Did the Jews continue their religion after being exiled in Babylon?

Answer 1

A:It would be more true to say the Jews evolved their religion while being exiled in Babylon. While King Josiah is credited with introducing monotheistic Judaism as the official religion of Judah in the seventh century BCE, it is clear that the ordinary people continued with polytheism at least until the Babylonian Exile. There is no known reference to the goddess of Wisdom prior to the Exile, but Lady Wisdom does feature in several books written during and after the time of the Exile, most notably the Book of Proverbs (some of which material may be pre-Exilic). On the other hand, the goddess Asherah drops out of the archaeological record from the end of the monarchy.

Lemche, in a careful analysis of the Old Testament traditions (Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy), has shown that the covenant concept seems to have played no significant role in Israel's religious life before the sixth century BCE. He considers it a fundamental mistake simply to assume that, because The Bible claims Israelite religion to have been unique from its very beginnings, it must have been so. He goes on to suggest that its special characteristics were the results of a long historical development, rather than its point of departure. The biblical traditions arose in an age which is much later than the age they purport to refer, so these traditions reflect the thinking of the end of a process rather than its origins.

We usually think of the Hebrew Bible as having been written by divinely inspired prophets who can readily be identified, including Moses in the second century BCE. Ronald E. Clements (The World of Ancient Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives, Israel in its historical and cultural setting) says the Old Testament was composed as the product of a very prolonged literary activity in which few wholly separate and self-contained independent works can be identified. The distinction between 'authors' and 'editors' has become increasingly blurred, and in some cases almost meaningless. The prophetic books for example, were clearly not written by prophets, but represent distilled collections of prophetic material, often from diverse ages. In the history subsequent to the early Exilic period, there is little evidence of activity by named prophets, and on most understandings of the prophetic role the particular function of the prophet had come to an end. Instead of prophets writing books in their own names, we find the books such as Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, the Wisdom of Solomon and some of the psalms written anonymously and, in time, attributed to earlier heroes. As for the history of the Hebrew people, the Book of Chronicles, dated to the middle of the fourth century BCE, was a complete rewrite of the Deuteronomic History, with an altered emphasis and much material omitted or altered to suit a new theological and political climate.

Answer 2

After the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, Jews in Babylon developed the institution now known as the synagogue, a center of Jewish worship without sacrifices.