JUDAISM. The religion of the Jews, as deyeloped from the religion of the ancient Hebrews. Before the settlement of the Hebrew tribes In Palestine their religion seems to have resembled that of other nomadic Semites. Each tribe probably had its own deity. Some of the tribes, however, before the settlement seem to have adopted the god Yahweh, for the statement (E) that the name Yahweh was not known before the time of Moses (Exod. iii. 1-14) is hardly true of all the tribes. " There are indications that Yahweh may have been a divine name in North Arabia for a thousand years before Moses. and that emigrants from this region to Babylonia and Palestine had carried the name to those countries" (G. A. Barton, R.W.). In the time of Moses Yahweh's pre sence with his people came to be represented by a box or ark, containing presumably a sacred stone; and his commands were orally transmitted in ten sentences. The ten commands (Exod. xxxiv.) seem to have been : 1. Thou shalt worship uo other god. 2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 3. The feast of the Passover thou shalt keep. 4. The firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb : all the first-born of thy sons thou shalt redeem. 5. None shall appear before me empty. 6. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh thou shalt rest. 7. Thou shalt observe the feast of ingathering (of dates). S. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread. neither shall the sacrifice of the Pass over remain until the morning. 9. The firstlings of thy flocks thou shalt bring unto Yahweh, thy God. 10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk. With the conquest of Palestine and the union of the tribes, life became gradually more settled. The shrines of the old inhabitants were taken over, and agricultural feasts became a prominent feature in the worship of Yahweh. The sanctuary, with one or two exceptions (the temple of Shiloh, I. Sam. I.-v.; and Solomon's temple), was a high place open to the sky. In the time of Elijah and Elisha we note the beginnings of a new development. More stress begins to be laid on ethics, and in a new form of the ten commandments (E) ritualistic require ments almost disappear (see DECALOGUE). In the period of the eighth-century prophets (755-690 B.C.) the development is carried further by Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah. These prophets introduced a practical mono theism, and Isaiah began to preach the Messianic Hope (see MESSIAH). Then Elezeklah sought to centre the worship of Yahweh in the temple of Jerusalem (II. Kings WEL 1-6, 22). In the reign of.King Manasseh (686-641), however, a religious reaction led to the restoration of the old shrines and the revival of heathen Semitic customs. To check this degeneracy the prophetical school composed about 650 B.C. the Deuteronomie law (i.e., the kernel of the book of Deuteronomy [q.v.]). This was found in the temple in the reign of Josiah, and prompted the king to introduce a great religious reform. Worship was again centred at Jerusalem; the old shrines were removed, and the survivals of heathen Semitic religion (sacred pillars, asherahs, etc.) were abolished. We may see here the fruit of Hosea's teaching. " Hosea's condemnation of the worship at the local sanctuaries and his supreme doctrine of love and kindness toward man and all of God's creatures, reappear in many of the enactments found in the prophetic law-book of Deuteronomy. His teachings regarding the love of God, the character and effects of sin, the necessity of repentance, God's readiness to forgive, and the duty of love and kindness from man to man, are the essence of that gospel which Jesus pro claimed to all the world " (C. F. Kent, The Kings and Prophets of Israel and Judah, 1909). A further land mark is reached when we come to the prophet Jeremiah, who reiterates and enriches the teachings of Hosea. As Barton notes, he contributed four great and potent ideas to the religion of Israel: theoretical monotheism; the conception of Yahweh as God of the nations as well as of the Jews: the doctrine of the inwardness of religion; and the idea of individual responsibility. With Hosea, Jeremiah also conceived of Israel's relationship to Yahweh as that of a covenant of marriage, and repre sented God as a God of love. The capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in 5S6 B.C. and the destruction of the temple was enough to revolutionize the ideas of the Jews. It led Ezekiel, the prophet-priest, who had been one of those deported by Nebuehadrezzar to Babylonia in 597, to dream of the rehabilitation in Palestine of a Hebrew state, in which prophetic ideals would he blended with the ritual law. " Above all, he was an idealist, who believed firmly in the ultimate future of his race " (C.
