I. No Generation Begins Religion Anew
II. The Accumulation of Religious Memory
III. Religious Traditions Do Not Develop in Straight Lines
IV. When Religious Narratives Become a Way of Life
V. When Interpretations Become Religious Authority
VI. Israel and Judah Within Inherited Religious Worlds
VII. From Israelite Religion to Developing Judaism
VIII. Christianity Within the Continuing History of Religion
IX. How Religious Worlds Become Self-Evident
X. Religious Continuity, Innovation, and the Exercise of Power
XII. The History of Belief and the Question of Divine Reality
Conclusion - The Unfinished Human History of Religion
Bibliography
Why These Authors and Sources Were Chosen
Appendix C - The Processes of Religious Inheritance and Transformation
Appendix D - Historical Layers in Israelite, Jewish, and Christian Religious Development
Appendix E - From Inherited Interpretation to Lived Religious Certainty
Essay 5A examined how religious traditions are inherited, remembered, transformed, practiced, and established as authoritative understandings of reality. We now turn to the historical communities through which these processes can be observed. The histories of Israel, Judah, Judaism, and Christianity reveal how inherited religious worlds developed into recognizable traditions without remaining unchanged, and how the beliefs, practices, and institutions of one generation became the religious inheritance of another.
The Formation of Religious Identity Within the Ancient Near East
The histories of Israel and Judah illustrate how religious communities develop distinctive identities from inherited cultural traditions. Neither kingdom emerged with a complete and unchanging system of belief. Their populations belonged to the wider world of the ancient Near East, sharing languages, social arrangements, religious practices, and understandings of divine reality with neighboring communities.
As explored in Essay 4C, developing forms of YHWH worship became associated with older Northwest Semitic traditions, including religious language and attributes associated with El. These relationships were historically complex, and their development cannot be reduced to the simple replacement of one deity by another.
Our concern here is how these inherited understandings became part of recognizable communal identities - and how those identities changed when the political and religious institutions supporting them were disrupted.
From Related Communities to Distinct Kingdoms
During the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age, communities in the southern Levant developed social and cultural arrangements increasingly associated with early Israel. Archaeological evidence indicates substantial continuity with earlier Canaanite populations, although the precise circumstances of Israel's emergence remain debated.
The northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah eventually developed distinct political institutions, royal traditions, territorial interests, and religious centers.
In the north, Samaria became the royal capital, while Bethel and Dan held religious significance. In Judah, Jerusalem became increasingly important as a royal and religious center, although worship continued elsewhere throughout much of the kingdom's history.
These differences influenced religious identity. Royal sponsorship of particular sanctuaries, local customs, inherited narratives, and competing interpretations contributed to varying understandings of communal responsibilities toward YHWH.
The biblical writings preserve evidence of such disagreements, often through criticism of religious practices their authors considered unacceptable. Archaeology and inscriptions reveal additional dimensions of religious life beyond the expectations expressed in particular biblical texts.
Israelite and Judahite religion therefore cannot be understood as two completely uniform systems, nor can their differences be reduced to the religious policies of their rulers alone.
When Political Worlds Disappeared
The Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom, culminating in the fall of Samaria around 722–720 BCE, transformed the circumstances of its inhabitants.
The Israelite monarchy disappeared, populations experienced displacement and reorganization, and surviving communities entered new relationships with the Assyrian imperial system.
Yet northern Israelite traditions did not simply disappear. They continued through surviving populations, communal memories, local practices, and literary traditions that subsequently interacted with those preserved in Judah.
The southern kingdom of Judah experienced comparable disruptions through Assyrian domination and its eventual Babylonian conquest.
The destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 587/586 BCE presented an especially profound challenge to inherited understandings of divine protection, sacred kingship, covenant, land, and communal identity.
- If YHWH was understood as the protector of the kingdom -
- how should Jerusalem's destruction be explained?
- If the temple held a central place in religious life -
- how could religious identity continue without it?
- And if Davidic kingship belonged to the community's understanding of its relationship with God -
- what did the disappearance of that monarchy mean?
These were questions concerning the survival of an entire religious world.
The institutions through which earlier generations had understood their relationships with YHWH no longer existed in their familiar forms.
Communities were therefore confronted with the necessity of preserving, abandoning, or reinterpreting aspects of their religious inheritance.
Remembering and Reinterpreting Catastrophe
Political catastrophe did not produce one uniform religious response.
Some inherited practices continued wherever circumstances permitted. Other traditions acquired new meanings as communities sought to understand defeat, displacement, and the possibility of restoration.
Biblical literature preserves interpretations of these experiences through covenantal failure, divine judgment, communal injustice, and the continuing responsibilities of Israel and Judah before YHWH.
Other writings express expectations of restoration, renewed covenant, and divine faithfulness despite political defeat.
Through such interpretations, older narratives became resources for understanding new historical circumstances. Stories of ancestors, deliverance, kingship, and covenant were preserved and reinterpreted by generations whose experiences differed considerably from those associated with the narratives themselves.
The authors and editors of biblical literature participated in this reconstruction of religious memory. Their work preserved earlier materials while also arranging and interpreting them through the concerns of later communities.
The distinction between historical events and their religious interpretation remains important. Historians can investigate Jerusalem's destruction through textual and archaeological evidence. But the religious claim that its destruction represented divine judgment belongs to the theological interpretations expressed in particular biblical writings.
Both are historically significant, but they each answer different questions. What matters here is that the interpretation of catastrophe contributed to religious continuity and transformation. A community could lose the political world it had inherited while preserving and reinterpreting the religious traditions through which it understood itself.
Changing Understandings of YHWH
These historical disruptions also contributed to changing understandings of divine identity.
Over time, increasingly exclusive forms of YHWH worship and more developed expressions of monotheism became important within the religious traditions that contributed to Judaism.
Some biblical writings emphasize exclusive loyalty to YHWH within a world where other divine beings are mentioned or acknowledged. Others more emphatically proclaim that YHWH alone is God.
These different formulations cannot be assigned to one simple developmental sequence accepted uniformly by every Israelite and Judahite community.
Nevertheless, the changing circumstances of the kingdoms encouraged questions concerning the relationship between YHWH and political power.
Could YHWH remain Israel's God without an independent Israelite kingdom?
Could divine sovereignty extend beyond Judah, Jerusalem, and their familiar institutions?
Might foreign empires themselves be understood within a larger account of divine activity?
Biblical writers developed differing responses to such questions. Some interpreted political catastrophe as evidence of divine judgment, while others emphasized the continuing sovereignty of YHWH over nations and historical events.
Such interpretations contributed to religious identities no longer dependent upon the continued existence of an independent monarchy.
They did not, however, require all communities to abandon earlier religious practices or understand divine reality identically.
The development of monotheistic language therefore belongs within a complex history of religious inheritance, political disruption, literary interpretation, and changing communal identity.
Religious Life Beyond Kings and Temples
The religious histories of Israel and Judah were also shaped by people whose activities rarely appear directly in surviving literature.
Families maintained households, participated in customary observances, visited local sanctuaries, remembered ancestral traditions, and responded to the uncertainties of everyday life.
Their practices did not necessarily conform to the expectations promoted by royal institutions, priestly authorities, or biblical writers.
Archaeological discoveries involving figurines, inscriptions, household objects, and religious installations reveal evidence of religious activities whose interpretation remains debated.
Nevertheless, these discoveries demonstrate the importance of distinguishing official religious ideals from the varied practices of ordinary communities.
Such practices mattered for religious continuity.
Memories, customs, family relationships, and local observances could survive political disruption even when royal institutions and established centers of worship disappeared. Religious identity was therefore preserved not only through the writings of religious leaders but also through the continuing participation of the communities that inherited these traditions. This ordinary dimension of religious life helps explain why political defeat did not necessarily result in the disappearance of the religious worlds associated with Israel and Judah.
From Ancient Kingdoms Toward Developing Judaism
The disappearance of the Israelite and Judahite monarchies did not bring their inherited religious traditions to an end. Narratives, rituals, laws, understandings of divine reality, and forms of communal belonging continued under new political circumstances. Some traditions acquired greater authority, while others were revised, marginalized, or preserved within different communities. Temple worship, priestly responsibilities, ancestral memories, written instruction, and everyday observances contributed to emerging understandings of religious identity.
The result was not ancient Israelite religion reproduced unchanged under another name. It was a continuing history in which communities preserved relationships with their religious ancestry while developing new ways of interpreting and practicing their inheritance.
The history of Israel and Judah therefore demonstrates that religious identity can survive the loss of its political foundations because inherited traditions remain available for reinterpretation within changing human circumstances.
The next stage of our inquiry follows these inheritances into the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman worlds, where developing Jewish communities would preserve recognizable continuities while forming new understandings of Scripture, religious responsibility, and communal belonging.
VII. From Israelite Religion to Developing Judaism
Scripture, Community, Interpretation, and Religious Life Beyond the Kingdom
Judaism did not emerge through one decisive event separating it completely from earlier Israelite and Judahite religion. Its history developed through centuries of political change, cultural encounter, literary preservation, religious interpretation, and communal reorganization.
