should the Early Hellenistic period be regarded as an era of cultural continuity with the Yahwism of the past, or should it be viewed as one of cultural rupture signaling the emergence of nascent Judaism as it later came to be known?
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/between-yahwism-and-judaism/DF4B36DC1118F3DDAF3A060C7B4878CC
the central role of the Judean high priest that emerged in the Persian period continued to play a dominant role throughout Ptolemaic and early Seleucid rule. If Judeans were adjudicating themselves under their own sets of laws, however, we lack the data to be able to identify or characterize any such bodies of regulations. Crucially, there is little reason to assume that the Torah, predicated on Pentateuchal legislation, had already come to be widely known and recognized as authoritative at this early stage. Like the Persian period, the Early Hellenistic period has produced none of the material or textual evidence indicating widespread Torah observance as we have from the Late Hellenistic and Roman periods.......
clearly inherited from their forebears the longstanding tradition of venerating YHWH as their primary deity, a tradition that reaches as far back as the Iron Age (if not earlier). The same YHWH temple in Jerusalem which had apparently been established in the Persian period (probably on Iron Age foundations) appears to have continued to function uninterruptedly throughout the Hellenistic period and into the start of the Roman period....
In Egypt, by contrast, Judeans began to replace Aramaic with Greek, and began to adopt Greek names alongside traditional Hebrew and Aramaic names. However, as the trigger for both these developments in Egypt was likely the very practical need to facilitate social and commercial contacts in an increasingly Greek-speaking environment, we should probably not regard these shifts as a fundamental rejection of traditional Judean culture in favor of Greek....
there is little if any reason to regard the Early Hellenistic period as one of cultural rupture. If it is preferable to speak of “Yahwism” rather than “Judaism” when discussing the Persian period, we should probably retain this preference when discussing the Early Hellenistic period as well.Footnote............
The development of Jerusalem’s status as cultic center is clearly manifest in the rebuilding of its temple compound by Herod the Great toward the end of the first century BCE,...
it began to act as a player on the stage of the larger Hellenistic world, Greek language, naming conventions, and material culture began to make significant inroads even in the ancestral homeland. And during this time, texts and traditions associated with what eventually became our Hebrew Bible came to achieve widespread reception among Judean communities virtually everywhere they were found......
In these ways, while the Early Hellenistic period certainly appears to mark a strong degree of continuity with the Yahwism of the past, in some senses it may also be thought to have paved the way for the subsequent transition into the Judaism of the future.
 
 
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