Judaism
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
one of the most important faiths in the world, which Christians, as well as Jews, consider to have been revealed by God. Ancient Judaism. - The earliest form of the Jewish faith was patriarchal. On the night of the Israelitish departure from Egypt an essential part of Judaism, in its second or more developed form, was begun by the institution of the passover (Exod. xii., xiii.). At Sinai two tables of stone were given containing the 10 commandments. Subsequently there was revealed to Moses, to be by him communicated to the people, a complicated system of ceremonial observances, interspersed with judicial enactments. A splendid tabernacle-i. e., a tent on a divine model, was erected as the habitation of Jehovah, in the journeyings through the wilderness, to be in due time followed by a temple, when the people were permanently settled. A hereditary priesthood was consecrated, and a theocratic form of government maintained, the supreme civil ruler, whether lawgiver, r, military leader, judge, or king, being regarded as the vice-gerent of God. Ancient Judaism was the precursor of Christianity and the germ from which it sprang; and Christians generally believe that all the ceremonies, sacred personages, etc. of the older economy were types and shadows of the life and sufferings of Jesus Christ (Heb. ix., x., etc.). Modern Judaism. - After the Jews lost their independence, and especially after the destruction of Jerusalem, the judicial regulations of the Mosaic law ceased to be observed. In the latter half of the 4th century arose the Jerusalem, and in Vol. V-Cyc-S Vol the 6th the Babylonian Talmud, containing the rules, constitutions, precepts, and gent interpretations intended to supplement those of the Old Testament. See HE- BREWS: JEWS. one of the 12
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's wrote this in 1921, before the two events that most define modern Jewish life: the Nazi genocide of 1933-45, which killed some six million Jews and destroyed the great communities of eastern Europe, and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. The world's Jewish population is now concentrated in Israel and the United States rather than in Europe, and is organised into Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and other movements; the first woman rabbi ordained in America, Sally Priesand, was ordained in 1972. The entry's framing of Judaism as "the precursor of Christianity" whose rites were "types and shadows" of Christ was standard Christian teaching then, but the Catholic Church repudiated that supersessionist reading in Nostra Aetate (1965) and many Protestant bodies have followed. Scholarship has also moved: the Dead Sea Scrolls, found from 1947, transformed knowledge of Judaism in the Second Temple period, and few academic historians now treat the ceremonial law as delivered whole to Moses at Sinai.
Written for this edition, 2026.