But... but... but... how could Judah the Hammer and company have succeeded in their ethnic revolt if something like **Judaism** had not already 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.
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.