Dispersion, Assimilation, and Collective Identity
The composite portrait of ancient Israelite society and its faith that one finds in the books of the Hebrew Bible is one of seemingly endless conflicts and successive divine revelations.
For the authors of the Hebrew Bible the central conflict was over one issue: Would Israelites remain loyal to their one God (referred to, in Hebrew, by the consonants YHWH), or would they worship the deities of the nations that surrounded them? This was a politically relevant question, as well as a spiritual one, as the people of ancient Israel struggled to maintain their political and cultural independence for several centuries. Eventually, however, the tides of imperial Near Eastern politics swept over them, and after a series of devastating military defeats—first at the hands of the Assyrians in 722 âñå and later at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 âñå—the once-independent Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah were destroyed. Thousands of the Israelites were driven into exile or simply absorbed into the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.Yet, despite this history of conquest and dispersion, the Israelites retained their national identity and their collective memory, and while living in exile they began to assemble a continuous history of their people and of their relationship with their God. Once completed, that history became part of their sacred scriptures. With the earliest copies of these books in hand, exiles from the kingdom of Judah began returning to their homeland after 538 âñå, believing that YHWH had at last forgiven them. Over the next few centuries, Jewish communities could be found not only in the historical land of Israel (which Greek and Roman geographers later named “Palestine”) but also in Mesopotamia and throughout the Mediterranean. These communities were referred to as the Jewish Diaspora, and in the many centuries that followed, the number of Jews living outside of their historic homeland ultimately far exceeded those living within its borders.
For more than two millennia, therefore, dispersion, acculturation, and resistance to total assimilation have formed the larger pattern of Jewish life and must serve as the backdrop to any discussion of Judaism as a historical religion.
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- Brodd Jeffrey, Little L., Nystrom B., Platzner R., Shek R., Stiles E.. Invitation to World Religions. 4th edition. — Oxford University Press,2022. — 1196 p., 2022