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...
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.
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.