THE CHOSEN PEOPLE pdf download

The Chosen People – A Study of Jewish History from the Time of The Exile Until The Revolt of Bar Kocheba. Sixth Century B.C. to Second Century A.D.

THE CHOSEN PEOPLE

The Chosen People

No people have received so much attention from historians, philosophers, and theologians as the Jews. For all that, their ethnic and cultural origins have remained shrouded in mystery, largely because the main source of information, the Bible, is self-contradictory in this regard.

The Hebrew and Aramaic writings that are contained within the biblical corpus come from a wide area of space and time, and the unity that has been impressed upon them derives largely from the wishful thinking of the Jewish theologian of a comparatively late date.

In fact, as recent research is showing ever more clearly, the myths and traditions of the Bible were very, very old long before they were ever collected or even written down in their present form, and stem in large measure from pre-Semitic strata of Near Eastern culture.

The task of sifting fact from fancy, history from pious hero-worship, becomes increasingly difficult as the heterogeneous nature of biblical traditions becomes more evident.

Nevertheless, it is plain that the Babylonian exile of the Jews in the sixth century B.C. played a decisive part in the formation of what we call Judaism, and that thereafter the distinctive features of the cult, particularly its exclusiveness, became more and more emphasized even if they were not then actually created.

The Israelite religion of the post-exilic years was a very different thing from that which had preceded the catastrophe of 587 B.C., and it is to this crucial period, culminating in the even greater disasters of the first and second centuries A.D., that we should look for a better understanding of the Jewish problems of today.