Early Judaism, part 1

what i'm going to do in this video is give a very high level history of some of the significant events in judaism and i will use the word history loosely because historians aren't able to really find a lot of evidence for some of what i'm going to talk about before the first millennium bce these stories we get from the first five books of the hebrew bible often referred to as the torah also the first five books of the old testament also we get them from the muslim quran but there isn't a lot of historical evidence for them and so many historians view it more along the lines of legend but there are many people who view these as historic facts and have attempted to place them on a historic timeline and what i'm going to do in this video is i'm going to attempt to fit onto this historic timeline where some of those the people who believe it did happen where they when they believed it happened but keep keep in mind that there's not a lot of strong archaeological evidence historical record here and these accounts were written several hundred years after when they were purported to occur so let's start in the beginning let's start in the book of genesis in the torah and the hebrew bible and the old testament and i'm not going to go into detail on the book of genesis it starts of course with god the the monotheistic god creating the the heavens and earth and then we have the stories of adam and eve and then several generations later the story of the great flood of noah and then noah's son shem and i talk about shem because this is where the word semitic comes from you might refer to you might have heard people refer to jewish people as semitic but also arab people are referred to as semitic because according to biblical accounts they are both viewed as descendants of abraham who is a descendant of shem so they are viewed as semitic the first real significant patriarch of the hebrew bible is considered abraham who i just mentioned and it has abraham moving from or from from the city of orr and there's debate on which or that is it might be the ancient sumerian city in in lower mesopotamia or some people believe that it was an ore in upper mesopotamia but regardless of which account you take and once again abraham is considered by many historians as a legendary figure so there's not clear evidence that he existed in a historical sense but if you take the accounts in the old testament and the hebrew bible he would have gone with his family from orr and eventually migrated to canon which is in near or around modern day israel lebanon palestine that general area so it's either from this or or that or and abraham is considered the first of the three significant patriarchs for the jewish people the other two are isaac and jacob and once again i could do a whole series of videos on the stories of abraham but abraham's first son is ishmael who he has with the servant of his wife sarah after they determine that they're not able to or they don't think that they're able to have children and according to biblical accounts ishmael is viewed as the progenitor as the patriarch of the arab people but later in life abraham and at this point he is roughly a hundred years old and his wife sarah according to biblical accounts is in her 90s they have isaac who is considered a significant patriarch in judaism and this is the famous this is a painting by rembrandt of the famous abraham being willing to sacrifice his son isaac but then he gets stopped at the last minute but it's viewed as a sign of his willingness to his faith in god and his willingness to follow god now isaac's son is jacob and jacob is later named by god as israel and so this is where the word israelites come from and even the modern state of israel now one of jacob's son is joseph and once again is according to biblical accounts there isn't a lot of historical evidence here but it's a fascinating story the story of joseph how he is sold by his brothers into slavery and taken from canon to to egypt but joseph once again fascinating story is eventually able to rise through the ranks become the vizier of egypt and later his family including jacob come to egypt when there's a famine in canon and that is the explanation for the biblical settlement of a significant fraction of the israelites in egypt but then they are enslaved and according to biblical accounts they are enslaved for 400 years over 400 years and that's what you see in this green line right over here and they stay enslaved in egypt until we get to moses who is considered the most significant of the prophets in the jewish tradition and one of the very most significant prophets amongst christians and muslims so let's get to moses so moses story once again one of these famous stories how the pharaoh is get feeling threatened by the growing population of the jewish people who remember are enslaved and so as the story goes he orders all newborn hebrew jewish boys to be killed but moses's mother hides moses and he puts them on a on a basket in the nile and the pharaoh's daughter discovers him and raises moses and so he's able to get an education and is part of the royal court of the pharaoh but later in life he sees a slave master that's abusing a jewish person to death and then he kills a slave master and so he's afraid for his life and so he runs away fearing the penalty for killing the slave master and he goes to mount sinai or mount horeb and this is where we think the biblical mounts this is where the current mount sinai mount horeb is and that's where we think the biblical one might have been and that's where we have the story of the burning bush where he is commanded by god who is kind of the angel of the lord is speaking through this bush and telling moses go back and you need to free the jewish people from enslavement and so he does go back and he is able to liberate them and once again this is a very famous story and the pharaoh's armies follow him he parts the red sea the pharaoh's army is eventually destroyed and he takes the jewish people back to mount sinai and mount horeb when these are sometimes viewed as two different mountains sometimes the same mountains different sides of the same mountains we are not exactly sure but most people view them as the same mountain and it was at mount sinai mount horeb where now with now moses is able to receive the famous 10 10 commandments and he's able to receive the jewish laws and the first five books of the hebrew bible the torah the pentateuch the the first five books of the old testament genesis exodus leviticus numbers and deuteronomy these the authorship of these is ascribed to moses so once moses and and once again historians really debate that but this is what this is according to biblical accounts now once he receives this this word of god he then takes the jewish people they set up a tabernacle they go through the desert for 40 years and he brings them to the promised land and before entering moses dies but he essentially is able to resettle the jewish people back in canon