Even the term Judaism requires care when applied to antiquity. The communities we associate with developing Jewish traditions did not necessarily recognize one uniform religious system corresponding to later understandings of Judaism. Their identities involved ancestry, geographical origins, religious practices, sacred writings, and differing understandings of communal obligation.
The distinction between Judean and Jewish is therefore historically important. In some ancient settings, identity was closely associated with Judah and its people; in others, it increasingly referred to religious and communal relationships extending across geographical and cultural boundaries. The terminology and timing of these developments remain debated.
Our concern is how recognizable Jewish traditions emerged through changing historical circumstances while preserving significant continuities with their Israelite and Judahite ancestry.
Religious Identity Under Foreign Empires
Following the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, the former territory of Judah became part of the Persian imperial system. Within the province of Yehud, Jerusalem's temple was rebuilt, traditionally dated to approximately 515 BCE.
The restored temple became an important center of sacrifice, priestly activity, and communal identity. Yet Judean religious life extended well beyond Jerusalem.
Communities associated with Judah and its inherited traditions lived in Babylonia, Egypt, and other regions. Their experiences differed according to local circumstances, political arrangements, and relationships with surrounding populations.
The absence of an independent monarchy also changed the institutions through which religious identity could be maintained. Temple worship, ancestral laws, priestly leadership, communal observances, and increasingly authoritative writings contributed to forms of continuity no longer dependent upon an Israelite or Judahite king.
The Jewish military colony at Elephantine in Egypt provides a particularly revealing example. Fifth-century BCE papyri document a community devoted to YHWH that maintained its own temple and religious practices while living within the Egyptian environment of the Persian Empire.
These documents reveal a religious world whose practices did not correspond entirely to the forms of worship emphasized in later biblical traditions. They also demonstrate that communities associated with YHWH could maintain recognizable religious identities outside Jerusalem.
For ordinary families, religious belonging continued through household relationships, communal gatherings, inherited customs, religious obligations, and practices of mutual responsibility.
Religious identity had become capable of continuing across geographical and political boundaries without requiring every community to practice or interpret its inheritance identically.
Torah and the Formation of Communal Identity
The developing authority of the Torah became increasingly important within Jewish religious life.
The writings eventually comprising the Pentateuch preserved traditions concerning creation, ancestry, covenant, deliverance, worship, law, and communal responsibility. Their formation involved inherited materials, literary composition, and editorial activity across extended periods, although their precise history remains debated. As these writings acquired greater authority, they provided shared resources through which communities could understand their origins and organize their responsibilities.
Yet authoritative writings did not eliminate interpretive disagreement.
How should ancestral commandments be practiced under foreign rule?
Which observances were essential to communal identity?
How should inherited instructions be understood when changing circumstances introduced questions earlier generations had not encountered?
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah, for example, portray efforts to organize communal life around inherited law, temple responsibilities, and distinctions concerning membership and religious practice. Their narratives reflect particular perspectives on the restoration and organization of the Judean community and should not be mistaken for evidence that every Jewish group accepted the same arrangements.
The authority of Torah therefore developed alongside continuing questions of interpretation, application, and communal belonging. This relationship remained reciprocal: inherited writings shaped religious expectations, while communities interpreted those writings through the circumstances they inhabited.
Judaism developed not simply through the possession of sacred literature but through the continuing effort to understand and practice that literature as authoritative instruction.
Jewish Communities Within the Hellenistic World
The conquests of Alexander the Great during the late fourth century BCE introduced new political and cultural relationships throughout the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Jewish communities increasingly encountered Greek language, educational practices, philosophical ideas, political institutions, and opportunities for participation within the wider Hellenistic world.
Their responses varied considerably.
Some Jewish writers employed Greek intellectual vocabulary to explain inherited religious commitments. Others emphasized customs and practices that distinguished their communities from neighboring populations. Many participated in Greek-speaking society while maintaining recognizable Jewish identities.
The translation of Jewish Scriptures into Greek, beginning with the Pentateuch during the third century BCE, illustrates this relationship between continuity and adaptation.
The translation of Jewish Scriptures into Greek began with the Torah (the Pentateuch) roughly around c.280 BCE, probably in Alexandria, Egypt. Other biblical writings were later translated over subsequent centuries, producing the diverse Greek scriptural traditions collectively known as the Septuagint (LXX). This was not a single translation headed by a formal body of translators. Nor was it completed at any one identifiable moment, but was an extended process of literary transmission, translation, and reinterpretation that continued into the early centuries CE (refer to Appendix A below).
Translation also introduced new possibilities for interpretation. Religious concepts could acquire different associations through the vocabulary available in another language, while textual traditions themselves continued to vary.
Political conflict further shaped these developments.
The Maccabean revolt, beginning in 167 BCE, arose amid Seleucid intervention, disputes concerning Jerusalem's temple, religious observance, political authority, and competing Jewish responses to Hellenistic culture.
The conflict should not be reduced to a simple confrontation between Judaism and Greek civilization. Jewish communities themselves disagreed over religious fidelity, political accommodation, and the acceptable forms of cultural participation.
The subsequent Hasmonean dynasty also illustrates how movements initially associated with religious resistance could develop their own political institutions and claims to authority.
These events reveal that Jewish identity was continually negotiated through encounters with surrounding cultures as well as disagreements within Jewish communities themselves.
Many Ways of Being Jewish
By the late Second Temple period, Jewish religious life included substantial diversity (refer to Appendix B re the Intertestamental period).
The surviving historical record identifies movements commonly associated with Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, although modern reconstructions of these groups depend upon sources written from different perspectives. Their disagreements concerned the interpretation of religious law, temple practices, purity, resurrection, communal authority, and expectations regarding divine activity.
The Dead Sea Scrolls provide further evidence of this diversity. Their biblical manuscripts, interpretive writings, community regulations, and religious compositions reveal differing understandings of Scripture, sacred calendars, worship, and communal obligation.
The precise relationship between the scrolls, the archaeological site at Qumran, and the communities that preserved these writings remains debated. Nevertheless, the collection demonstrates that Jewish religious interpretation was neither uniform nor fully settled.
Yet most Jewish religious life cannot be reconstructed through the histories of these named movements alone.
Families and local communities practiced inherited customs, gathered for prayer and instruction, observed festivals, maintained relationships with synagogues and the Jerusalem temple, and participated in networks connecting Jewish populations throughout the Mediterranean and Near East.
Religious life was sustained through ordinary participation as well as formal teaching and institutional leadership.
The writings of Philo of Alexandria provide another example of this diversity. Living within a Greek-speaking Jewish environment during the first century CE, Philo interpreted Jewish Scriptures through forms of philosophical reasoning available within his wider intellectual world. His work demonstrates that Jewish religious interpretation could engage deeply with Greek philosophy without simply abandoning its Jewish identity.
These different communities were not necessarily attempting to establish separate religions. They frequently disagreed over how faithfully to understand and practice inherited traditions.
Jewish identity remained recognizable through shared inheritances even where understandings of those inheritances differed considerably.
This was the diverse religious world within which the earliest followers of Jesus would emerge.
The Destruction of the Second Temple and Its Consequences
The Roman destruction of Jerusalem's Second Temple in 70 CE introduced another major disruption into Jewish religious history.
The loss of the temple brought an end to its sacrificial system and transformed the circumstances of priestly activity, pilgrimage, and religious authority associated with Jerusalem. For communities whose religious practices and expectations were closely connected with the temple, its destruction raised significant questions concerning worship, identity, and the continued interpretation of sacred obligations.
Yet Judaism did not begin anew in 70 CE.
Jewish communities had already developed forms of prayer, instruction, household observance, communal assembly, and scriptural interpretation that did not depend entirely upon participation in Jerusalem's sacrificial worship. These practices provided resources for religious continuity under changing historical circumstances.
Following the destruction, different Jewish communities responded in different ways. Some inherited arrangements could no longer function as before, while others acquired greater importance. Traditions associated with rabbinic teachers gradually contributed to influential developments in Jewish law, education, religious interpretation, and communal practice.
These developments were neither immediate nor universally accepted. Rabbinic Judaism should not be understood as having replaced every other form of Jewish religious life directly after the destruction of the temple. The Mishnah, compiled around 200 CE, represents an important stage in the preservation and organization of rabbinic legal traditions rather than the completion of Judaism's historical formation. Jewish communities continued to develop across different regions, preserving varied relationships with inherited literature, religious practice, communal authority, and surrounding societies.
The destruction of the temple therefore offers another historical example of religious continuity through transformation. As with the earlier destruction of Jerusalem under Babylonian rule, the loss of a central institution did not end the religious traditions associated with it. Instead, inherited practices and interpretations remained available for reorganization within changing circumstances.
