An Embroidery Of The Wikipedia Page For Embroidery.

Following up on the promised Jewish history for @misguidedandperplexed. This will be a brief history of the origins of the Israelites and Judaism from a secular, historical viewpoint. Sources will be linked, although some of them are behind paywalls.

Around the year 1200 BCE, there was a mass destruction of empires around the Levant and Mediterranean, known as "The [Late] Bronze Age Collapse." (a) The period after the Bronze Age Collapse until the 6th century BCE (500s), is called the Iron Age. It is in this time period that the Israelites emerge in the Levant.

Ann Killebrew, whose work I'm citing, defines the term "ethnogenesis" as "a coming together of peoples from diverse backgrounds into a single tribal group which shares a belief in a common descent and ideology" (b). What we want to establish is how and when Israelite ethnogenesis took place.

There are a few theories about this. One is that early Israelites were “seminomadic” people who spent summers in the Judean Hills and gradually developed a sense of community with the few Canaanites already living there, eventually permanently settling in the hills. This is perhaps the closest of the newer models to the biblical narrative, in that a people originally moving across a desert over a long period of time arrived in modern Israel/Palestine and built their own settlements, sometimes clashing with the people there as they expanded their territory. (b)

The most likely theory, in my opinion, is that early Israelite society was made of both Canaanite peasants and farmers and “displaced peasants and pastoralists”, including the peoples from the deserts surrounding modern Israel/Palestine. It also allows for small groups of slaves running from Egypt to have joined the people of the hills, which would provide an excellent basis for the Exodus story, despite it not happening exactly as written in the Bible. (b)

Whatever theory we use, we have to account for the missing Patriarchs. It seems unlikely that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's sons ever existed in real life, but their names refer to real tribes of the early Iron Age. The Israelite tribes of the early Iron Age don't match with the ones we know today, exactly. (c) Early texts, notably the Song of Deborah, include references to the tribes of Gilead and Machir, and exclude several of the usual tribes. This is evidence of a degree of “fluidity” in the early Iron Age I, as the tribes were still in the process of becoming distinct entities; the list of tribes seems to have solidified by the time the tribes came together in the 10th-9th centuries BCE. (d)

Okay we're out of the Joshua/Judges period! Next up: Monarchies.

You may have seen the claim that the first Israelite monarchy arose in 1047 BCE and lasted until it split into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south, somewhere in the middle of the 900s BCE. The 1047 number is almost definitely untrue, but it's harder to say whether or not the United Monarchy (as the theorized first monarchy is known) really existed (e). It certainly did not exist in the grandeur that is depicted in the Tanakh. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to skip to the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel in the northern region of Israel/Palestine (called Cana'an at the time), which did occur sometime in the 800s BCE (f), and was followed by the Kingdom of Judah to the south shortly thereafter. In 722 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Empire, and the remainder of the Israelite population of the Northern Kingdom was absorbed into the Southern Kingdom. In 587-586 BCE, the Southern Kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, which began the Babylonian Exile, in which the Israelites were carted off to Babylon. (g)

And now that we're in the Exile, it's finally time to talk about Judaism!

Up until the Babylonian Exile, the Israelites were henotheistic -- that is, they believed there were multiple gods, but worshipped only one. There is debate over which god they worshipped where and when, but to simplify, the god that emerged in Cana'an during this time was known as yud-hey-vav-hey (YHWH, in English letters). YHWH had merged with another god, Ba'al, from the Cana'anite pantheon, and had then merged again with the Cana'anite god El; we aren't sure where YHWH came from. Suffice to say, by the time of the Exile, the Israelites were a sacrificial cult that worshipped the god of the Israelites, YHWH, by sacrificing to YHWH at the Temple in Jerusalem. This is called Yahwism or simply Israelite Religion by modern scholars. (h)

And then, the Temple was destroyed, and the Israelites found themselves in diaspora, away from their sacred site. This is the period in which Judaism, as distinct from Israelite Religion, arose. The Exilic community saw the emergence of prayer and the start of mass observance of Shabbat, as well as the massive rise in importance of Yom Kippur, and the process of codifying the Torah began in earnest. (i)

In 539 BCE, many Jews returned to Judah under the rule of the Persians. From that point until 70 CE, the religion practiced is known as Second Temple Judaism (j). It was during this time that sects of Judaism emerged, like the Essenes (of Dead Sea Scrolls fame), and the Pharisees (the precursors to the post-70 CE rabbis). (k). After the destruction of the Second Temple, most of the Jews living in Eretz Yisrael were forced out into what is now called the Diaspora. It is in the Diaspora that Rabbinic Judaism (the kind almost-universally practiced today) emerged.

