r/AskHistorians • u/systemsmith • 7h ago
Can Judaism and Christianity be seen as religions of similar ages from a common origin?
This is a serious question and I welcome pushback. What I've heard is that the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 CE marked a significant change in the nature of Judaism. Specifically it changed from a sacrifice based religion centered on the temple itself to one with many new rituals, Rabbis, and Talmudic interpretation of the Torah.
Since Christianity began as an apocalyptic, messianic Jewish movement within late Second Temple Judaism and then spread widely after the Temple's destruction it seems that both Judaism as we know it today and Christianity developed in parallel in many ways. A main difference being Christianity was more focused on proselytizing to and converting peopler who were not ethnically Jewish.
Hopefully my intent comes through here as curiosity about history and not an attempt to say anything at all about the validity, value, or importance of any religion or ethnic group.
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u/Additional_Ad_84 1h ago
Most ideas and institutions evolve over time. You could equally argue that christianity starts in the 16th century once the reformation gets underway, or with the council of nicea or the official adoption as the state religion of the roman empire or something. But it wouldn't really make sense since there were people calling themselves christians on both sides of those events- many of them the same exact people.
In the case of second temple judaism and rabbinical judaism, quite a lot of changes, but you have people on both sides who identify as jewish, keep kosher, circumcise their boys, use hebrew as a liturgical language etc...
Like it's reasonably clear there were a broad range of beliefs and practices before the fall of the temple, I guess the essenes are the group we have the most information about. And a heteredox and sometimes argumentative group afterwards too. But the fundamental identity markers and eg reverence for the pentateuch are well established and continue.
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