This page does not presuppose any assumption about the existance of Christ. It is not a “Christianized” view on the subject of the Judaic religion, it tries to be academic.

The Judaic faith calls upon and rests upon some very specific points in order to claim it’s validity.

1. That Abraham is the patriarch of all of the Jewish people,
2. That God made a covenant with Abraham, promising that his descendants would become a great nation,
3. That though Abraham’s son Isaac and his lineage, down to Jacob/Israel, and his twelve sons, the tribes of Israel came into existence, and
4. That the covenant God made with Moses grants the children of Israel claim over the lands that became known as Judea.

From these, as well as the details of the covenants that God made with His people, the ancient kingdoms of Israel to the north and of Judea to the south were formed.

In order to go into detail about the history and ontological conclusion of the Judaic faith, we must mention that in most of the covenants, the precondition for the covenant itself was obidience and faith to God and His rules, with each new covenant within the totality of the Old Testament being an update to the previous rules¹. In most cases, when evil befell on the Jews, it was because they diverged from the commandments as a society; they stopped obeying God and the laws He had given them, and so God, seeing as they didn’t want to maintain their relationship with Him, withdrew.

This is what ultimately happened to the Kingdom of Israel, the northern kingdom. The people of the Kingdom of Israel adopted the idols and gods of their neighbours, and in the process ended their covenant with God. They abandoned Him, and so when the Assyrians came He respected their choice and left them alone. As a result the ten tribes that comprised the kingdom of Israel were exiled, spread out, and eventually they stopped existing. As the tribes forgot God, so too did He forget them, and as a result they ceased.

Let us now look at the destruction of the Second Temple, and the subsequent exile of the Jews across the Roman empire.

the ontological end of Judaism #

In the covenant between God and Moses, it was dictated that the only place of worship, where the Levites (men of the tribe of Levi), who God ordained as priests, could practice their religious tasks, such as the sacrifices, was the Temple. This means that in every sense, be that physical or metaphysical, the Temple is the ontological center of the faith. God’s very presence on earth, the Shekinah dwelt in the Temple, and only in the Temple.

Without the Temple, there is no Judaism, as there is no possible means with which to fulfil the conditions outlined in Mosaic Law. In an ontological sense, the Judaic faith needs the Temple to exist, because the Temple is the only place where religious ritual can take place, as ordained by God Himself. The existence of the Temple is a necessity for the ontological existance of the Judaic religion, as it was mandated that it would be.

This means that the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans ended not only the Judaic religion in the physical sense of exiling the Jews across Europe, but it also ended the Judaic religion in a metaphysical and ontological sense. The Temple fell and the Judaic religion with it. There is no more Israel, no more Judea, no more the Judaic religion.

religious mandate #

After the end of the Judaic faith in a religious sense, Rabbinic Judaism, where the Pharisees and scribes gained religious authority, became the norm. Since the Levites could not fulfil, in every sense of the word, their duties, the focus shifted into interpreting the pre-existing law, the Torah, however there lies an issue.

The Levites were granted their authority by God Himself, on Mount Sinai; they were ordained by Him as His priests.

The rabbis could not claim any such authority, as they are rabbis purely because of their mastery of the Torah, a learned skill, which means that any person, be they Jew or non-Jew, can claim the same expertise, and can even interpret the Torah more meaningfully or accurately that a rabbi. Since there is no religious authority or divine mandate, it is impossible to categorically decide which interpretation is objectively correct, and so it is impossible for a rabbi to claim any sort of religious importance. Their role is purely academic, and their authority is human.

the dissolution of the tribes of Judea #

In the Biblical era, and until the destruction of the Second Temple, the Judaic tribes kept track of their members via records in the Temple, with the membership of each tribe passing in a patrilinear fashion. This meant that the sone of a member of the tribe of Benjamin would be of the tribe of Benjamin.

With the destruction of the Temple, along with its records, it was only though oral tradition that the tribal lineage could be kept track of, as the tribal identity was passed from father to son.

After the destruction, there was a shift in Judaic practice however, and the Jewish society shifted from a patriliniear to a matrilinear system. This meant that a baby would be of Jewish descent if the mother was Jewish, regardless of the father. This in turn led to the end of the last tribes of Israel since, if membership to a tribe is patrilinear, as was practised under Mosaic Law, the shift to a matrilinear system severed any connection, biological or metaphysical, to the original twelve tribes of Israel.

All twelve tribes have ontologically ceased to exist, and so there are no more children of Jacob/Israel left, and so there is nobody to claim a continuation to the covenants of old.

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