World religions. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 43 стр.

refers to him by name El or Elohim, and one called P, representing the tradi-               However, not all the Jews wished to return to Palestine; some had pros-
tions of the priestly caste. The task of collecting these documents together in       pered in Babylon and stayed on there. Subsequently other Jewish communities
their present form was probably carried out in Babylon during the Exile in the        developed in the Persian Empire, and then in the Greek and Roman Empires,
sixth century B.C.                                                                    till by the year A.D. 70 there were probably more Jews living outside Palestine
     These books, the Torah, make up the core or foundation of the Hebrew Bi-         than in it. This is called the Diaspora or Dispersion. The religion of these com-
ble and have traditionally been considered its most sacred part. In addition, the     munities also came to center on the synagogue.
Bible contains two other collections: the Prophets and the Writings.                        The rabbinical schools came to develop the view that, alongside the Writ-
                                                                                      ten Torah, God had communicated to Moses an Unwritten or Oral Torah, which
                                   The prophets                                       was handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. This un-
     While the basic features of Hebrew religion as described in the Torah were       written Law contained many precepts and legal regulations not found in the
probably created by the priestly caste, another group also played a large role:       written Law. It provided the basis for the subsequent development of Rabbinic
the prophets. The word “prophet” from its etymology means “one who speaks             Judaism.
on behalf of another”, and in its religious sense it means one who speaks on be-            By the time of Jesus, Hebrew religion had become markedly diverse in
half of God. The prophets gave the Hebrew people instruction in the name of           comparison with the Rabbinic Judaism of later times. On the one hand the tradi-
God concerning the various courses of action they should take as a people.            tional beliefs and sacrifices, which were concerned solely with obtaining well-
Above all, the prophets called on the Hebrew people to repent of their sins.          being in this world, were preserved by the priestly caste, the Sadducees, whose
     The major prophetical books in the Bible are: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamenta-         God was still essentially the national God of the Jewish people. But other
tions, and Ezekiel. In addition there are thirteen smaller or “minor” ones            groups had emerged with different beliefs and practices. As the result of Persian
(Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk,                   or other influences, belief had developed in a future life, and a judgement be-
Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi).                                            yond the grave leading to Paradise or to Hell. The Pharisees, a group dedicated
     The earlier prophets addressed themselves to the Hebrew people as a              to keeping the Law of Moses in their personal life, emerged and came to accept
whole, because it was the people as a whole who were committed to observe             this view, and with it a view of God which tended to emphasize his universal
the covenant with Yahweh. According to the message of these prophets it was           character as the God of all mankind. Both the Sadducees and the Pharisees had
permissible to punish the whole people because of the transgressions of some.         their Rabbis or Scribes, men who specialized in the knowledge of the Law, in-
But with the prophet Jeremiah a stronger sense of the individual emerged. Ac-         terpreting it in the light of their respective principles. A form of Jewish monas-
cording to Jeremiah a person’s fate depended on his or her own actions. Hence-        ticism had developed, known as the Essene movement, which regarded the
forward Hebrew religion addressed itself more and more to the individual con-         Sadducees as corrupt. In addition, the belief had become widespread that the
science rather than simply to the people as such.                                     messianic age would soon arrive, bringing with it the end of the world, and
                                                                                      various messianic communities had developed. Some expected the Messiah to
                              The synagogue system                                    be a human being, while in other writings he is described as a pre-existent
      In 587 B.C. Israel was conquered by the Babylonians, who destroyed the          heavenly being. In Galilee, in the north, bands of religious guerrillas formed,
temple in Jerusalem and sent the bulk of the population into exile in Babylon.        the Zealots, with the intent of overthrowing the Roman rule. Outside of Pales-
As we have remarked, it was probably here that the Torah was compiled. In 538         tine, the Jewish community was assimilating Graeco-Roman culture and phi-
B.C. the Persian emperor Cyrus conquered Babylon and ended the Jewish cap-            losophy, a trend embodied in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the
tivity. For the next 200 years Israel was part of the Persian Empire. After the re-   Septuagint, made about 200 B.C., and in the figure of Philo of Alexandria, a
turn from the Exile work began on rebuilding the temple, but at the same time a       contemporary of Jesus.
novel religious system was set up: the synagogue system. A synagogue is a hall              In A.D. 70, after a Jewish revolt, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the
for meeting, prayer, and study. Although the center of the religion continued to      temple and forbade it to be rebuilt. After a further revolt was put down in A.D.
be the sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem, synagogues were constructed in          135 Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem. This left only the Synagogue sys-
towns and villages throughout the land, and the study of the written Law or To-       tem and the rabbinate, which were to provide the foundation for the emergence
rah became a matter of paramount importance. Alongside the priests a second           of Rabbinic Judaism.
religious caste developed, the rabbis, or teachers of the Divine Law.
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