Judaism's Continuing Independent History
The history of Judaism demonstrates how religious identities may preserve recognizable continuities despite changes in political institutions, sacred geography, language, religious leadership, and communal practice. Its development involved relationships among inherited Scripture, law, worship, communal memory, ordinary participation, and continuing interpretation.
Yet Judaism's history cannot be reduced to a preparation for Christianity.
Jewish communities developed their own understandings of religious obligation, divine reality, Scripture, worship, and communal responsibility before, during, and long after the emergence of the Jesus movement. Christianity would arise within this diverse Jewish world, inheriting its Scriptures, religious vocabulary, moral concerns, and expectations concerning divine activity.
But Christianity's subsequent development did not complete or replace Judaism's continuing history.
Jewish and Christian identities gradually became more distinguishable through differing interpretations and historical circumstances, while retaining complex relationships to their shared religious ancestry.
Nor did this differentiation occur everywhere at the same time. Communities continued to negotiate the boundaries of Jewish and Christian identity across multiple generations.
The development of Judaism thus illustrates how an inherited religious world can become a continuing tradition without remaining uniform, geographically confined, or unchanged.
The next stage of our inquiry turns toward the early followers of Jesus and the emergence of Christianity within this wider Jewish and Mediterranean history. Their experiences will reveal another process of religious development: how communities sharing important religious inheritances could gradually develop distinguishable identities while continuing to interpret and contest their common ancestry.
VIII. Christianity Within the Continuing History of Religion
From Jewish Jesus Movements to Developing Christian Identity
Christianity emerged within the diverse Jewish religious world of the first century CE. As examined in Section VII, this was a world already shaped by centuries of political disruption, cultural encounter, scriptural interpretation, religious disagreement, and changing communal institutions.
Its earliest participants did not begin with a completed New Testament, established Christian creeds, or the ecclesiastical structures that later generations would recognize as characteristic of Christianity. They inherited Jewish Scriptures, traditions of worship and ethical responsibility, expectations concerning divine activity, and interpretations of covenant shaped by life under Roman rule.
Within this environment, the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, together with the claims made about him by his followers, contributed to the formation of movements that gradually developed recognizable Christian identities.
The historical question is how communities arising within Judaism came to understand themselves through Jesus while increasingly including non-Jewish participants, developing distinctive forms of religious life, and negotiating their relationships with the wider Jewish and Mediterranean worlds.
Jesus Within the Jewish Religious World
The historical Jesus belonged to the Jewish religious environment of Roman-ruled Galilee and Judea.
His remembered teachings and public activities drew upon Jewish Scripture, prophetic traditions, moral instruction, expectations concerning God's reign, and debates over religious obligation.
He should not be understood as appearing outside Judaism to establish a religion already distinguishable from the traditions of his contemporaries. His activity belonged within the diversity of Jewish religious life during the Late Second Temple period.
The Gospel narratives preserve important traditions concerning Jesus, although they were composed decades after his death and reflect the literary and theological purposes of their respective authors and forming Christian communities.
Historical reconstruction of Jesus' teachings must therefore distinguish Jesus' activity from the memories and subsequent interpretations preserved in these writings.
His crucifixion under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, whose governorship extended from approximately 26 to 36 CE, is among the most widely historically accepted events in the scholarly reconstructions of his life.
Following his death, Jesus' followers proclaimed that God had raised him from the dead. They interpreted his life, crucifixion, and resurrection through inherited Jewish understandings of divine activity, covenant, messianic expectation, and the future restoration of God's people. These convictions became central to their developing religious identities.
Within the purposes of these essays, historians can investigate the early proclamation of Jesus' resurrection and its significance for the movement. But whether that proclamation corresponds to an actual divine act remains a separate historical-philosophical and theological question. For our present inquiry, the significance is that the earliest interpretations of Jesus developed within an already existing Jewish religious world.
The Earliest Communities of Jesus Followers
The earliest Jesus movements consisted principally of Jewish followers who interpreted Jesus through Israel's Scriptures and religious traditions.
These communities did not initially possess one complete system of Christian doctrine or one universally recognized institutional organization.
Their participants shared convictions concerning Jesus while continuing to disagree over religious practice, authority, and the significance of their inherited obligations.
The increasing participation of Gentiles - people who were not Jewish - therefore introduced particularly consequential questions.
Must Gentile followers undergo circumcision and assume Jewish identity?
Which commandments were obligatory for them?
Could Jewish and Gentile participants share meals and worship without adopting identical religious practices?
The letters of Paul, written largely during the middle decades of the first century CE, provide some of our earliest surviving evidence of these disputes.
Paul's correspondence reveals communities negotiating relationships among Jewish ancestry, religious law, belief in Jesus, communal fellowship, and the inclusion of Gentiles.
The controversy surrounding the Eucharist (Communion, or Table fellowship) at Antioch, described in Galatians 2, illustrates how questions of shared religious identity became matters of belief and everyday participation.
Such disagreements were not secondary difficulties arising after Christianity had already become a settled religion. They helped shape the identities of the communities that would eventually become recognizable as Christian.
The movements expanded through households, itinerant teachers, missionaries, local assemblies, commercial routes, and networks connecting Jewish and Gentile populations throughout the Mediterranean world. For many participants, belonging involved shared meals, worship, baptism, mutual assistance, religious instruction, and relationships with other members of their communities.
These recurring practices contributed to the formation of religious identities even where participants did not agree upon every theological interpretation. Christianity therefore emerged not simply through the development of beliefs about Jesus, but through the continuing lives of communities organized around their relationships with him and with one another.
The Gradual Differentiation of Jewish and Christian Identities
The emergence of Christianity is sometimes described as a separation between Judaism and Christianity, often called the parting of the ways. The expression can be useful, but it risks suggesting that two already established religions separated at one identifiable historical moment. Yet the evidence presents a more complicated history. That both groups were evolving and developing, testing and exercising, their belief systems according to how they presently were perceiving and critiquing their inherited experiences.
During the first century, different Jesus-following communities maintained different relationships with Jewish worship, ancestral law, sacred literature, and communal institutions.
Some continued recognizably Jewish practices while affirming Jesus as Messiah.
Others, particularly communities increasingly composed of Gentiles, developed distinctive patterns of participation and religious obligation.
The inclusion of Gentiles did not automatically require Jewish followers of Jesus to abandon their own religious identities. Nevertheless, it introduced enduring questions concerning covenant, Scripture, communal boundaries, and the relationships among Jews and non-Jews within the movement.
The Roman destruction of Jerusalem's temple in 70 CE further altered the circumstances of both Jewish communities and Jesus-following groups. These disruptions contributed to continuing developments in religious authority, communal practices, and the interpretation of inherited traditions.
Yet 70 CE did not mark one final separation between Judaism and Christianity.
Jewish followers of Jesus continued to exist alongside predominantly Gentile Christian communities. Jewish and Christian groups also maintained relationships involving shared writings, religious practices, disagreement, and sometimes competing claims concerning Israel's inheritance.
The boundaries separating these communities varied by geographic region and historical period. Some became increasingly distinct during the first and second centuries. Others remained overlapping or contested for considerably longer. The differentiation of Judaism and Christianity therefore resembles the branching and intersecting religious histories discussed in Essay 5A more closely than a single moment of institutional separation.
Christianity did not emerge by leaving Jewish history behind. It developed through continuing interpretations of a Jewish religious inheritance, even as its communities acquired increasingly distinctive identities.
The Continuing Interpretation of Jesus
As Jesus-following communities expanded, their understandings of Jesus developed through inherited Jewish religious language and new historical circumstances. Early Christian writings describe him as Messiah, Lord, Son of God, and through expressions concerning salvation, divine agency, and, in some texts, preexistence.
These titles and concepts did not necessarily possess identical meanings across all early Christian communities. Some writings express remarkably elevated understandings of Jesus' relationship to God. Others emphasize his teaching, prophetic activity, humanity, suffering, or anticipated return.
Such diversity should not be arranged as a simple sequence in which an originally human Jesus gradually became divine through increasingly elaborate religious imagination.
Elevated claims concerning Jesus appear early in the surviving Christian literature, including writings associated with Paul. At the same time, the precise relationships among Jesus, God, divine agency, and worship remained subjects of continuing interpretation.
The developing movement also encountered Greek-speaking environments in which inherited Jewish concepts could be communicated through additional intellectual vocabulary. These encounters contributed to new possibilities for expressing and debating Christian convictions.
Over subsequent generations, competing interpretations of Jesus became increasingly significant for communal identity and religious authority. Some eventually contributed to formulations recognized within later Christian orthodoxy. Others were criticized, modified, marginalized, or rejected.
These developments require careful historical investigation, particularly because the terminology of later Christian creeds should not be projected uncritically onto the earliest Jesus movements. Their fuller examination belongs to a separate study of the historical development of Christology as proposed but which outline has not been drafted as of this date.
For Essay Five, the important observation is that Christian understandings of Jesus participated in the same ongoing processes of religious memory, interpretation, differentiation, and communal recognition that shaped the traditions which Christianity inherited.
