the jewish religion (judaism) emerged out of the writings of the Hebrew Bible, but it is not actually to be found in those writings. Judaism is a religion that worships God through words – prayer, sermons, the reading of scripture, and the like – in buildings called synagogues under the leadership of learned rabbis. The Bible knows something of prayer but nothing of the rest: the Bible portrays a religion centered on a single building commonly called the Temple and led by hereditary priests who worship through actions – elaborate sacrificial rites and other ceremonies of purification and atonement. The transition from that earlier religion to one that modern people would recognize is the story line of this book.

Almost all our information about the early parts of this story comes from the pages of the Bible (see “What Is in the Bible?”). The Bible is actually not a single book; it is an anthology of materials that were written over a span of many centuries – perhaps as much as 1,000 years – in two different languages and in at least two different countries. Not surprisingly, its writings show a variety of styles and a variety of outlooks on many important questions (see Chapter 2). This diversity of content allowed later readers to find many different messages in its pages and to apply those messages to the great variety of situations that they faced.