As a last note, I will say that there is a definitive through-line from Israelite Religion to Second Temple Judaism to Rabbinic Judaism. Obviously there are political ramifications for all of this, which I won't get into now, and there's much more history after the Diaspora began that I would be happy to talk about elsewhere. But hopefully this is a satisfying explanation of the rise of Judaism from a secular standpoint. :)

Sources:

a. Mark, Joshua J. "Bronze Age Collapse." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified September 20, 2019.

b. Killebrew, Ann E., 'Early Israel’s Origins, Settlement, and Ethnogenesis', in Brad E. Kelle, and Brent A. Strawn (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible (2020; online edn, Oxford Academic, 10 Nov. 2020).

c. “The Twelve Tribes of Israel.” (2013) Jewish Virtual Library.

d. Weingart, Kristin (2019) "'All These Are the Twelve Tribes of Israel:' The Origins of Israel’s Kinship Identity." Near Eastern Archaeology 82.1: 29–30.

e. Kalimi, Isaac (29 November 2018). Writing and Rewriting the Story of Solomon in Ancient Israel. Cambridge University Press. p. 32.

f. Master, Daniel M. “Phases in the History of the Kingdom of Israel.” Chapter. In The Social Archaeology of the Levant: From Prehistory to the Present, edited by Assaf Yasur-Landau, Eric H. Cline, and Yorke Rowan, 354–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

g. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Babylonian Captivity." Encyclopedia Britannica, January 31, 2025.

h. Brown, William. "Ancient Israelite & Judean Religion." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified July 13, 2017.

i. Silberman, L.H., Cohen, G.D., Vajda, G., Feldman, L.H., Greenberg, M., Novak, D., Gaster, T.H., Hertzberg, A., Dimitrovsky, H.Z., Baron, S.W., Pines, S. "Judaism." Encyclopedia Britannica.

j. Reed, Annette Yoshiko "Second Temple Judaism". In obo in Biblical Studies. Oxford Bibliographies.

k. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Essene." Encyclopedia Britannica, March 11, 2025.

yes 2020 has sucked like a ravenous kirby but in november we finally get to vote that hateful orange turd out of office so eyes on the prize ya’lls

Stuff my camp kids did during snack free time today from most to least expected.

1. Eat their snack (the primary thing they are expected to do)

2. Ships and sailors (normal camp game)

3. Big kids sang the National anthem in four part harmony while the little kids buried a tenth grader in leaves and grass. (I put these together because these events clearly were connected but I’m not sure how)

4. Held a “funeral” where the girl was resurrected by everyone singing “Love Story” over her dead body.

5. Turned on “fire ambiance eight hours” on somebody’s phone, buried the phone completely in sticks in the shape of a campfire, and roleplayed as monkeys/cavemen discovering fire for the first time.

My something was a toothbrush...

Do you ever accidentally break something and regret it but also secretly think you're stronger than you ever knew possible???

Currently feeling feelings over Peter’s Denial

We now shift outside the high priest's house to an apostle in trouble. This is "Peter's Denial."

I've grown less self-conscious about repeating myself with recordings, so here again is the live Australian cast from 1973 with an interesting, string-laden, fast-paced take on this little scene.

You know the drill...

The Lyrics

MAID BY THE FIRE I THINK I'VE SEEN YOU SOMEWHERE I REMEMBER YOU WERE WITH THAT MAN THEY TOOK AWAY I RECOGNISE YOUR FACE

PETER YOU'VE GOT THE WRONG MAN LADY I DON'T KNOW HIM AND I WASN'T WHERE HE WAS TONIGHT NEVER NEAR THE PLACE

SOLDIER THAT'S STRANGE FOR I AM SURE I SAW YOU WITH HIM YOU WERE RIGHT BY HIS SIDE AND YET YOU DENIED

PETER I TELL YOU I WAS NEVER EVER WITH HIM

OLD MAN BUT I SAW YOU TOO IT LOOKED JUST LIKE YOU

PETER

(ad lib shout)

I DON'T KNOW HIM

MARY MAGDALENE PETER DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE SAID YOU'VE GONE AND CUT HIM DEAD

PETER I HAD TO DO IT DON'T YOU SEE OR ELSE THEY'D GO FOR ME

MARY MAGDALENE IT'S WHAT HE TOLD US YOU WOULD DO I WONDER HOW HE KNEW

The Plot

He ran away from the scene of the arrest, but he couldn't bear not knowing what was happening to his teacher. Small surprise, then, that Peter followed the arresting party to the house of Caiaphas. Unable to enter himself, he warmed up by a campfire outside.