From Christian Writings to Scripture
The earliest Christians inherited Jewish sacred writings rather than a completed Christian Bible. For many Greek-speaking communities, these writings were available through Greek-Jewish scriptural traditions associated with the Septuagint's gradual development, whose extended development we examine in Appendix D below. Greek translations were especially important because they made Jewish religious literature accessible across the linguistic environments in which early Christianity expanded.
The writings that were eventually collected within the New Testament corpus developed in newly different circumstances than that of the Jewish scriptures. Paul's letters addressed particular communities and controversies. The Gospels preserved and interpreted traditions concerning Jesus. Other writings contributed religious instruction, theological argument, communal exhortation, and expectations concerning God's future activity.
These works did not initially circulate as one universally recognized collection. Communities copied, exchanged, preserved, and interpreted writings that they associated with Jesus, his followers, and recognized Christian teachers. Some writings acquired considerable influence through their recurring use in worship and religious instruction. Others became subjects of disagreement concerning their origins, interpretations, or suitability for communal use.
During the second century, Marcion advanced a distinctive collection of Christian writings and a controversial understanding of Christianity's relationship to Jewish Scripture. His proposals contributed to wider disagreements concerning which writings expressed legitimate Christian teaching and how the religious inheritance of Israel should be understood.
These controversies did not create Christian scriptural authority from nothing. Many writings already possessed significant standing among particular communities. Nevertheless, the formation of the New Testament canon involved extended processes of transmission, selection, interpretation, and recognition.
The commonly received twenty-seven-book New Testament collection became more clearly established during the fourth century, although regional differences concerning certain writings continued.
The growing recognition of Christian Scripture supplied communities with an enduring collection of writings through which they could interpret Jesus, organize worship, teach religious obligations, and define communal belonging.
What later generations inherited as the New Testament had itself developed through centuries of religious and literary history.
Developing Christian Institutions and Practices
Christian religious identity also developed through changing arrangements for communal leadership, worship, instruction, and mutual responsibility.
The earliest writings refer to apostles, prophets, teachers, elders, overseers, and deacons, although the roles and relationships among these figures differed by community and period.
As Christian assemblies grew and became more geographically dispersed, questions concerning legitimate leadership, continuity of teaching, and relationships among communities acquired increasing importance.
By the early second century, writings associated with Ignatius of Antioch provide evidence of influential episcopal arrangements in some Christian communities. Such evidence should not be taken to mean that every church possessed the same institutional structure or that later forms of ecclesiastical leadership had already been established everywhere.
Institutional development was uneven, involving local circumstances, inherited practices, disagreements, and changing relationships among religious leaders.
Christian identity was also sustained through ordinary religious participation. Baptism, communal meals, prayer, teaching, charitable activity, and commemorations associated with Jesus became recurring practices through which members experienced belonging.
These practices did not necessarily possess identical meanings or ceremonial forms across all communities. The meal that later Christian traditions would understand through developed Eucharistic theology, for example, belonged to a longer history of communal gatherings, remembrance, worship, and interpretation. Its changing significance illustrates how familiar religious practices can preserve recognizable continuities while acquiring additional theological meanings.
Households, local assemblies, traveling teachers, and networks of mutual assistance therefore contributed to the developing character of Christianity alongside the activities of its recognized leaders.
Thus, the history of Christianity cannot be reconstructed solely through church councils, theological controversies, or the writings of prominent religious figures. Christianity became a living religious tradition through the participation of communities whose inherited understandings were repeatedly practiced, interpreted, and transmitted to succeeding generations.
Christianity Within the Roman and Mediterranean Worlds
Christianity developed through continued interaction with the political, linguistic, philosophical, and religious environments of the Roman Empire. Greek language provided an important means of communication, while Roman roads, cities, commercial relationships, and networks of Jewish communities facilitated the movement of people and religious ideas.
Christian writers increasingly employed concepts available within the surrounding intellectual world to express their understandings of God, Jesus, salvation, and human responsibility. But such interactions should not be confused with the claim that Christianity merely copied neighboring religions. Religious traditions frequently use available cultural resources to express commitments their participants understand as distinctive.
Yet the adoption of new vocabulary can also introduce new questions, distinctions, and interpretive possibilities. The relationship between inherited Jewish Scripture and Greek philosophical language became especially consequential for later Christian theological development.
Political circumstances also changed.
During Christianity's first centuries, its communities generally lacked the governmental authority necessary to impose their teachings upon the wider Roman population. Their relationships with Roman officials and local society varied across time and place, including periods of toleration, hostility, and persecution.
Constantine's support for Christianity during the early fourth century introduced significant changes in the relationship between Christian institutions and imperial power. These developments affected religious leadership, doctrinal disagreement, communal recognition, and the institutional resources available to Christian communities.
Their wider political consequences will be examined in Section X below.
By late antiquity, many Christian communities inhabited religious worlds substantially different from those experienced by Jesus' earliest followers.
- They possessed influential collections of Scripture
- Established practices of worship
- Developing regional theological traditions
- Recognized religious leaders, and
- Increasingly organized institutional relationships.
Yet Christianity did not become one uniform tradition. Differences of language, geography, interpretation, religious practice, and institutional authority continued across communities within and beyond the Roman Empire.
The history of Christianity therefore cannot be represented as the uninterrupted development of one original, completely settled religious system.
But neither can it be reduced to arbitrary invention or the disappearance of its earlier inheritances.
Christianity's recognizable identity persisted through continuing relationships with Jesus, Jewish Scripture, early Christian testimony, worship, and communal life - relationships that were themselves interpreted within changing historical worlds.
The historical significance of Christianity's emergence is consequently not that religious inheritance ceased to matter, but that inherited traditions became available for new forms of religious understanding and participation.
Christian continuity was sustained through community preservation, reinterpretation, differentiation, and transformation.
These developments bring us to the next stage of our inquiry.
How did writings assembled over centuries become familiar as one sacred Bible?
How did contested interpretations of Jesus become established doctrinal formulations?
And how did historically developing church structures come to be regarded as permanent features of Christian religious life?
Section IX examines how such histories of religious development become the inherited certainties of subsequent generations.
When Historical Developments Become Established Religious Realities
Sections VI–VIII traced the development of religious identity from ancient Israel and Judah through developing Judaism and Christianity. These histories reveal communities continually preserving, interpreting, and reorganizing their inherited religious traditions under changing circumstances.
Yet later generations seldom encounter these histories in the order through which they developed.
Sacred writings arrive as Scripture. Doctrines are taught as established expressions of faith. Religious ceremonies and institutions are encountered as familiar features of communal life. Their historical development may receive little attention because the resulting traditions have already become part of the world into which people are born.
This is one way that religious history becomes inherited religious certainty.
The transition can be observed especially clearly in the histories of Scripture, Christian doctrine, and religious institutions.
When Sacred Writings Become Scripture
The Hebrew Bible did not emerge as one completed collection recognized identically by every ancient Israelite or Jewish community. Its writings developed across different historical settings, preserving inherited narratives, laws, prophetic traditions, poetry, wisdom, and communal memory.
As these materials were composed, edited, copied, interpreted, and transmitted, particular writings acquired increasing religious authority.
The Dead Sea Scrolls provide evidence of the textual diversity that existed during the Second Temple period. Appendix A, examining the Septuagint, likewise illustrates how Jewish religious literature circulated in differing linguistic and textual forms.
Christianity inherited these Jewish scriptural traditions while gradually developing its own collections of writings associated with Jesus and his followers. The twenty-seven books eventually recognized as the New Testament did not originally circulate as one universally established collection.
A particularly revealing example comes from Athanasius of Alexandria, whose Festal Letter of 367 CE provides the earliest surviving list corresponding exactly to the twenty-seven books of the New Testament commonly recognized today. His list was historically important, but it did not immediately establish universal agreement among all Christian communities.
For later generations, however, these diverse histories of composition, transmission, and recognition could become largely invisible.
The resulting collection was encountered simply as the Christian Bible - a familiar and authoritative inheritance whose historical formation was not necessarily part of ordinary religious instruction. What developed through history could consequently be received as though it had always existed in its familiar form.
Recognizing this development does not establish whether Scripture is divinely inspired. It identifies the historical processes through which particular writings acquired their recognized status within religious communities.
When Theological Interpretation Becomes Doctrine
Christian understandings of Jesus provide another illustration.
The earliest followers of Jesus interpreted his life, death, and resurrection proclamation through inherited Jewish religious language. As the movement developed, disagreements concerning Jesus' identity, his relationship to God, and the appropriate language for expressing Christian convictions became increasingly consequential.
The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE addressed disputes concerning the relationship between the Father and the Son. Its creed employed the language of shared divine substance to express an understanding of their relationship that its participants regarded as faithful to Christian belief.
Yet Nicaea did not bring these controversies to an end.
Further disputes, theological arguments, imperial interventions, and church councils contributed to the development of additional formulations that became authoritative within many Christian traditions.
