Early Judaism in Modern Scholarship
John J. Collins
Judaism in the period between the conquests of Alexander the Great in the
fourth centuryb.c.e.and the last Jewish revolt against Rome in the early
second centuryc.e.has been characterized in various ways. For German
scholars of the late nineteenth and early and mid-twentieth century, such
as Emil Schürer and Wilhelm Bousset, this wasSpätjudentum,“Late Juda-
ism.” The “lateness” was relative to the teaching of the prophets, and be-
spoke decline as well as chronological sequence. The decline reached its
nadir in rabbinic Judaism, understood as a religion of the Law.
After the Holocaust, this way of characterizing ancient Judaism was
widely (but not universally) recognized as not only offensive but danger-
ous. It was also inaccurate. On any reckoning, the history of Judaism since
the Roman period is longer than the preceding history. Moreover, it is now
increasingly apparent that the religion of ancient Israel and Judah before
the Babylonian conquest was significantly different from the “Judaism”
that emerged after the Exile. It has often been assumed that the reforms of
Ezra in the fifth century marked the beginning of Judaism, but in fact we
have little historical knowledge about these reforms, or indeed about Ezra
himself. Shaye Cohen has argued persuasively that the Greek word
Ioudaiosoriginally meant “Judean,” a usage that never disappears, but that
“in the latter part of the second centuryb.c.e.is supplemented by a ‘reli-
gious’ or ‘cultural’ meaning: ‘Jew’ ” (Cohen 1999: 3; Mason 2007 disputes
the supplementary meaning). The word “Judaism” derives from the Greek
Ioudaismos,which first occurs in 2 Maccabees (2:21; 8:1; 14:38), as does its
counterpartHellenismos(4:13). The Jewish, or Judean, way of life was cer-
tainly recognized as distinctive before this. It was noted by Hecataeus of
Abdera at the beginning of the Hellenistic period (ca. 300b.c.e.). The1EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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