"how writing was utilized by ruling elites to solidify and maintain social order"
Are you familiar with Yonatan Adler's book "The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal"? I was fascinated by it, though of course I am not qualified to judge its quality, nor do I know how Adler is regarded in his scholarly community. T…
"how writing was utilized by ruling elites to solidify and maintain social order"
Are you familiar with Yonatan Adler's book "The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal"? I was fascinated by it, though of course I am not qualified to judge its quality, nor do I know how Adler is regarded in his scholarly community. The argument is internally coherent, though, and it appears well-sourced. Adler himself seems very well credentialed. If you don't want to spend the necessary time to read the book, you can get the elements of the argument from one of his YouTube lectures.
Anyway, by "Judaism", Adler means a broad cultural practice; he is explicitly not interested in an intellectual or religious history. He argues that in the 1st century CE, there is good textual evidence that Jews were practicing Judaism in this cultural sense: observing the Sabbath, various high holidays, dietary restrictions, using purification pools etc. If you were somehow able to go back in time and observe Jews living their lives, you would have no trouble identifying them as Jewish. His method is to start from there and see how far back you can trace evidence for these practices. For instance, there is positive archaeological evidence for tefillin, mezuzot, purification pools, and chalk culinary vessels. There is also negative evidence: lack of the bones of proscribed animals in middens, the lack of representation of animals and especially people on e.g. coins, etc. (One interesting example has a blob of text *describing* the authority under which it was issued, in place of the customary *depiction*.)
Tl;dr, the evidence peters out sometime in the middle of the 2nd century BCE. Jump to the 4th century BCE, and there is a lot of positive evidence for Jews *not* practicing Judaism - they were eating a lot of carp and engraving depictions of people and animals on their coins. The first five chapters take you through all this evidence, and are presented as firm and objective. The 6th chapter is interpretation. To cut to the chase, Adler suggests that Judaism was introduced by the Hasmoneans to legitimize and establish their rule. Under that interpretation, if it were not for an interregnum between the control of Israel and Judea by rival Hellenistic kingdoms, Judaism might never have existed.
But... but... but... how could Judah the Hammer and company have succeeded in their ethnic revolt if something like **Judaism** had not already existed?
That's a bit like asking how Trump and company could have succeeded in their revolt if something like Trumpism had not already existed. There is an origin for everything, and it is seldom made of whole cloth. This doesn't strike me as a very serious objection to Adler's speculation - which is not to say that there aren't any.
Hasmoneans were priests who ended up ruling an independent kingdom after the revolt. It is possible that before winning political control, their religious practices were mostly kept by a priestly elite and not hoi polloi (or the Hellenized Judean elite they also overthrew) and only regularized to the masses after they won. But of course they looked back at religious texts that dated to at least the Babylonian exile and likely long before, and were preserved by the likes of Ezra. The Holiness Code in Leviticus is certainly more ancient than the Hasmoneans, even if the ordinary people of the land didn't keep it in First Temple times.
I kinda thought that scripture-oriented Judaism was created by the Exiles in Babylon, rather than by the Returnees of Ezra and Nehemiah, or by the Hasmoneans. But I have no idea why I thought that...
Certainly the prophets (whether contemporaneously rebuking late second temple Israel/Judah or retconning those warnings into texts by the rivers of Babylon) didn't see the political/religious elite, or the common man, as particularly committed to the exclusive worship of the God of Israel.
The returnees needed a Law by which to establish their society, and Ezra/Nehemiah were in some position to provide them with instruction in that law, to which they were mostly unfamiliar. But of course they were reaching back to something preexisting. And of course the majority of exiles and their descendants did not return, and kept up a practice and culture of Judaism in Mesopotamia.
"how writing was utilized by ruling elites to solidify and maintain social order"
Are you familiar with Yonatan Adler's book "The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal"? I was fascinated by it, though of course I am not qualified to judge its quality, nor do I know how Adler is regarded in his scholarly community. The argument is internally coherent, though, and it appears well-sourced. Adler himself seems very well credentialed. If you don't want to spend the necessary time to read the book, you can get the elements of the argument from one of his YouTube lectures.
Anyway, by "Judaism", Adler means a broad cultural practice; he is explicitly not interested in an intellectual or religious history. He argues that in the 1st century CE, there is good textual evidence that Jews were practicing Judaism in this cultural sense: observing the Sabbath, various high holidays, dietary restrictions, using purification pools etc. If you were somehow able to go back in time and observe Jews living their lives, you would have no trouble identifying them as Jewish. His method is to start from there and see how far back you can trace evidence for these practices. For instance, there is positive archaeological evidence for tefillin, mezuzot, purification pools, and chalk culinary vessels. There is also negative evidence: lack of the bones of proscribed animals in middens, the lack of representation of animals and especially people on e.g. coins, etc. (One interesting example has a blob of text *describing* the authority under which it was issued, in place of the customary *depiction*.)
Tl;dr, the evidence peters out sometime in the middle of the 2nd century BCE. Jump to the 4th century BCE, and there is a lot of positive evidence for Jews *not* practicing Judaism - they were eating a lot of carp and engraving depictions of people and animals on their coins. The first five chapters take you through all this evidence, and are presented as firm and objective. The 6th chapter is interpretation. To cut to the chase, Adler suggests that Judaism was introduced by the Hasmoneans to legitimize and establish their rule. Under that interpretation, if it were not for an interregnum between the control of Israel and Judea by rival Hellenistic kingdoms, Judaism might never have existed.
But... but... but... how could Judah the Hammer and company have succeeded in their ethnic revolt if something like **Judaism** had not already existed?
That's a bit like asking how Trump and company could have succeeded in their revolt if something like Trumpism had not already existed. There is an origin for everything, and it is seldom made of whole cloth. This doesn't strike me as a very serious objection to Adler's speculation - which is not to say that there aren't any.
Hasmoneans were priests who ended up ruling an independent kingdom after the revolt. It is possible that before winning political control, their religious practices were mostly kept by a priestly elite and not hoi polloi (or the Hellenized Judean elite they also overthrew) and only regularized to the masses after they won. But of course they looked back at religious texts that dated to at least the Babylonian exile and likely long before, and were preserved by the likes of Ezra. The Holiness Code in Leviticus is certainly more ancient than the Hasmoneans, even if the ordinary people of the land didn't keep it in First Temple times.
I kinda thought that scripture-oriented Judaism was created by the Exiles in Babylon, rather than by the Returnees of Ezra and Nehemiah, or by the Hasmoneans. But I have no idea why I thought that...
Certainly the prophets (whether contemporaneously rebuking late second temple Israel/Judah or retconning those warnings into texts by the rivers of Babylon) didn't see the political/religious elite, or the common man, as particularly committed to the exclusive worship of the God of Israel.
The returnees needed a Law by which to establish their society, and Ezra/Nehemiah were in some position to provide them with instruction in that law, to which they were mostly unfamiliar. But of course they were reaching back to something preexisting. And of course the majority of exiles and their descendants did not return, and kept up a practice and culture of Judaism in Mesopotamia.