The creed associated with Constantinople in 381 CE, for example, contributed to the development of what later generations commonly inherited as Nicene Christianity.
These developments should not be understood as church councils simply inventing Christian beliefs. Their participants appealed to inherited Scripture, worship, theological convictions, and competing understandings of Christian faithfulness.
Nevertheless, the formulations through which particular interpretations became recognized doctrine emerged within identifiable historical circumstances.
What once required sustained interpretation, disagreement, and institutional decision could eventually become an ordinary confession of faith recited by generations unfamiliar with the controversies surrounding its formation.
An interpretation developed and defended within history could become an established measure of religious orthodoxy.
This distinction between inherited conviction and its later doctrinal expression does not determine whether the doctrine is true. It clarifies how historically formed expressions of belief become recognizable religious inheritances which carried within them religious authority.
When Religious Institutions Appear Timeless
Religious institutions provide a third example.
Ancient Israelite and Jewish communities developed changing relationships among royal institutions, temple priesthoods, sacred writings, communal teaching, and local religious practices.
Following the destruction of Jerusalem's Second Temple in 70 CE, Jewish religious life continued through existing and developing forms of interpretation, worship, law, and communal responsibility.
Rabbinic traditions gradually acquired increasing influence, although their authority was neither immediate nor universal.
Christian communities likewise developed from varied arrangements for teaching, worship, and leadership toward increasingly organized forms of ecclesiastical authority.
As episcopal offices, church councils, recognized teaching traditions, and regional institutions became established, their historical development could recede from ordinary communal awareness.
Later generations might encounter these arrangements as the permanent or divinely intended organization of religious life.
Yet historical investigation reveals the circumstances through which particular institutions developed, acquired authority, encountered opposition, and adapted to changing social and political environments.
This does not mean that historical institutions necessarily lack legitimacy. It means that their familiarity, longevity, or widespread acceptance cannot by themselves establish claims concerning their permanence or divine authorization.
Recovering the History Behind Religious Certainty
Scripture, doctrine, and institutions help religious communities preserve continuity across generations. Their authority can become so familiar that their formation is no longer readily apparent.
Historical inquiry makes these developments visible again.
It allows readers to distinguish between the religious understandings they have inherited and the historical processes through which those understandings acquired their present forms.
A person may continue affirming Scripture, Christian doctrine, or an established religious tradition while acknowledging its history of formation and interpretation.
The historical acceptance of a belief does not establish its ultimate truth. Neither does the discovery of historical development automatically establish its falsehood.
Rather, historical investigation reveals how religious convictions become embedded within the continuing lives of communities.
This is an important distinction for our broader inquiry. Religious certainty is not necessarily evidence that a particular understanding has existed unchanged from the beginning. It may reflect the success with which generations have preserved, practiced, and transmitted an inherited interpretation.
Once such interpretations become established as authoritative, however, another historical question arises. Who determines which understandings will be preserved, which innovations will be permitted, and which disagreements will be regarded as unacceptable?
The question brings us from the historical formation of religious certainty to the exercise of religious authority and power.
How Religious Authority Becomes Institutionally and Politically Consequential
Religious traditions require means of preserving
- inherited teachings,
- sustaining communal practices,
- resolving disagreements, and
- transmitting their understandings to succeeding generations.
Leadership and institutions therefore play important roles in religious continuity. They can preserve literature, support education, maintain worship, organize charitable responsibilities, and provide communities with recognizable forms of belonging.
Yet religious authority also determines which interpretations receive recognition, which practices are encouraged or restricted, and whose voices may participate in defining communal identity.
Its consequences become more substantial when religious institutions acquire control over membership, leadership, resources, and acceptable teaching.
A further transformation occurs when religious institutions develop relationships with governments capable of enforcing decisions through law and political power.
The distinction between communal leadership, institutional regulation, and state coercion is therefore central to understanding how religious authority developed within Israel, Judaism, and Christianity.
Religious Authority Within Ancient Israel and Judah
Religion and political authority were already closely associated throughout the ancient Near East.
Kings sponsored sanctuaries, supported religious personnel, participated in public ceremonies, and connected political legitimacy with divine favor.
The Israelite and Judahite monarchies likewise developed relationships among royal authority, temple institutions, local religious practices, and inherited understandings of YHWH.
Biblical accounts of kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah preserve traditions concerning attempts to regulate worship and centralize religious activity in Jerusalem.
The historical scope of these reforms remains debated. Their literary presentation also reflects the theological perspectives of biblical authors and editors.
Nevertheless, they illustrate an important relationship: political rulers could promote particular religious practices while discouraging or suppressing others.
Such actions could alter the institutional circumstances through which communities practiced their inherited religion.
This did not mean that royal authorities controlled every dimension of religious life. Household observances, local traditions, and competing interpretations continued beyond the immediate reach of centralized institutions.
As Section VI demonstrated, the religious histories of Israel and Judah cannot be reduced to their kings and temples alone.
Religious Authority Under Foreign Rule and Jewish Independence
Following the disappearance of the Israelite and Judahite monarchies, Jewish communities lived under successive imperial governments. First Egyptian, then Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greece, Syrian, and lastly Roman rule.
Temple institutions, priestly leadership, ancestral laws, and local communal authorities operated within Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman political arrangements.
Their responsibilities and powers differed considerably according to historical circumstances.
The experience of Seleucid rule and the subsequent Maccabean revolt provides a particularly revealing example.
Under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, political intervention in Jerusalem's religious institutions contributed to restrictions upon Jewish observances and conflict over temple worship.
The Maccabean resistance developed within these circumstances, eventually contributing to the establishment of Hasmonean political authority.
Yet the Hasmonean dynasty itself came to exercise political and religious power, combining governmental leadership with claims concerning the high priesthood.
The history of the movement therefore illustrates how a struggle to preserve religious practices against external interference could subsequently produce new arrangements of religious and political authority.
As examined in Appendix B, Hasmonean independence did not eliminate disagreements over legitimate religious leadership, religious observance, territorial expansion, or political rule.
The relationship between religious conviction and political authority remained historically consequential. Religious communities could seek to preserve their inherited identities under foreign domination while also developing new struggles concerning the exercise of power when political circumstances changed.
Christian Authority Before Imperial Recognition
The earliest Christian communities generally lacked the political resources necessary to impose their religious beliefs upon the wider Roman population.
They developed arrangements for teaching, worship, leadership, discipline, and communal recognition within their own associations and networks.
Disagreements concerning Scripture, Jesus' identity, religious obligation, and legitimate teachers contributed to the formation of increasingly recognizable communal boundaries.
During the second and third centuries, Christian writers advanced competing interpretations while appealing to inherited writings, apostolic traditions, and respected religious leaders.
Ignatius of Antioch, writing during the early second century, emphasized the importance of bishops and communal unity within the churches addressed by his letters.
Later in that century, Irenaeus of Lyon appealed to apostolic continuity and recognized teaching traditions when responding to interpretations he regarded as unacceptable.
Their writings illustrate how religious communities sought to distinguish teachings they considered faithful from those they regarded as departures from inherited belief.
Such efforts could strengthen continuity while also limiting the recognition of dissenting interpretations.
Yet a distinction remained between a religious community's authority to regulate its own membership and the government's power to impose legal penalties.
A person excluded from a Christian assembly might experience substantial social and religious consequences. That exclusion was nevertheless different from imprisonment, confiscation of property, banishment, or punishment imposed through state authority.
This difference became increasingly important as Christianity's relationship with the Roman Empire changed.
Constantine and the Transformation of Christian Power
Christianity's political circumstances changed substantially during the reign of Constantine in the early fourth century.
The arrangements associated with the Edict of Milan in 313 CE, involving Constantine and Licinius, provided for religious toleration and the restoration of confiscated Christian property.
These developments did not immediately establish Christianity as the exclusive religion of the Roman Empire.
They did, however, contribute to a new political environment in which Christian communities gained recognition, institutional resources, and increasing access to imperial authority.
Constantine also became involved in disputes among Christian leaders. The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE offers a particularly important example. The council addressed disagreements concerning the relationship between God the Father and the Son. Constantine supported its gathering and sought a resolution that might contribute to religious and imperial unity.
The resulting creed established an influential doctrinal formulation, but the controversy continued through subsequent generations.
During the reign of Constantine's son Constantius II, theological and ecclesiastical disputes became entangled with imperial interventions involving the appointment, deposition, and exile of bishops.
Athanasius of Alexandria was among the prominent religious leaders whose career became deeply involved in these conflicts.
These events should not be reduced to political struggles disguised as religious disagreements.
The participants held theological convictions they considered essential to Christian faith. Their disputes involved genuine disagreements concerning Scripture, divine reality, and the meaning of Christian confession.
Nevertheless, the imperial setting changed the consequences of those disagreements.
A controversy concerning theological interpretation could now influence whether a bishop retained his office, received imperial support, or faced exile.
Religious interpretation had acquired consequences extending beyond the internal decisions of religious communities.
