When Was Judaism Founded? (TIMELINE)

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When was Judaism founded? The answer is a complex and elusive one, as it intertwines centuries of evolving religious practices, beliefs, and historical events. To understand the roots of Judaism, one must consider the gradual development of its core elements.

In this article, I’ll explore how ancient beliefs evolved into the complex religious tradition we recognize today. Through examining key historical and archaeological evidence, I’ll piece together the timeline of Judaism’s origins and clarify the forces that shaped it over millennia.

When Was Judaism Founded? Iron Age Yahwism?

As people learn more about this topic, they often want specifics. For example, what date was Judaism founded? As with any ancient religion, answering that question is all but impossible. Religions develop over centuries, leaving historians with massive heaps of data, much of it mythical, with which to answer the question of their origins. Therefore, the best that we can do is to identify an approximate era in which the religion now known as Judaism was founded. But what exactly is Judaism?

In A Short History of Judaism, Jacob Neusner defines Judaism as consisting of three essential elements. the study of the written Torah, the recognition of Jews as a chosen people to whom the Torah was granted by God, and the obligation for Jews to follow the commandments of the written Torah. Neusner goes on to write that these basic elements have their roots in the Iron Age (1200-550 BCE) in a proto-Judaism called Yahwism, named for its God.

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In his book Jerusalem the Center of the Universe: Its Archaeology and History (1800-100 BCE), archeologist Israel Finkelstein notes that Yahwism had its beginnings in the 9th century BCE, when the originally Canaanite kingdoms of Israel and Judah both claimed Yahweh as their chief God. However, in the 8th century, these kingdoms were conquered by the Assyrian empire. When the kingdom of Israel attempted to rebel against the Assyrians, it was destroyed, with survivors migrating to Judah.

In Monotheism and Yahweh's Appropriation of Baal, James Anderson writes that Canaanite kingdoms such as Israel and Judah were each thought to be governed by divine couples, as well as a number of lesser gods; in the case of Israel and Judah, this couple consisted of Yahweh and his consort Asherah. Eventually, belief in Asherah and the lesser gods faded in importance. By the time that the Assyrian empire disintegrated around 631 BCE, Yahweh alone was the God of the Jews.

Anderson also notes that in the process of whittling down their gods to one, the Israelites appropriated the positive characteristics of other gods, attributing these solely to Yahweh. While this was an important step toward the eventual development of Judaism’s monotheism, this Yahweh-alone movement was not yet entirely monotheistic. In fact, in On the Origins of Judaism, Philip Davies writes that even at this time, the religion of the people of Israel and Judah could not be called Judaism as we know it. Instead, he argues that many were still worshiping multiple gods and probably lacked a written Torah.

When Did Judaism Actually Start? The Second Temple Period?

The Babylonian empire destroyed the Judean city of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The wealthiest and most educated survivors of Judah were subsequently taken into captivity in Babylon. However, in 539 BCE, the Babylonians were conquered by the Persian empire, allowing any exiles who wanted to return to Judah to do so. After 50 years, those who returned were likely not the original exiles, and after living so long in Babylon, it’s unlikely that the majority chose to return.

In Biblical History and Israel’s Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History, Megan Bishop Moore and Brad Kelle note that while these returnees were indeed the descendants of the Yahweh-alone movement, their religion was still not entirely recognizable as the Judaism that would later develop.

These people had a more developed idea of priesthood than their predecessors, a prohibition on marrying non-Israelites to maintain purity, and a new focus on Scripture. In fact, much of the Hebrew Bible was written and assembled during this period. Because of this, the majority of scholars since the 20th century have asserted that widespread observance of the Torah’s commandments began during this period.

However, there are several recent dissenters. For example, in The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal, Yonatan Adler has this to say:

Adler thus argues that widespread commitment to following the commandments of the Torah only began during the Hasmonean dynasty at the earliest (140 BCE-37 CE). Israel Finkelstein, mentioned above, entirely agrees with this position based on the archeological evidence.

When Was Judaism Founded? Rabbinic Judaism?

When modern people speak about Judaism, we generally mean Rabbinic Judaism, which contains all three of the elements from Jacob Neusner’s definition above. However, this type of Judaism, which continues in multiple forms today, only began to develop after Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE. This coincides, by the way, with the development of Christianity, which, in 70 CE, was simply another sect of Judaism, according to Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways, A. D. 70 to 135 by James D.G. Dunn.

