Judaism - What is judaism - When did it start?

[Ferrocyanide]

INTRODUCTION:
I often tell christians, muslims, mormons that they are jewish.
The reason is that I try to emphasize to these people that the foundation for their faith is the jewish culture and religion.
I don’t think that there is any way to escape that fact.

This means that Jesus is a jew, his parents are jews, his grandparents, sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts and plenty more are most likely jews.
He grew up in a jewish culture, which automatically means that he is going to know the version of hebrew of the time and he is going to get a religious education at some point.
Therefore, it is no surprise that he is going to build on that foundation as he starts up his own religion.

I don’t think that there was a singular jewish religion at the time of Jesus. It was fragmented.
The Bible mentions the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. I would not be surprised if there were more and I have no idea how long these sects have existed for.
We would need some written documentation where it states who the master leader of the pharisee movement was and what his ideas were.
I view christianity as just another sect of judaism.
In the case of christianity, we know that the master leader is suppose to be: Jesus.

Once the master leader is dead, then a power struggle takes place with his followers. Who is going to be the next leader?
It can happen that a split occurs.
In the Bible, we see evidence of it. There was also an extra biblical writing where one sect was urinating on another sect.

So anyway, I view religion like I view software.
At one point, Microsoft created Win NT. They improved on that source code and came out with Win 2000, then Win XP, Win Vista and so on.
These are just software versions. Some parts might be removed and new things might be added.

The same thing happens in the Linux world, the Mac OSX world, and so on.
It happens with TV, watches, XBox, circuit boards.

For me,
Judaism is Judaism v1.0
Christianity is Judaism v2.0
Islam is Judaism v3.0
Mormonism is Judaism v4.0

Each new leader(s) comes along and improves the product, he removes the bugs, adds new feature and goes into mass production.


THE PROBLEM:
I encounter people who write this to me even when I explain that to them:

Smedley Butler:
Judaism ≠ Christianity. The religion of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Caleb, Samuel, or King David, can no more be called “Judaism” than a Jehovah’s Witness missionary today could be compared to the Peter, Paul, or Martin Luther.

Me:
Yes, their religion would be a form of judaism, since they came from that particular culture. You can call it the religion of the hebrews. Each culture has developed their own religion over time, but religion is not static. It evolves over time.


Smedley Butler:
In 33AD there weren’t Jewish people. There were no Jews. There were ethnic people from the tribe of Judah, and Benjamin, and Levi.
There were Judean’s which is about as specific as saying someone is “American”. There were those that followed the Torah, who were from all of the original 12/13 tribes, from those that followed the Torah, there were emerging cults with the Pharisees and Sadducees taking prominence.

Jesus was not a Jew, he was a Israelite, of the House/Tribe of Judah.

The idea that Christianity is Jewish in background is not accurate. It’s like saying Water is an offshoot of Pepsi.

People have conflated Temple worshippers/Torah adherents in Jesus’ day with the Scribes, Sadducees, Pharisees, and their more modern, (and, mostly unrelated) Talmudic Jewish


Me:
What was the religion of these ethnic groups: tribe of Judah, and Benjamin, and Levi?

Who wrote the tanakh and what was their religion?


CONCLUSION:
Let’s discuss.

[Silver]

Following this line of reasoning, Judaism is paganism 2.0.

[Belacqua]

religion is not static. It evolves over time.

Are pakicetids whales?

