Second Temple Judaism in the context of "Hasmonean dynasty"

Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in classical antiquity that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Hellenistic culture and religion. Until the early Muslim conquests of the eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic Judaism were Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria (modern-day Turkey), the two main Greek urban settlements of the Middle East and North Africa, both founded in the end of the 4th century BCE in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Hellenistic Judaism also existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, where there was a conflict between Hellenizers and traditionalists.

The major literary product of the contact between Second Temple Judaism and Hellenistic culture is the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible from Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic to Koine Greek, specifically, Jewish Koine Greek. Mentionable are also the philosophic and ethical treatises of Philo and the historiographical works of the other Hellenistic Jewish authors.

Jewish Christians were the followers of a Jewish religious sect that emerged in Roman Judea during the late Second Temple period, under the Herodian tetrarchy (1st century AD). These Jews believed that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah and they continued their adherence to Jewish law. Jewish Christianity is the historical foundation of Early Christianity, which later developed into Nicene Christianity (which comprises the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant traditions) and other Christian denominations.

Christianity started with Jewish eschatological expectations, and it developed into the worship of Jesus as the result of his earthly ministry in Galilee and Jerusalem, his crucifixion, and the post-resurrection experiences of his followers. Jewish Christians drifted apart from Second Temple Judaism, and their form of Judaism eventually became a minority strand within mainstream Judaism, as it had almost disappeared by the 5th century AD. Jewish–Christian gospels are lost except for fragments, so there is a considerable amount of uncertainty about the scriptures which were used by this group of Christians.

Western civilization traces its roots back to Europe and the Mediterranean. It began in ancient Greece, transformed in ancient Rome, and evolved into medieval Western Christendom before experiencing such seminal developmental episodes as the development of Scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the development of liberal democracy. The civilizations of classical Greece and Rome are considered seminal periods in Western history. Major cultural contributions also came from the Christianized Germanic peoples, such as the Longobards, the Franks, the Goths, and the Burgundians. Charlemagne founded the Carolingian Empire and he is referred to as the "Father of Europe". Contributions also emerged from pagan peoples of pre-Christian Europe, such as the Celts and Germanic pagans as well as some significant religious contributions derived from Judaism and Hellenistic Judaism stemming back to Second Temple Judea, Galilee, and the early Jewish diaspora; and some other Middle Eastern influences. Western Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization, which throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture. (There were Christians outside of the West, such as China, India, Russia, Byzantium and the Middle East). Western civilization has spread to produce the dominant cultures of modern Americas and Oceania, and has had immense global influence in recent centuries in many ways.

Following the 5th century Fall of Rome, Europe entered the Middle Ages, during which period the Catholic Church filled the power vacuum left in the West by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, while the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) endured in the East for centuries, becoming a Hellenic Eastern contrast to the Latin West. By the 12th century, Western Europe was experiencing a flowering of art and learning, propelled by the construction of cathedrals, the establishment of medieval universities, and greater contact with the medieval Islamic world via Al-Andalus and Sicily, from where Arabic texts on science and philosophy were translated into Latin. Christian unity was shattered by the Reformation from the 16th century. A merchant class grew out of city states, initially in the Italian peninsula (see Italian city-states), and Europe experienced the Renaissance from the 14th to the 17th century, heralding an age of technological and artistic advance and ushering in the Age of Discovery which saw the rise of such global European empires as those of Portugal and Spain.

Jerusalem during the Second Temple period describes the history of the city during the existence there of the Second Temple, from the return to Zion under Cyrus the Great (c. 538 BCE) to the siege and destruction of the city by Titus during the First Jewish–Roman War in 70 CE. During this period, which saw the region and city change hands several times, Jerusalem was the center of religious life for all Jews; even those who lived in the diaspora prayed towards Jerusalem on a daily basis and went there on pilgrimage during three annual religious festivals. Under Hasmonean and Herodian rule, Jerusalem served as a royal capital and the seat of all major national institutions. In Jerusalem, the Pharisees of Second Temple Judaism developed into the Tannaim and Judaism's post-Exilic religious identity as it continues today, and the Hebrew Bible was perhaps canonized, although exactly when this occurred remains disputed. It was also in Jerusalem during the later stages of this period that Christianity was born.

The 600 years of the Second Temple period can be divided into several periods, each with its own distinct political and social characteristics. The physical development of the city was greatly affected by the changing characteristics of each era, while at the same time influencing these periods themselves. The city's population was characterized by social stratification, both economic and religious, which grew more pronounced over the years. There existed in the city, for example, a clear distinction between a rich and cosmopolitan elite and the wider population wishing less influence in the nation's ways from the outside world. Social strata also encompassed different religious outlooks, each with its different emphasis: some reliant on the Temple priests, while the majority were led by traditional non-priestly families, emphasizing the world of Torah study and the development of law over the formal hierarchy established in the Temple.

