Vishvavajra
Active Member
Indeed. Ancient people generally didn't have names for their religions. It was just "the way we do things here." For the Western world at least, Christianity was the first to pioneer the concept of a named religion that was separable from the native culture of a place. Even Judaism in ancient times wasn't strictly a religious designator but an entire culture—and one that only arose in comparing these people here against those over there. It's basically the equivalent of "Hellenism."Of course Moses never said his religion was Judaism. Why would he label his religion by the name of one of the 12 tribes? Why would he even call it a religion when it was, for him, simply an exhaustive social code centered around an omnipresent deity whom he encountered day to day?
Can you show me a use of the word (in English or Hebrew) Jew/Judaism from before the Scroll of Esther (approx 350 BCE)?
And the reason why we don't see references to Judaism as such before the 4th century BCE or so is probably because Judaism as a self-conscious national identity is a post-Exilic/diaspora phenomenon. When it was just some people living in a place, doing their thing, there was no need to name it. When they're living in other places and still doing their thing, setting them apart from the rest of the population, then it makes sense to want to name it.