[Ferrocyanide]

Following this line of reasoning, Judaism is paganism 2.0.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism

Wikipedia says:
“Defining paganism is complex and problematic. Understanding the context of its associated terminology is important.[35] Early Christians referred to the diverse array of cults around them as a single group for reasons of convenience and rhetoric.[36] While paganism generally implies polytheism, the primary distinction between classical pagans and Christians was not one of monotheism versus polytheism, as not all pagans were strictly polytheist. Throughout history, many of them believed in a supreme deity. However, most such pagans believed in a class of subordinate gods/daimons—see henotheism—or divine emanations.[13] To Christians, the most important distinction was whether or not someone worshipped the one true God. Those who did not (polytheist, monotheist, or atheist) were outsiders to the Church and thus considered pagan.[37] Similarly, classical pagans would have found it peculiar to distinguish groups by the number of deities followers venerate. They would have considered the priestly colleges (such as the College of Pontiffs or Epulones) and cult practices more meaningful distinctions.[38]

Referring to paganism as pre-Christian indigenous religions is equally untenable. Not all historical pagan traditions were pre-Christian or indigenous to their places of worship.[35]

Owing to the history of its nomenclature, paganism traditionally encompasses the collective pre- and non-Christian cultures in and around the classical world; including those of the Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic tribes.[39] However, modern parlance of folklorists and contemporary pagans in particular has extended the original four millennia scope used by early Christians to include similar religious traditions stretching far into prehistory.[40]”

^^^^^So, paganism seems to refer to a bunch of non-christian religions and also atheists, even if those religions are not related.
It doesn’t work out, but I think I understand the point you are making. Ultimately, there is a long line of priests (leaders) that took the religion and added their own ideas into it, so slowly, over time, a religion evolves.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Following this line of reasoning, Judaism is paganism 2.0.

It was indeed once.

Jews as a people did not exist before the Exodus.

There were proto Israelites in pre history. They worshipped El, a Sumerian storm and a war god, plus his wife, Asherath who was part of the Canaanite pantheon.

Israeli archaeologists, Siberman and Finklestein discovered hundreds of small statues of a female deity in Israel, dating to ca 3rd century bce. The Israelites did not become monotheists until after the Exodus.   Judaism reckons the Exodus as having occurred during the reign of Ramses The Great. (1303-1213 bce)  In any case, the Torah was  actually written down sometime between the Fourth and Sixth Centuries bce. 

The findings of the female  goddesses in Israel dating to the fourth century bce suggests that although monotheism may have become the state religion centuries before, that people held on to at least some of their old gods for some time.  

Judaism is the first of the three Abrahamic faiths. The other two being Christianity and Islam. The Prophet Abraham is revered in all three faiths.   The three faiths all worship the same one god.
 
Yes, there were Jewish  sects at the time of Jesus. The Pharisees and the Saducees were not among them(see below). Essenes seem to have been a different sect .The only one of which I am sure was a sect was the Samaritans. Although they called (and still call) themselves Jews, they were not/are not recognised by mainstream Jewry

Of course, you are free to consider Christianity to be anything you like.  However,  to simply declare that Christianity is just another Jewish sect  is a no true Scotsman fallacy  and demonstrably untrue.  Perhaps take the time to actually read up about the history of Christianity. Perhaps begin with Bart Ehrman.

Minor point:  A person's "Jewishness" has always been traced  through the maternal line. If one's mother is a Jew, one is also a Jew. Of course this is moot today as the  Jews have been not been  an identifiable people for centuries.

From the death of Jesus, until the first Nicene Council in the fourth century, there was no such religion as christianity.  There were dozens of sects teaching "The Way' of Jesus throughout the Roman world. The sect which became the religion we call christianity was declared the state religion of the Roman empire in the Fourth century.    They became literally the last sect extant by the simple expedient of murdering all opposition and burning their books. That practice was continued with gay abandon fort the next 1000 years.

With the references, this is getting a bit long. Think I'll stop here 


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The Pharisees (/ˈfærəsiːz/; Hebrew: פְּרוּשִׁים‎ Pərūšīm) were a social movement and a school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for .

Pharisees - Wikipedia

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The Sadducees (/ˈsædjəsiːz/; Hebrew: צְדוּקִים‎ Ṣĕdûqîm) were a sect or group of Jews who were active in Judea during the Second Temple period, starting from the second century BCE through the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The Sadducees are often compared to other contemporaneous sects, including the Pharisees and the .