From Imperial Support to Religious Enforcement
The relationship between Christianity and Roman government continued to develop throughout the fourth century.
Emperors and bishops did not always agree. Christian communities remained diverse, and political officials sometimes supported theological positions opposed by influential religious leaders.
Nor did imperial involvement immediately produce a uniformly Christian society.
Nevertheless, the increasing association between church institutions and governmental authority made additional forms of religious enforcement possible.
A further development occurred under Theodosius I.
In 380 CE, an imperial decree commonly known as the Edict of Thessalonica endorsed a particular form of Nicene Christianity. Subsequent imperial legislation increasingly regulated certain religious practices and forms of Christian dissent.
The implementation and consequences of these measures varied, but they demonstrate a substantial transformation in the relationship between recognized religious teaching and governmental power. Thus, the distinction between religious persuasion and political coercion had become especially consequential.
Persuasion seeks agreement through teaching, argument, example, and voluntary participation.
Religious institutions may also establish standards concerning communal membership, leadership, and recognized teaching.
Political coercion enters when governments enforce religious decisions through legal penalties, confiscation, imprisonment, banishment, or physical force.
These forms of authority sometimes overlapped, but they should not be confused.
A religious conviction does not become political coercion merely because a community considers it authoritative. The historical question concerns the means through which that conviction is promoted, regulated, or enforced.
The distinction is important because the means available for preserving religious identity can change dramatically when religious institutions become associated with the coercive powers of government.
Religious Disagreement and Continuing Reform
The institutional recognition of particular beliefs did not eliminate religious disagreement.
Within Jewish traditions, scriptural interpretation, legal reasoning, and communal debate continued through changing historical circumstances.
Christian communities likewise experienced recurring disagreements concerning doctrine, worship, leadership, recognized Scripture, and their relationships with political society.
Some disputes resulted in the revision of established practices. Others contributed to institutional separation, new religious communities, or attempts to restrict dissent.
Yet historical change should not automatically be equated with progress. An innovation may introduce greater flexibility or produce new forms of exclusion. A longstanding tradition may preserve valuable communal memory or maintain arrangements later generations consider unacceptable.
Likewise, religious authority cannot be understood only through its potential for coercion.
Institutions have preserved ancient literature, maintained educational traditions, provided material assistance, sustained communities through persecution and displacement, and transmitted religious practices across generations.
Their effects have depended upon the historical circumstances in which authority was exercised.
The relationship between continuity and reform is therefore not adequately described as a struggle between an oppressive past and a liberating future.
Religious communities continually negotiate what should remain recognizable, which interpretations deserve recognition, and how inherited responsibilities should be understood under changing conditions.
Institutional authority influences the outcomes of those negotiations without eliminating the possibility of further disagreement and interpretation.
The Historical Accountability of Religious Power
Religious authority acquires particular significance when leaders or institutions claim to represent divine instruction.
Participants may understand their decisions as necessary for preserving sacred truth, maintaining faithful worship, or protecting the religious integrity of their communities.
Such convictions are themselves part of the historical record.
Yet a claim to divine authorization remains distinguishable from the historical evidence concerning how that authority developed and was exercised.
Historical investigation can ask who made particular decisions, what interests or convictions influenced them, how disagreements were treated, and what consequences followed for the communities involved.
It can distinguish voluntary participation from institutional exclusion and governmental coercion.
Such investigation does not require historians to determine whether God exists or whether a particular religious institution has genuinely received divine authorization.
It does require that religious institutions and their actions remain open to historical examination, even when their participants understand those actions as sacred obligations.
The histories of Israel, Judaism, and Christianity reveal institutions that preserved learning, sustained communal identity, organized religious participation, and transmitted inherited traditions.
They also reveal disagreements over legitimate authority, competing religious interpretations, social boundaries, and the exercise of political power.
Neither uninterrupted progress nor inevitable corruption adequately describes these histories.
Rather, they demonstrate that religious authority remains part of the continuing human processes through which inherited religious worlds are preserved, contested, and transformed.
Religious institutions are not removed from history by the authority they claim. Their development, decisions, and consequences remain part of the historical record.
From Religious History to the Question of Divine Reality
We have now followed the development of inherited religious traditions from ancient Israel and Judah through developing Judaism and Christianity.
These histories have shown how religious communities preserved recognizable identities through political disruption, migration, cultural encounter, scriptural interpretation, institutional development, and changing understandings of religious authority.
We have also examined how sacred writings, doctrinal formulations, and religious institutions became familiar inheritances whose historical origins were not always apparent to later generations.
The result is a historical account of religious development that neither requires a predetermined progression toward Christianity nor treats Judaism as an incomplete stage awaiting Christian fulfillment.
Instead, the histories reveal continuing religious communities whose understandings developed through relationships with their inherited pasts and changing circumstances.
Yet our investigation raises an additional question.
If the development of religion can be investigated through human experience, cultural transmission, literary composition, communal memory, political circumstances, and institutional authority, does explaining religious history require an appeal to God?
And if these historical developments can be explained without invoking divine activity, what conclusions, if any, may legitimately be drawn concerning the possible reality of God?
These questions concern the relationship between historical explanation and claims about divine reality.
They bring us to Essay 5C, where we will distinguish what historical scholarship can explain about the development of religion as separate from the philosophical and theological questions that remain open beyond those explanations.
 |
| The inter-relationship between various significant ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament (some identified by their sigla). "Mt" here denotes the Masoretic Text; "LXX", the original Septuagint. |
Introduction - A Bible Before the Christian Bible
The Septuagint (LXX) occupies an important place in the historical development of Judaism and Christianity. Originating as Greek translations of Jewish religious writings, it became one of the principal scriptural resources through which early Christians understood Israel's religious inheritance and interpreted the significance of Jesus.
Yet the Septuagint was not originally one completed Bible published at a particular moment. It developed through multiple translations, revisions, and collections of writings over several centuries.
Consequently, asking when the Septuagint was completed requires distinguishing three different historical questions:
Translation: When were the individual Jewish Scriptures translated into Greek?
Collection: When did these writings begin to circulate together in recognizable scriptural collections?
Authority: When did Jewish and Christian communities recognize particular Greek writings as authoritative Scripture?
These questions do not have identical answers. Indeed, the historical development of the Septuagint illustrates why religious literature should not be imagined as moving automatically from composition to a completed, universally accepted canon.
I. When Did the Septuagint Begin?
The Septuagint originated within the Greek-speaking Jewish world of Ptolemaic Egypt, especially Alexandria.
Its earliest major undertaking was the translation of the Torah, or Pentateuch, comprising Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Most scholars date this translation to the third century BCE, commonly around the middle of that century, approximately 280–250 BCE. The precise circumstances and dates remain uncertain.
The Letter of Aristeas, usually dated to the second century BCE, preserves a celebrated account of seventy-two Jewish translators producing a Greek translation of the Torah under royal sponsorship.
This narrative became influential in explaining the Septuagint's origins and authority. Yet historians generally regard it as a later literary account that combines historical traditions with an idealized explanation of the translation's significance.
Its description of the Torah being translated in seventy-two days should therefore not be mistaken for an independently established historical fact.
The name Septuagint, traditionally abbreviated LXX from the Roman numeral seventy, reflects this account of the translators. Originally associated especially with the Greek Pentateuch, the name later came to designate a much larger and more varied collection of Greek Jewish religious writings.
The significant historical development was that Jewish communities began expressing their inherited sacred literature within a language widely used throughout the Hellenistic Mediterranean.
II. When Were the Remaining Books Translated?
Following the translation of the Pentateuch, other Jewish writings were gradually translated into Greek.
Prophetic, historical, poetic, and wisdom literature entered Greek-speaking Jewish religious life through projects undertaken in different periods and circumstances.
Many translations appeared during the second and first centuries BCE, while other translations and revisions developed during the early centuries CE.
These writings did not necessarily share one translation method or originate within a single institution. Some translators followed Hebrew wording closely, while others employed freer Greek expressions.
Moreover, not every writing associated with the later Greek Bible originated as a translation from Hebrew. Some Jewish religious books were composed in Greek, while others survive in Greek forms that differ significantly from their Hebrew or Aramaic textual ancestry.
An important historical witness is the Greek prologue to the Book of Sirach.
The translator, traditionally identified as the author's grandson, describes arriving in Egypt in 132 BCE and refers to the Law, the Prophets, and other ancestral writings. His remarks indicate that significant portions of Jewish religious literature were already available in Greek.
They do not establish that every book later included within Jewish or Christian biblical collections had already been translated.
There is consequently no historically defensible single date when the entire Septuagint was completed.
Its individual components developed through an extended history of translation, composition, revision, and transmission.
III. When Did the Septuagint Become a Recognizable Collection?
The next question concerns the transition from individual Greek writings to larger scriptural collections.
During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, religious literature circulated in different manuscripts and collections. Individual writings could possess substantial religious authority without belonging to one physically assembled Bible.
The Hebrew and Greek textual traditions also did not always correspond exactly.