Leading up to 70 CE, Jewish religion was divided between competing sects, including the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes, among others. When the Temple, the center of Jewish religious practice, was destroyed, the emphasis in Judaism shifted from sacrifice to Scripture. The surviving Jewish sects, namely Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, then developed on parallel tracks. In fact, some scholars, such as Daniel Boyarin in his book Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, have argued that Judaism and Christianity were not entirely separated until at least the 4th century CE.

Key to the development of Rabbinic Judaism were a group of later Torah scholars known as the Amoraim, writing between 200 CE and 500 CE in Babylon and Israel. They developed and wrote the commandments and legal interpretations known as the Oral Torah, which is said to have been commandments given to Moses at the same time as the written Torah but not recorded in as text until the Amoraim came along.

How Old is Judaism? Biblical Founders of Judaism

Three of the biblical figures most important for the foundations of Judaism and Jewish identity are Abraham, Moses, and David. For historians, however, taking these figures and the biblical stories about them at face value isn’t always an option.

Abraham is said to be the father of the Jews, as well as of Christians and Muslims. In Genesis, God tells him to leave his own land and go to Canaan, where he will found a new nation. For a very long time, biblical scholars accepted the reality of Abraham as a historical figure. However, in What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel, William Dever writes that by the beginning of the 21st century, most scholars believed Abraham to be a legendary figure based on the total lack of evidence for him outside of the Bible.

The situation with Moses is similar. While Moses is incredibly important in the founding story of Judaism, scholars have yet to find any archeological evidence of his existence. Dever writes that based on this total lack of extrabiblical proof, the scholarly consensus is that Moses was also a literary invention.

David is a slightly different story, however. In the Bible, he is said to have been a great king who united Israel and Judah into one mighty kingdom. However, outside the Bible, no writings from other cultures mention him. Unlike Abraham and Moses, however, there is some archeological evidence for his existence.

In 1993, a commemorative stone called the Tel Dan stele was discovered in Israel. The inscription on the stele, written by a king of Damascus named Hazael in the 9th century to memorialize his victory over enemy kings, contains a phrase many scholars have translated as “House of David”, likely a reference to the kingdom of Judah. Other possible references to the House of David have been theorized in readings of inscriptions, but only the Tel Dan stele has been confirmed as a reference to David.

It is likely, therefore, that David did exist, but based on archeological evidence, Israel Finkelstein believes that the portrayal of David as a mighty king of a great nation is inaccurate. In David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, Finkelstein writes that the Judah of David’s time had a very low population and that Jerusalem was a small village, rather than a great city. He therefore concludes that rather than the king of a great nation, David was the chief of a relatively small population.

The evidence for these legendary figures does not stand up to modern historical scrutiny.

Conclusion: When Did Judaism Actually Start?

When was Judaism founded? No religion can be dated to one specific point in time. Instead, religions are the products of years and years of changing culture, ideas and practices.

Jacob Neusner defined Judaism by claiming that it contains three basic elements: the study of the written Torah, the recognition of Jews as a chosen people to whom God gave the written Torah, and the duty to follow the commandments of that written Torah. However, even by this definition, it’s not entirely clear when Judaism began.

The earliest roots of Judaism, Iron Age Yahwism, began in the 9th century when Israel and Judah took Yahweh as their national God. However, they also took the goddess Asherah as Yahweh’s consort, a common practice within the Canaanite societies from which they emerged. While this would eventually lead to Jews committing only to Yahweh, there was likely no written Torah yet.

Following the exile in Babylon, some descendants of these Yahweh-only Jews returned to Jerusalem to rebuild their religion. There was a new emphasis on the priesthood and Scripture, as well as prohibitions on marrying non-Jews. However, this was probably still not the Torah-observant Judaism we know today.

Instead, some modern scholars argue that widespread observance of the Torah’s commandments only began between 140 BCE and 37 BCE. According to these scholars, this was the beginning of Judaism as we know it, and it contains all of Neusner’s elements.

However, perhaps Judaism only really began with the advent of Rabbinic Judaism, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Surviving Jews shifted their religious focus from the Temple to texts, spurring a long history of competing interpretations of the Torah which continues today.