REL1300 Final Exam Study Guide Judaism A Key Terms One chapter of Exodus relates an encounter that Moses a leader and lawgiver has with God before the escape from Egypt During the visit to the wilderness Moses has a vision of God as a flame in a bush that burns without being consumed God identifies himself as the God of the patriarchal lineage Abraham Isaac and Jacob and gives his personal name YHWH the Name God chose Abraham as the second covenant and he promised that Abraham and his descendants will have the land of Canaan for their own on condition that they live according to the obligations set down in the covenant He is the founder of Judaism When the Exodus story begins the Hebrews are working on construction projects in the eastern part of the Nile Delta God tells Moses to request their release from what amounts to slave labor When the Pharaoh refuses God sends plagues on the Egyptians but spares the Hebrews enabling them to escape Jewish people would come to identify with the Exodus the focus of the annual Passover festival as a metaphor of the transition from slavery to freedom as people with a special destiny and purpose Passover is commonly celebrated in homes with special foods as well God first chooses Saul then David and David s successor to preserve the Israelites from the Philistine menace God strengthens David to the point where he can defeat the Philistine s champion Goliath he captures Jerusalem and made it the capital the City of David and he unifies the tribes of the north and south as a single Israelite people David is succeeded by his son Solomon who undertakes ambitious construction projects throughout the kingdom and builds lavish temples But the ten northern tribes are alienated by his emphasis on centralized government and his use of labor and when Solomon died the kingdom broke apart The northern tribes take on the name Israel for themselves The southern tribes centered on Jerusalem and use the name Judah for their kingdom The scripture from which the Bat or Bar Mitzvah reads in public for the first time is the Torah In a broad sense the Torah religious law includes the entire Hebrew Bible and all the commentaries on it but specifically referring to the five books of Moses The Torah is considered the ultimate repository of religious truth and Jews are expected to study as well as obey it throughout their lives Zoroastrianism is a nominally monotheistic religion with dualistic overtones It developed on Persia Iran sometime before the 6th century BCE it was the state religion of the last empire and it is still alive today Dualists often refer to the good god and evil devil that are opposites of each other Eschatology is centered on the expectation of a world to come both for the individual and for the world as a whole when this life will be overhauled and a new utopian age commences Focus on the end of life as we know it eschaton end times The coming of age ritual is a regular part of every congregation s weekly worship Saturday the day of rest called the Sabbath is a day for prayer and public assembly in the synagogue the house of worship and community meeting The Talmud is the body of Jewish civil and ceremonial law which is comprised of the Mishnah and the Gemara There are two versions of the Talmud the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud Elijah was a prophet and wonder worker in the northern kingdom of Israel and he defended the worship of the YHWH and was a Passover Seder Rosh Hashanah New Year and Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement are celebrated at the time of the autumn harvest Yom Kippur occurs ten days after Rosh Hashanah and is a day for the most solemn reflection and self examination The Shema hear is the Hebrew word that starts the most important prayer in Judaism After the biblical corpus had been fixed the rabbis proceeded to collect and add to the body of Bible interpretation known as Midrash interpretation or commentary The conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE marked the end of the Hellenic age the time of city states in classical Greece and the beginning of the Hellenistic age Hellenization was the historical spread of ancient Greek culture and to a lesser extent language over foreign peoples conquered by Greece Sadducees represent the aristocracy that embraced Hellenization The upper class both politically and occupationally they were also the party of the priestly establishment and the custodians of the temple in charge of its operations Pharisees represent the middle classes They include landowners skilled workers and professional scribes serving the aristocratic Sadducees They tend to interpret the scripture more broadly than the Sadducees did though they tried to establish principles and procedures for the scriptural interpretation Essenes are believed to have been the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls a collection of manuscripts from the early Maccabean and early Roman periods They were also a group of rigorously observant priests under the leadership of the righteous teacher Zealots are groups that rejected Roman authority under any circumstances The Zealots came together expressly to liberate Judea from Roman control Apocalyptic apocalypse is from the Greek word for unveiling and it was the final battle between the forces of darkness and light expected at the end of time Apocalyptic literature flourished in the Hellenistic Era The Babylonian Exile marks the transition of the Hebrew tradition from the national cult of an ancient kingdom to the religious heritage of a widely dispersed people It was the deportation of Jewish leaders from Jerusalem to Mesopotamia by the conquering Babylonians in 586 BCE and it disrupted to Israel political ritual and agricultural way of living Tanakh is an acronym referring to the entire Hebrew Bible Torah or law Nevi im or prophets and Ketuvim or sacred writings In 538 BCE Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon and allowed the Jews who had been captive there to return home to the land of Israel The Israelites saw his victory over their oppressors as part of God s plan to bring a new order to the world The Jews build a second temple called the Second Temple A rabbi is a teacher in Roman times an expert on the interpretation of the Torah since priestly sacrifices ceased with the destruction of the temple the rabbi has been the scholarly and spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation Reform Judaism first and most influential reformer was Moses Mendelssohn and he argued
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