Some Greek translations preserve different arrangements, wording, or lengths of particular biblical writings. The Greek version of Jeremiah, for example, differs significantly in length and organization from the form represented by the later standard Masoretic Hebrew tradition.
The Greek book of Esther includes material absent from the corresponding Hebrew form.
Such differences cannot always be explained simply as translators adding or removing material. In some instances, Greek translations reflect Hebrew textual forms that differed from those preserved in later standard Hebrew manuscripts.
The discoveries among the Dead Sea Scrolls provide important evidence of textual plurality during the Second Temple period.
The historical record therefore suggests that the development of Jewish Scripture involved multiple textual traditions rather than the uninterrupted transmission of one completely uniform manuscript.
The Great Christian Biblical Codices
A particularly important development occurred during the fourth and fifth centuries CE, when large biblical codices preserved substantial collections of Greek Scripture within single manuscript volumes.
Among the most significant surviving witnesses are:
Codex Vaticanus: Fourth century CE.
Codex Sinaiticus: Fourth century CE.
Codex Alexandrinus: Fifth century CE.
These manuscripts demonstrate the increasing importance of substantial Christian collections of Greek biblical literature.
Yet their surviving contents are not identical, and the books included or omitted differ.
They therefore do not establish that the Septuagint possessed one universally settled collection during the fourth century.
Rather, they provide important material evidence of the scriptural collections used and preserved within particular Christian environments.
The move toward larger codices made it possible for inherited religious writings to appear together as recognizable biblical collections. But the physical assembly of writings and the theological recognition of a closed canon remained distinguishable developments.
IV. When Did Jewish Communities Accept the Septuagint?
The earliest Greek translations were produced within Jewish religious environments and were used by Greek-speaking Jewish communities.
The Greek Pentateuch acquired considerable authority, especially where Greek had become the primary language of religious instruction and communal life.
The Letter of Aristeas portrays the translation as receiving formal approval and describes opposition to altering its wording. Whether these details accurately preserve an actual ceremony of acceptance is uncertain.
The narrative nevertheless reveals the importance that some Jewish writers attached to the Greek Torah's authority.
Greek Jewish Scriptures continued to circulate across different communities. Their use was not necessarily identical everywhere, nor did acceptance of the Greek Torah establish universal agreement concerning every additional translated or Greek-composed religious book.
The writings of Philo of Alexandria, who lived during the first century CE, demonstrate the theological and philosophical importance of Greek Scripture within at least one influential Jewish intellectual environment.
For such communities, Greek scriptural language became a resource for religious interpretation, philosophical reflection, and the continuing practice of Jewish identity.
The Septuagint was therefore not originally a Christian Bible. It was a Jewish scriptural inheritance that Christianity subsequently received and reinterpreted.
V. Did Rabbinic Judaism Reject the Septuagint?
The relationship between Jewish communities and Greek scriptural traditions changed during the first several centuries CE.
As Christianity expanded, Greek biblical writings became central to Christian preaching, theological interpretation, and arguments concerning Jesus.
Jewish and Christian interpreters sometimes disagreed over the meanings of particular passages and the textual forms used to support competing interpretations.
At the same time, Hebrew Scripture acquired increasing importance within developing rabbinic traditions.
Additional Greek translations, including that associated with Aquila during the second century CE, provided alternatives to older Greek versions.
These developments have sometimes been summarized as the Jewish rejection of the Septuagint.
That description is too sweeping.
There was no single recorded decision through which all Jewish communities formally rejected every Greek translation.
Nor did Jewish communities immediately abandon Greek Scripture. Greek-speaking Jewish religious life continued, and the use of Greek biblical texts varied across geographical regions and historical periods.
The increasing importance of Hebrew textual traditions within rabbinic Judaism should therefore be distinguished from the claim that Jews everywhere rejected Greek Scripture at one identifiable moment.
The history is better understood as a gradual differentiation among Jewish and Christian textual preferences, interpretive traditions, and developing scriptural authorities.
VI. When Did Christianity Accept the Septuagint?
Early Christian communities inherited Jewish Scripture within environments where Greek translations were widely available.
Many New Testament authors employed Greek scriptural language, and numerous biblical quotations in Christian writings correspond closely to Greek Jewish textual traditions.
The Septuagint consequently became foundational for much early Christian biblical interpretation.
Christian readers interpreted Israel's inherited Scriptures in relation to Jesus, his death and resurrection, and their understandings of divine salvation.
Yet early Christian use of Greek Scripture did not mean that every community possessed or recognized an identical collection of Old Testament books.
Different Christian writers discussed the boundaries of authoritative Scripture, and their lists did not always agree.
Churches in different linguistic and geographical environments also developed their own scriptural traditions.
Fourth-Century Councils and Biblical Recognition
The regional councils of Hippo in 393 CE and Carthage in 397 CE contributed to the recognition of biblical books within the Latin-speaking North African church.
Their lists included writings later classified as deuterocanonical by Roman Catholic Christianity.
These councils were historically important, but they did not constitute a universal decision by the entire Christian church to finalize one standard Septuagint.
Different Christian communities continued to recognize different Old Testament collections and textual traditions.
The later histories of Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant biblical canons demonstrate that such differences were not eliminated in late antiquity.
The Septuagint therefore became a major scriptural inheritance of Christianity without one moment of universally binding acceptance or finalization.
VII. The Septuagint and the Hebrew Masoretic Tradition
The relationship between the Septuagint and the Hebrew Masoretic Text is frequently misunderstood.
The Masoretic Text represents a carefully transmitted Hebrew textual tradition whose vocalization, accentuation, and preservation became associated with Jewish scribal scholars known as the Masoretes, especially during the early medieval period.
Its consonantal textual ancestry, however, is much older.
The Septuagint originated centuries before the surviving medieval Masoretic manuscripts, but this does not mean that all Greek readings are older than their corresponding Hebrew readings.
The Greek translations were made from Hebrew textual forms already circulating in antiquity, some of which differed from the textual tradition eventually represented by the Masoretic Text.
The Dead Sea Scrolls provide important evidence that multiple Hebrew textual forms existed during the Second Temple period.
- Consequently, differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic Text may arise from translation choices, distinct Hebrew source manuscripts, later textual revisions, or combinations of these factors.
- Neither tradition should simply be dismissed as an inaccurate version of the other.
- Both preserve important evidence for reconstructing the histories of biblical writings.
VIII. Why the Septuagint Matters for the Development of Judaism and Christianity
The Septuagint demonstrates several processes examined throughout Essay Five.
First, inherited religious literature can enter new languages and cultural environments without necessarily losing its connection to earlier traditions.
Second, translation involves interpretation. The movement from Hebrew or Aramaic into Greek introduced linguistic and conceptual possibilities that influenced subsequent Jewish and Christian readings.
Third, scriptural authority develops through communal use, preservation, interpretation, and recognition - not merely through the existence of a written text.
Fourth, communities sharing related sacred writings may eventually develop different understandings of their contents and authority.
Finally, the formation of a biblical collection is not identical to establishing the historical or theological truth of the claims made within its writings.
Historical scholarship can investigate when texts were translated, how manuscripts differed, which communities used particular writings, and how collections acquired recognized authority.
Whether those writings communicate divine revelation remains a further philosophical and theological question.
The Septuagint thus illustrates how religious inheritance becomes living religion through translation, cultural encounter, interpretation, and the continuing recognition of sacred authority.
IX. Chronological Summary - Translation, Collection, and Recognition
| Approximate period | Historical development |
|---|---|
| c. 280–250 BCE | Greek translation of the Pentateuch probably undertaken in Ptolemaic Egypt |
| Third–first centuries BCE | Additional Jewish religious writings translated or composed in Greek |
| After 132 BCE | Greek prologue to Sirach witnesses existing translated Jewish religious literature |
| First century BCE–first century CE | Greek Jewish Scriptures circulate through diverse Jewish communities |
| First–second centuries CE | Early Christians increasingly use Greek Jewish Scriptures to interpret Jesus and Christian faith |
| Second century CE | Aquila's Greek translation reflects continuing Jewish engagement with Greek biblical texts |
| Third century CE | Origen's Hexapla compares Hebrew and Greek biblical textual traditions |
| Fourth century CE | Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus preserve large Greek Christian biblical collections |
| 393–397 CE | Regional North African councils identify authoritative biblical collections for church use |
| Fifth century CE | Codex Alexandrinus provides another major witness to Greek Christian Scripture |
| Medieval period | Masoretic scholars preserve and annotate the inherited Hebrew textual tradition |
| Later Christian history | Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions maintain differing biblical canons |
All dates are approximate where appropriate. The appearance of a translation, manuscript, or canon list does not establish its universal acceptance.
Conclusion - A Scripture That Continued to Become
The Septuagint did not begin as a complete Bible, nor did it reach one moment at which its textual contents and recognized authority were universally finalized.
Its history began with Jewish translation projects, continued through the production and circulation of additional Greek writings, and entered Christian history through the appropriation and reinterpretation of inherited Jewish Scripture.