F. Kent). He, again, emphasized the great principle of individual responsibility. Second Isaiah (ff. in Baby lonia from about 550 B.C.) encouraged the Jews to take advantage of the decree of Cyrus by returning to Palest ine, and further conceived of Israel as the " suffering Servant of Yahweh " who had been chosen to bear the chastisement due not only to its own sins but to the sins of the nations. It was perhaps during his time that the Code of Holiness took shape. This was followed later by the document known as P—an elaboration of the priestly law and a re-editing of the earlier history in the light of it. Later still, in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (Ji. 444 B.C.), with the adoption of this priestly law in Palestine as the fundamental law of Jewish re ligion, Judaism in the specific sense of the name was born—a compromise between the idealism of the prophets and the ritualism of the priests. Most of the Jews who were settled in Babylonia preferred to remain there, but they too accepted the priestly law. The papyri from Elephantine in Egypt show that the Jewish colony, though it had a temple there, did not accept the new law at once. With the rebuilding of the temple at Jeru salem, a hymn-book was introduced, and the Samaritans, who built a rival temple on Mt. Gerizim, became a separate sect. In the Greek period, after the conquest of Palestine by Alexander (332 B.C.), the Jews became more widely dispersed, many of them settling in Alexan dria, where they came under the direct influence of Greek thought. The prophets cea-setl (c. 250 B.C.), and were succeeded (after 200 B.C.) by the apocalyptists. many of whom wrote in Greek. Hellenic philosophy was one thing. When imperial force was used to impose upon the people Hellenic religion (168 B.C.), the Jews rebelled and found salvation in the Maccabees. Between this time and the birth of Philo (c. 20 B.C.). several Jewish parties or sects—the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes—arose; the oral traditions of the law were started, and schools of oral tradition became active (the School of Hillel, the School of Shammai). Philo Judaeus (b. about 20 B.C.) was contemporary with Jesus. His doctrine of the Logos exercised a great influence on later Christian thought. " Though Philo was a good and loyal Jew, he stood, so to speak, apart from the real centre of Jewish intellectual and spiritual development. He was on the one hand too closely dependent on Greek thought, and on the other had only a limited knowledge of Jewish thought and tradition. The Bible be knew only in the Greek translation, not in the original Hebrew; and of the Halaka, whiCh was still in the making in Palestine, he knew still less " (Isaac Hnsik). The Synagogue, as we know from the New Testament, was already firmly established in the time of Jesus. It seems to have originated much earlier, perhaps in Babylonia. When Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D. Jaiineb (Gk. Jamnia) had already become an important centre of Jewish learning. Here the oral law was now further developed, and the traditions were formulated in what came to be known as the Mishnah (200 A.D.). This, with the Gemara, which contains traditions later than the Mishnah, constitutes what is known as the Talmud. of which there are two recensions. one Palestinian (4th cent.), the other Babylonian (6th cent.). After the Bible, the Talmud is the chief religious book of Judaism. From the sixth to the eleventh century the rabbinical school in Babylonia (the Geonim) enjoyed a great reputa tion for interpretation. In the Middle Ages Judaism was interpreted on orthodox or unorthodox lines by many famous philosophers and exegetes. The exegetes in cluded Bashi (1040-1105), Ibn Ezra (1093-113S), and Kimehi (1160-1235). The philosophers included Ibn Gabirol (1021 105S), Judah Halevi (b. in the last quarter of the 11th cent.), Ibn Daud (b. about 1110), Moses Maimonides (1135 1204), and Levi ben Gerson (1288-1344). The theological system of Maimonides largely shaped the intellectual life of the Jews for centuries. Maimonides propounded thirteen articles of faith. These, " in setting forth a Jewish Credo, formed a vigorous opposition to the Christian and' Mohammedan creeds: they therefore met almost universal acceptance among the Jewish people, and were given a place in the common prayer-book, in spite of their deficiencies, as shown by Crescas and his school " (K. Kohler). His first five articles were : 1, the existence; 2, the unity: 3, the incorporeality; 4, the eternity—of God; 5, that He alone should be the _object Of worship. His tenth article is divine Providence.