Judaism is a religion that arose in the first millennium B.C. in Palestine; it is prevalent among Jews. There is no reliable statistical data on the number of believers (Judaizers). Most believers are concentrated in Israel and the United States.
In the 13th century B.C. part of the Western Semitic nomadic tribes, who, according to biblical legend, fled to the desert from the Egyptian Pharaoh (Jewish tribes), united around the common cult of the tribal union god Yahweh during their invasion of Palestine [finally the tribal union, which took the name “Israel” (“God Fighting”), was formed by the 11th century B.C.]. The worship of Yahweh (whose name was later tabooed and replaced by the word “lord”) did not exclude the worship of other deities, both their tribal and local Canaanite deities. Yahweh had no images or temples; to him was dedicated a tent (“tabernacle”) and in it a casket (“ark”), considered the earthly residence of the god, invisibly present in the whole world.
The official cult was performed by a special tribal group or caste of Levites. At the end of the 11th century BC the kingdom of Israel-Judea was established and King Solomon (son of King David) built a temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem. The cult of Yahweh thus became the basis of the official ideology of that state, which protected the interests of the slave-owners. When the kingdom was divided in the 10th century BC into the northern kingdom, Israel proper, and the southern kingdom, Judah, with its center in Jerusalem, this temple retained its significance mainly for the southern kingdom; the northern kingdom had its own temples. But even in the southern kingdom other places of worship of both Yahweh and other gods continued to officially exist.
In the gradual formation of Judaism as a dogmatic religion the most important role was played by the so-called prophetic movement, which developed from the 9th-8th centuries B.C. Since the 8th century B.C. the sermons of the prophets were written down. At first the prophets did not insist on the universality of Yahweh, but declared him to be a “jealous god” who would not allow his “chosen ones” to honor other gods. The concept of a “treaty” (“covenant”) between the Israelite tribes and Yahweh emerged (the former allegedly undertook not to honor other gods and to fulfill Yahweh’s wishes, and Yahweh undertook to give them power over Palestine). The outward sign of the “covenant” was the announcement of circumcision, which was in reality a rite known to many other peoples of the ancient East as a remnant of the initiation ritual of accepting a boy into the warrior community. Some of the prophets spoke out against various manifestations of social injustice, continuing to stand on the ground of the then universal slave ideology.
The demise of the northern, Israelite kingdom in 722 B.C. and the deliverance of Jerusalem from the Assyrian siege (700 B.C.) were used by the prophets to introduce their ideas among the people of the kingdom of Judah.
The books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, attributed to Moses, who, according to tradition, had led the Israelites while they were still nomadic, took shape in the 9th and 7th centuries B.C. They recounted the mythical past of the Israelites as well as legal and ethical standards in the spirit of the concept of the “covenant” and the “jealous god”; the rituals and many features of the mythological worldview were taken from earlier cultic traditions. To the 8th and 6th centuries B.C. also go back books interpreting the history of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in terms of the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of Yahweh’s conditions by kings and populations. In the 8th-7th century B.C. the prophets had already begun to deny the very existence of gods other than Yahweh, but the existence of other cults among the population is attested before the 5th century B.C.
In 622 B.C., during the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem by King Josiah, the manuscript of the so-called Deuteronomy was “discovered,” summarizing the teachings of the prophets. Together with the final edition of the other four Books of Moses, Deuteronomy formed the Pentateuch, or Torah (Law), the most revered part of sacred scripture (the Bible) in J. since the early 4th century B.C. The Torah, the most revered part of sacred scripture (the Bible), was the most widely known part of the Hebrew Scriptures. This determined the dogmatic nature of Judaism and the great importance given to the literalist-accurate performance of the rituals prescribed by the Torah.
In 587 B.C. most of the Jews were relocated by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II to Babylonia; the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Among the immigrants came the prophet Ezekiel with the idea of restoring Israel, but as a theocratic state centered in the new Jerusalem temple. The Messiah, a descendant of King David, was to be the founder of this state. The development of Judaism during the Babylonian captivity was influenced by the Iranian religion.