4.)K.JV).Whatever else may be in question, we agree that in the Jewish religion, there is only one God especially as suggested by African Scholars like Abe (2005.p34) and some biblical narratives apart from the popular verse quoted above. 39), opined that from the geographical standpoint of view one could see that there was a homogeneous civilization which shared a common material culture through the entire period that influenced language, literature, arts and even religion of the entire peoples in Palestinian and Mesopotamian world These were substantially the same in the Bronze Age. Steinberg (2011 p.239) supports this assertion by saying that since Israel had its background and emerged from the same Northwest-Semitic settings as the Phoenicians and other Canaanite groups one would expect to find extremely close relationship in both material and higher culture which includes faith and belief system. This influenced the belief in the gods or goddesses of renewal of life and fertility
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