The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (US: /tɑːˈnɑːx/, UK: /tæˈnæx/ or /təˈnæx/; Hebrew: תַּנַ״ךְ, romanized: tanaḵ; תָּנָ״ךְ, tānāḵ; or תְּנַ״ךְ, tənaḵ), also known in Hebrew as Miqra (/miːˈkrɑː/; מִקְרָא, miqrāʾ), is the canonical collection of Hebrew scriptures, comprising the Torah (the five Books of Moses), the Nevi'im (the Books of the Prophets), and the Ketuvim ('Writings', eleven books). Different branches of Judaism and Samaritanism have maintained different versions of the canon, including the 3rd-century BCE Septuagint text used in Second Temple Judaism, the Syriac Peshitta, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and most recently the 10th-century medieval Masoretic Text compiled by the Masoretes, currently used in Rabbinic Judaism. The terms "Hebrew Bible" or "Hebrew Canon" are frequently confused with the Masoretic Text; however, the Masoretic Text is a medieval version and one of several texts considered authoritative by different types of Judaism throughout history. The current edition of the Masoretic Text is mostly in Biblical Hebrew, with a few passages in Biblical Aramaic (in the books of Daniel and Ezra, and the verse Jeremiah 10:11).

The modern form of the Hebrew Bible that is authoritative in Rabbinic Judaism is the Masoretic Text (7th to 10th centuries CE), which consists of 24 books, divided into chapters and pesuqim (verses). The Hebrew Bible developed during the Second Temple Period, as the Jews decided which religious texts were of divine origin; the Masoretic Text, compiled by the Jewish scribes and scholars of the Early Middle Ages, comprises the 24 Hebrew and Aramaic books that they considered authoritative. The Hellenized Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria produced a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible called "the Septuagint", that included books later identified as the Apocrypha, while the Samaritans produced their own edition of the Torah, the Samaritan Pentateuch. Both of these ancient editions of the Hebrew Bible differ significantly from the medieval Masoretic Text.

Rabbinic Judaism (Hebrew: יהדות רבנית, romanized: Yahadut Rabanit), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, Rabbanite Judaism, or Talmudic Judaism, is rooted in the many forms of Judaism that coexisted and together formed Second Temple Judaism in the land of Israel, giving birth to classical rabbinic Judaism, which flourished from the 1st century CE to the final redaction of the Talmud in c. 600. Mainly developing after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), it eventually became the normative form of Judaism.

Rabbinic Judaism has been an orthodox form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian Talmud. It has its roots in the Pharisaic school of Second Temple Judaism and is based on the claim that Moses at Mount Sinai received both the Written Torah (Torah she-be-Khetav) and the Oral Torah (Torah she-be-al Peh) from God. The Oral Torah explains the Written Torah, and the rabbis claimed that it was they who possessed this memorized and orally transmitted part of the divine revelation. At first, it was forbidden to write down the Oral Torah, but after the destruction of the Second Temple, it was decided to write it down in the form of the Talmud and other rabbinic texts for the sake of preservation.

Christianity in the ante-Nicene period was the period in Christian history following the Apostolic Age (1st century AD) up to the First Council of Nicaea (325 AD). Although the use of the term Christian (Koine Greek: Χριστιανός) is attested in the Acts of the Apostles (80–90 AD), the earliest recorded use of the term Christianity (Koine Greek: Χριστιανισμός) is attested by the ante-Nicene Father and theologian Ignatius of Antioch (c. 107 AD).

While the Jewish–Christian community was centered in Jerusalem in the 1st century AD, Gentile Christianity spread widely in the 2nd century AD. One stream of Gentile Christianity (so-called "proto-Orthodox Christianity") that emerged in this period in the persons and theological positions of the Apostolic Fathers would eventually become the international Great Church. Proto-Orthodox Christianity placed importance on the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as saving humanity, and described Jesus as the incarnated Son of God come to Earth. The 2nd and 3rd centuries AD saw a sharp separation between Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity, with the latter being derived from the teachings of the Apostle Paul. There was an explicit rejection of Second Temple Judaism and Jewish culture by the end of the 2nd century, with a growing body of anti-Jewish Christian literature. Many doctrinal variations in this era defy neat categorizations, as various forms of Christianity interacted in a complex fashion.

Paganism is commonly used to refer to various religions that existed during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as the Greco-Roman religions of the Roman Empire, including the Roman imperial cult, the various mystery religions, religious philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and more localized ethnic religions practiced both inside and outside the empire. During the Middle Ages, the term was also adapted to refer to religions practiced outside the former Roman Empire, such as Germanic paganism, Egyptian paganism and Baltic paganism.

From the point of view of the early Christians, these religions all qualified as ethnic (or gentile, ethnikos, gentilis, the term translating goyim, later rendered as paganus) in contrast with Second Temple Judaism. By the Early Middle Ages (800–1000), faiths referred to as pagan had mostly disappeared in the West through a mixture of peaceful conversion, natural religious change, persecution, and the military conquest of pagan peoples; the Christianization of Lithuania in the 15th century is typically considered to mark the end of this process.