The resulting traditions were neither completely uniform nor historically static.
Their differences reveal how sacred literature develops through relationships among language, communal memory, interpretation, textual transmission, and religious authority.
The Septuagint consequently provides an important historical example of the larger argument advanced throughout Essay Five.
Scripture did not enter human history as a completed collection existing apart from the communities that preserved it. Its recognizable forms developed through the continuing lives of those communities.
For religious believers, recognizing this history need not settle questions of inspiration or revelation. It does, however, distinguish the historical formation of Scripture from later convictions concerning its divine origin and authority.
That distinction is essential to understanding how inherited religious literature became the living Scripture of Judaism and Christianity.
Introduction - The Centuries Between the Testaments
The Second Temple period extended from the rebuilding of Jerusalem's temple around 515 BCE until its destruction by Rome in 70 CE. Its later centuries, often called the Late Second Temple period, included Seleucid rule, the Maccabean revolt, Hasmonean independence, and Roman domination. This was a period of considerable Jewish religious diversity, scriptural interpretation, apocalyptic expectation, and institutional development. It formed the historical environment within which Jesus lived and the earliest Christian movements emerged.
Christian readers sometimes refer to the centuries between the later writings of the Hebrew Bible and the appearance of the New Testament as the intertestamental period. Traditionally associated with approximately 400 BCE to the beginning of the first century CE, this designation can suggest an interval in which little of religious significance occurred.
Historically, however, these centuries were extraordinarily important.
Jewish communities experienced successive imperial governments, major cultural encounters, disputes over religious authority, periods of political independence, and renewed foreign domination. During these centuries, Jewish literature, scriptural interpretation, temple practices, and expectations concerning Israel's future continued to develop.
The following overview traces these developments from Persian rule through the Hellenistic kingdoms, Maccabean revolt, Hasmonean dynasty, and Roman domination, providing the historical context for the Jewish world from which the earliest Jesus movements emerged.
I. Persian Rule and the Restoration of Jerusalem (539–332 BCE)
Following the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, Judean communities lived within the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Some descendants of those displaced under Babylonian rule returned to Judah, while others remained in established communities elsewhere.
Jerusalem's temple was rebuilt, traditionally dated to approximately 515 BCE, restoring an important center of priestly worship and communal identity.
Within the Persian province of Yehud, inherited laws, sacred writings, priestly responsibilities, and communal practices acquired continuing significance. The biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah preserve particular perspectives on religious reform, Torah instruction, and the organization of Judean communal life.
Yet Jewish religious identity was not confined to Jerusalem. Communities in Babylonia and Egypt demonstrate that religious continuity could develop across geographical boundaries.
II. Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Kingdoms (332–200 BCE)
Alexander the Great conquered the eastern Mediterranean and much of the Persian Empire during the late fourth century BCE. Following his death in 323 BCE, his territories were divided among competing successor kingdoms.
Judea came under the influence of Hellenistic rulers, particularly the Ptolemies of Egypt and later the Seleucids of Syria.
Greek language, political institutions, education, commerce, and philosophical thought became increasingly important across the region.
Jewish responses varied. Some communities adopted aspects of Greek culture while preserving their religious identities; others resisted practices perceived as threatening inherited obligations.
The Greek translation of the Torah, begun during the third century BCE, illustrates this cultural interaction. It belonged to the larger history of Greek Jewish Scripture examined in Appendix D.
III. The Seleucids and Antiochus IV (c. 200–164 BCE)
Around 200 BCE, the Seleucid Empire gained control of Judea from the Ptolemies.
During the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE), conflicts involving Jerusalem's high priesthood, internal Judean rivalries, imperial intervention, and religious practice intensified.
In 167 BCE, Seleucid measures prohibited important Jewish observances and interfered with temple worship. The Jerusalem temple was rededicated to a foreign cult, creating a crisis for communities committed to its inherited religious practices.
These events cannot be explained entirely as a simple conflict between Greek culture and Jewish religion. Judean factions themselves disagreed concerning political authority, cultural accommodation, and legitimate religious leadership.
Nevertheless, the restrictions associated with Antiochus IV generated substantial resistance.
IV. The Maccabean Revolt (167–160 BCE)
The revolt began under Mattathias, a Judean priest, and continued under his sons, particularly Judas Maccabeus.
The rebels challenged Seleucid authority and sought to restore practices they regarded as essential to Jewish religious life.
In 164 BCE, Jerusalem's temple was recovered, purified, and rededicated. This event became the historical foundation of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
The conflict continued beyond the rededication of the temple. It involved political alliances, military campaigns, competing claims to leadership, and the changing position of Judea within the weakening Seleucid Empire.
The principal surviving literary accounts include 1 and 2 Maccabees, which preserve valuable but distinct perspectives on these events.
The revolt demonstrates how religious commitments, communal identity, and political resistance could become closely intertwined.
V. The Hasmonean Dynasty (Second–First Centuries BCE)
The Maccabean uprising eventually contributed to the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, which achieved substantial political autonomy during the second century BCE.
Under leaders such as Simon, John Hyrcanus I, and Alexander Jannaeus, Hasmonean authority expanded through military activity, territorial control, and political administration.
The dynasty combined religious and political leadership, with rulers exercising authority over both governmental affairs and the high priesthood. Some later Hasmoneans also claimed royal titles.
Yet independence did not eliminate internal disagreement.
Questions concerning legitimate priesthood, religious law, political power, and relationships with surrounding populations contributed to continuing tensions within Jewish society.
The Hasmonean period illustrates a significant historical transformation: a movement associated with resistance to foreign religious interference developed into a ruling dynasty possessing its own political and religious interests.
The preservation of religious identity and the exercise of political power could therefore produce new conflicts within the communities they were intended to protect.
VI. Roman Intervention and the World Before Jesus (63 BCE–First Century CE)
In 63 BCE, the Roman general Pompey intervened in Judean political conflicts and captured Jerusalem, bringing the region under Roman domination.
The Hasmonean political order was subsequently displaced by arrangements increasingly dependent upon Roman authority.
Herod the Great ruled as a Roman client king from approximately 37 to 4 BCE. His reign included extensive building projects, most notably the enlargement and reconstruction of Jerusalem's temple complex.
Following Herod's death, the region experienced further political division and changing relationships with Roman officials.
During the first century CE, Jewish communities lived under varying combinations of Roman administration, local rulers, priestly institutions, and communal authorities.
Religious diversity remained considerable. Pharisaic, Sadducean, and other Jewish traditions differed in their interpretations of Scripture, law, temple practice, and expectations concerning Israel's future.
Some Jewish writings expressed hopes for divine deliverance, renewed kingship, resurrection, judgment, or the transformation of the present world. These expectations were diverse rather than universally shared.
This was the Jewish world into which Jesus of Nazareth was born and within which the earliest Jesus movements developed.
Christianity consequently emerged not from a religious vacuum, but from Jewish communities whose inherited traditions had undergone centuries of political disruption, cultural adaptation, religious interpretation, and institutional transformation.
VII. Historical Timeline
| Approximate date | Historical development |
|---|---|
| 539 BCE | Persian conquest of Babylon |
| c. 515 BCE | Rebuilding of Jerusalem's Second Temple |
| 332 BCE | Alexander the Great conquers the region |
| 323 BCE | Alexander dies; successor kingdoms develop |
| c. 301–200 BCE | Ptolemaic dominance in Judea |
| c. 200 BCE | Seleucid control of Judea |
| 175–164 BCE | Reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes |
| 167 BCE | Restrictions on Jewish practices; Maccabean revolt begins |
| 164 BCE | Rededication of Jerusalem's temple |
| c. 142–141 BCE | Hasmonean autonomy substantially consolidated |
| 63 BCE | Pompey captures Jerusalem; Roman domination begins |
| 37–4 BCE | Reign of Herod the Great |
| First century CE | Historical Jesus and the emergence of early Jesus movements |
| 70 CE | Roman destruction of Jerusalem's Second Temple |
Dates are approximate where appropriate. Political authority and regional boundaries changed through successive conflicts and administrative arrangements.
Conclusion - A Religious World in Continuing Development
The centuries preceding Christianity were not an interruption in Jewish religious history.
They were a period of substantial literary, cultural, political, and institutional development.
Persian restoration, Hellenistic cultural contact, Seleucid intervention, Maccabean resistance, Hasmonean independence, and Roman domination all contributed to the circumstances within which Jewish communities preserved and interpreted their inherited religious traditions.
These events did not produce one uniform Judaism or predetermine the emergence of Christianity.
They contributed instead to a diverse Jewish religious world in which competing understandings of Scripture, political authority, religious obligation, and divine hope continued to develop.
The so-called intertestamental period was therefore not an empty space between two biblical worlds. It was part of the continuing human history through which those worlds became related.
Understanding this history helps explain both the development of Second Temple Judaism and the religious environment from which Christianity eventually emerged.
No comments:
Post a Comment