An Authoritarian Yahweh Priesthood Organizes Judaism

Darius was followed by Artaxerxes, who ruled over the vast Persian empire for forty-two years. Like Darius, Artaxerxes was interested in the peoples of his empire remaining orderly under their local laws and religion. He appointed as Judah's new governor a Yahwist scholar and priest named Ezra, who had been living in Babylon, and he instructed Ezra to appoint magistrates and judges who would keep Judah in observance of the laws of its god, Yahweh.

According to the Old Testament, Ezra and a following of eighteen hundred males moved to Judah. And what Ezra found must have been far from what he had expected. According to the Old Testament, when he arrived he tore at his hair, his beard, his garment, his robe, and he sat down appalled. He found that the Hebrews of Judah had not separated themselves from other peoples and that they had been practicing "abominations."

Ezra wanted to separate the worshipers of Yahweh from foreign influences and to advance their identity as a community of worshipers of Yahweh. He called the people of Jerusalem to assemble, and he told the assembly that new demands would be put upon them. Judah was to become a Yahwist state and its people to be considered one people. Ezra commanded that no one could marry any of the foreign women and that any man who had already married such a woman must expel her from his house.

Already the people of Judah were a mix of peoples. Solomon himself had been the son of a woman described as a Hittite: Bathsheba. Nevertheless, Ezra was concerned with lineage of the Yahwist priesthood, and he purged from the priesthood those who could not prove that they were descended from purely Hebrew families. But rather than attempt to extend this stricture to those who were not priests, he made observance of Yahwist practices the deciding issue whether one belonged to his community – beginning what would eventually be Judaism’s racial tolerance. Judaism was a faith based on the worship of Yahweh and adherence to Yahweh’s laws as described in the Moses legend. The words Judaism and Jew derive from the Hebrew word Yehudah, the fourth son of Jacob and the founder of the tribe of Judah.

Like most other religions at this time, rather than evangelistic, its concern was essentially with its own community. Ezra's laws were presented as Yahweh's laws for the community of Jewish worshippers of Yahweh. This included the traditional eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The custom of an entire family being considered guilty for the act of any one of its members was discarded in favor of individual responsibility: the father was to continue to have supreme authority within the family, but a father would not be punished for the sins of a son, or a son for the sins of the father.

Marriage was strictly regulated as before. Fathers were to arrange the marriages of their sons and daughters without their consent. Marriage was recognized as the basis of a family, and marital promises were supported by the harshest of measures: if an engaged woman copulated with another man, both she and the man were to be stoned to death; if a married man or a married woman committed adultery they were to be stoned to death -- unless the man copulated with a slave, in which case he was merely beaten. (Leviticus 19:20.)

If a father found his son stubborn, rebellious and disobedient, he could take him to the city elders, and then the son could be stoned to death. In a dispute that went to court, the man judged wicked would be whipped, but no more than forty times. If a man had two wives and one was loved and the other unloved and the unloved one gave birth to the first son, that son would remain favored as the first son. If a neighbor needed help with his stray oxen, sheep or donkeys, one should help him. And one should not move a neighbor's boundary marker.

The Jewish priesthood expected people to look after their health by following Judaic law. Touching the dead or touching persons having certain types of ailments was prohibited. To clean a leper, one was obliged to sacrifice a male lamb to Yahweh and to sprinkle the patient with the blood of a bird mixed with running water. In the Old Testament's Book of Leviticus, Yahweh is described as giving laws to Moses that rejected Canaanite ways. Moses is described as prohibiting the wearing of garments made of both linen and wool or garments with tassels, as was custom among the Canaanites. And it was written that one should not eat pork or any animal that did not both chew its cud and have cloven feet. Pork had been the major source of meat among the Canaanites, who, having been a settled people could raise pigs. The nomadic Hebrews had raised sheep and goats, which, unlike pigs, could be herded over long distances. And, with pork having been a food eaten by the detested Canaanites and not traditional among Hebrews, it had been described as unclean, although there is no evidence that the Canaanites suffered from eating their pigs anymore than the Hebrews suffered from eating their sheep or goats.

The outlook of the ruling priesthood was embodied in the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These books were declared to have been written by Moses himself, inspired by God. The books were called the Torah of Moses. They appear to have been assembled with national unity in mind, as a compilation of the history of the Jewish people, with a clear distinction between the people favored by Yahweh and the outsiders detested by Ezra. Included was the long list of who begat whom that expressed Ezra's concern about lineage, and also included were the priestly matters and legalities about which Ezra was concerned. Not included among the books were those writings that supported one group or another rather than the Jewish nation as a whole, writings that were later to be described as apocrypha (hidden things) and pseudepigrapha (falsely attributed writings).

The Torah of Moses included Ten Commandments in two places: Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. One of these commandments was in keeping with the priesthood’s desire for exclusive Yahweh worship. It read: “You shall have no other gods before me.” Judaism embodied a monotheism that set it apart from the polytheistic religions, which tended toward the tolerance that had apparently been with King David and his son Solomon. The Greeks were worshipping gods that embodied all of the ways of humans. The Greeks believed that gods rather than men made laws, but they did not claim their gods as wise as much as the priests of Yahweh claimed that Yahweh was the source of wisdom. The Yahwist priesthood had less of an appreciation for grace with the ups and downs of life and life for its own sake. They focused more on evil and sin as the cause of their suffering and on a hard set of rules to avoid sin.

Another of the Ten Commandments was:

Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy... On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.

Other commandments were: You shall not murder, nor commit adultery, steal, give false testimony against your neighbor, covet your neighbor’s house, wife, manservant, maidservant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to him.

Aside from the Ten Commandment's words about murder, in the Book of Deuteronomy a case was made for justifiable killing. It appears to have been a priestly attempt to protect the faith, and reads:

If your brother, your mother's son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying "Let us go and serve other gods," ...you should not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him. But you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be the first against him, to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. (Deuteronomy 13:6-9.)

Meanwhile, the prosperity that the followers of Yahweh had expected continued to elude them. In and around Jerusalem poverty continued, and famine appeared. As described in the Book of Nehemiah, 5:1-5, the poor protested:

We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses that we might get grain because of the famine... We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards. And now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers, our children like their children. Yet behold, we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves. And some of our daughters are forced into bondage already, and we are helpless because our fields and vineyards belong to others.

After Ezra, the priests who governed Judah attempted economic and social reforms. As described in the Book of Deuteronomy, usury within the community of Hebrews was prohibited, but usury against non-Hebrews was allowed. As a part of these reforms, every seventh year debts were to be abolished. And every seventh year, fellow Jews who had been enslaved were to be set free -- while the slavery of others was to remain. And adversity and hardship continued among the Jews. Suffering Jews continued to look nostalgically to the glorious days of King David. And they looked forward to Yahweh bringing them another great king, an anointed one: a mäshäih, again in English, a messiah.

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