Religion and Theology

There are two formative periods in the development of Judaism  the first marked the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans. The second date, 640, refers to the Arab conquest of the Near and Middle East and the establishment of Islam as the dominant religion of the region.

The Jewish faith encountered serious problems. The destruction of the temple was a serious blow to the priestly class  the temple being the symbol of faith and religiosity. Christianity became the legal religion of the Roman Empire. Emperor Constantine the Great adopted Christianity after his Christian inspired victory over his rival at Milvian Bridge. Theodosius II banned paganism and other mystic faiths in the empire. The Jews were essentially pushed into the margin, losing political and religious control over the Holy Land.

At the start of the 7th century A.D., the Arabs conquered parts of the Byzantine Empire, destroyed the once proud Sassanian Empire, and embellished Christian kingdoms in Spain and North Africa. The Jews became subjects of an alien faith. Muslims claimed the Holy Land as part of their religious heritage. These great surges pushed Jewish thinkers to study Greek and Roman philosophy, finding rational grounds for both the destruction of the Second Temple and the inflation of the Jewish faith to alien religions. Religious communities like the Essenes sprung up, awaiting liberation and religious fervor from the Divine majesty.

However, prior to the Great Jewish Diaspora, there were signs that Greek and Roman philosophy influenced Judaism. The Greek philosopher, Philo, for example, argued that the truth of the Torah of Moses must coincide with scientific rationality. Indeed, according to him, the Torah was a systematic and scientific account of the world and human life.

The preeminent philosopher Plato argued that the visible world contained an order that the human mind, using logical and mathematical reasoning, could comprehend. This pattern or order has a hidden blueprint  a form which cannot be situated in the material world. The world of Ideas is the unintelligible mystic set  the world where different Forms and Ideals are created. The logos may be defined as the efficient cause of Ideals. After the Torah was translated into Greek, the word logos became synonymous to the word God  the source of intelligible and unintelligible Forms and Ideals.

Commentaries on the Mishnah, often called Talmud, was produced around 200 C.E. The Mishnah is a collection or legal discussions about the application of Jewish laws to different situations. In the section called Abot (which means fathers). In this section, the Talmudic rabbis discussed several religious and civil matters. These subjects were laws related to relationships, marriage, and family. For example, the Tractate Yebamot deals specifically with levirate marriage  this is the obligation of a man to marry his deceased brothers wife if he died without offspring. This law was based from the biblical command to be fruitful and multiply  inherent originated from the Book of Genesis. Although women were exempted from the duty of procreation, they did not have equal status with men under the Talmudic law. The law also prohibited women from studying the Torah  because women were expected to engage essentially in domestic activities. However, the Talmud law is fairly liberal with respect to the rights and privileges of women  an influence of Greek and Roman philosophy.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, the Talmudic law became the blueprint of Jewish life. The Talmudic law helped Jewish communities in the Roman Empire, later the Arab empire, to cope with political and social challenges inherent to a minority.