Sadducees - Wikipedia

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Samaritans (/səˈmærɪtənz/; Samaritan Hebrew: ࠔࠠࠌࠝࠓࠩࠉࠌ‎,[2] romanized: [i]Shamerim[/i], transl. Guardians/Keepers [of the Torah]; Hebrew: שומרונים‎, romanized: Shomronim; Arabic: السامريون‎, romanized: as-Sāmiriyyūn) or Samaritan people are members of an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites of historical Israel and Judah. They are native to the Levant and adhere to Samaritanism, an Abrahamic, monotheistic and ethnic religion in the Holy Land.[3] Some Samaritan groups exist elsewhere in Brazil, Cuba, Spain, Catania, Sicily, Thailand, United States, Canada, and all around the world who call themselves "Shomrey HaTorah" also known as "Keepers of the Torah" who keep and observe most of the practices and rituals such as the Sabbath, ritual purity, and keeping of the festivals of Samaritanism outside the Holy Land with some exceptions in regards to the Passover sacrificial lamb which can only be observed at Mount Gerizim[4] with members being of Abrahamic faiths, Bnei Anusim, Lost Tribes of Israel, ethnically Jewish, and former-Jewish in origin.[5][6][7]

Samaritans - Wikipedia

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My references for proto Judaism: 

Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel, (Eerdmans, ISBN 0-8028-2852-3, 2005),[1] is a book by Syro-Palestinian archaeologist William G. Dever, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Did God Have a Wife? was intended as a popular work making available to the general public the evidence long known to archaeologists regarding ancient Israelite religion: namely that the Israelite god of antiquity (before 600 BCE), Yahweh, had a consort, that her name was Asherah, and that she was part of the .

Did God Have a Wife? - Wikipedia


The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, a book published in 2001, discusses the archaeology of Israel and its relationship to the origins and content of the Hebrew Bible. The authors are Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, an archaeologist, historian and contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine.

The Bible Unearthed - Wikipedia

[Ferrocyanide]

religion is not static. It evolves over time.

Are pakicetids whales?

I have noticed that the way biologists (paleontologists) operate is that they give names but there is no version number.
It’s not even crystal clear what version number one should assign.

If I had to name them whales, I would call them whale v -1.0. Notice the minus sign.

In the same sense, if Win Vista is the reference point, then
Win Vista is version 1.0
Win XP is Win Vista v-1.0
Win 2000 is Win Vista v-2.0
Win NT 4.0 is Win Vista v-3.0
(more or less)

[Belacqua]

If I had to name them whales

You don't have to name them whales.

No one calls them whales. 

They aren't whales. 

Version numbers are irrelevant.

[Fake Messiah]

This means that Jesus is a jew, his parents are jews, his grandparents, sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts and plenty more are most likely jews.
He grew up in a jewish culture, which automatically means that he is going to know the version of hebrew of the time and he is going to get a religious education at some point.
Therefore, it is no surprise that he is going to build on that foundation as he starts up his own religion.

It's more important that Paul was a Jew who was not taking part in a traditional Jewish religion, but he was a Hellenistic Jew who participated in both Jewish and non-Jewish culture, practices, and ideas. And by the 1st century there were an abundance of religions in the Greco-Roman world known as "mystery religions". In these different mystery religions, which were like cults, people worshiped specific heroes or gods, such as Adonis, Dionysus, Mithras, and Osiris. Many of these gods were savior type gods, who were said to take on various problems of individuals or the world, and people were initiated into these religions often through secret ceremonies that included various rituals, such as sacrifices, special meals, anointing, washings, etc.

So Paul's preaching and ideas reflect a merger of the Jewish apocalyptic and messianic traditions with the Greek mystery religions.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Ferrocyanide

I often tell christians, muslims, mormons that they are jewish.

Then you are often wrong. 

Boru

[brewer]

When:1968, What: song and album.