Not the world's smartest decision. Three onlookers (a maid, a soldier, and an old man) all recognize Peter as one of the men who were with Jesus earlier. Each time he vehemently denies his association, just as Jesus said he would, to the dismay of Mary, who wonders how Jesus knew that would happen...

The Analysis

Aside from the soldier becoming a generic "Solo from the Mob" in the currently licensed score, everything has stayed the same in this scene, lyrically and dramatically, since 1970, so time to once again chart the recurring motifs musically.

We've got:

Peter denying Jesus three times (as predicted), to the main theme from "Strange Thing, Mystifying," which originally accompanied Judas' criticism of Jesus' relationship with Mary -- thereby connecting Peter musically with Judas, both of them now betrayers of Jesus, and...

...when Mary points out that Peter did as Jesus said he would, she sings this to the betrayal motif from the Last Supper, even further underscoring Peter's betrayal.

Let it never be said Andrew Lloyd Webber didn't have a purpose in choosing a cyclical nature for these melodies!

Mildly Unrelated Op.-Ed.

In marked contrast to how he's described in the Bible, Peter kind of gets the short end of the stick in JCS. He doesn't have a lot to do as a solo vocalist, aside from "Peter's Denial" and "Could We Start Again Please?" He's pretty much just "one of the boys" in any staging; it's usually hard to even identify who Peter is unless he's singled out from the start, until his big moments in the second act.

Audition notices, no doubt building on what scripture makes him out to be, tend to describe him in terms like "gentle" or phrases along the lines of "slow to find his strength, but when he does, he becomes a stabilizing force among the apostles." But I gotta tell ya... I don't see it. There's not enough material there on paper to cover that ground.

When I've contemplated directing the show over the years, I've begun to pay special attention to the roles of Simon Zealotes and Peter. Simon's sole major appearance is in Act I, and Peter's couple of big scenes are in Act II, both without set-up or real follow-through. Can you see where I'm going with this?

Taking my cue from the recent European tour featuring Ted Neeley, I've thought of casting one performer to play both parts, billed separately due to contractual obligation but essentially a single role. It cuts costs (remember, I'm a producer first and foremost), creates a useful character arc out of two thankless ones without changing a word or note, and as long as there are twelve bodies (and one Jesus) around the table in Act II, those in the audience versed in the source can simply infer that Simon became Peter over the show's course, just like the notoriously temperamental Peter was originally called Simon in the Bible.

Let me go back to that second thing for a moment: "creates a useful character arc out of two thankless ones without changing a word or note." I want to unpack that to further sell my point.

What is Simon, really? He's exuberant, he's militant, someone who clearly jumps in before he really understands what's going on. He calls on his master to overthrow the Romans, only to be told he doesn't get the picture. Maybe, like Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ ("...only you understand it? Well, you'd better make me understand it too!"), he decides to wrestle with that, but he's not quite there yet. When the cops break up the scene, he reverts to form, only to be told, "Dude, not only are you wrong, it is way past the time what you're offering would be helpful. Don't quit your day job." How do you react to that? Maybe you discover you're not the Zealot you thought you were, and when the chips are down, out of both frustration and self-preservation, you deny you even know the guy when cornered by the opposition. And you still cling to the faint hope that this will change: "Alright, you've made your point. Time to unleash the fury, right? ...RIGHT???" Very powerful, fully-realized character there.

It's worth a thought, anyway...

Coming Up Next:

They said "take him to Pilate," and that's where he's headed for a showdown: "Pilate and Christ."

via @crysomemore

*goes on sefaria dot org*

the uncanny valley between “this academic article doesn’t make sense because i’m an idiot” and “this academic article doesn’t make sense because the author is an idiot”

Thank you for your contributions to society... oh wait! You have done nothing! In fact you have probably made the earth a worse place. Congratulations!

Knowing for a fact I made at least a few million folk in this world smile is good enough for me <3