In a recent book, the Israeli archaeologist Yonatan Adler contends that one cannot speak of “Judaism” as such beginning anytime before the middle of the 2nd century BCE, at least if Judaism is understood as a set of practices observed by a sizeable number of people who thought of themselves as Jews. Jon D. Levenson has examined the book’s strengths and weaknesses here. In her own review, Malka Simkovich argues that ideas like “covenant, monotheism, revelation, and the messianic age” were widely shared by Jews earlier than Adler suggests, along with a focus on “the Jerusalem Temple, charity, and prayer.” What’s more, she writes, Jews of this era already had a strong sense of fellow feeling wherever they lived:
In the 2nd century BCE, Jews living in Egypt enthusiastically responded to the Hasmoneans’ victory over the Syrian Greeks. To show support for their Judean kin, many Egyptian Jews began to give their children Hebrew names. And by the 1st century BCE, Jews in Egypt were sending so much money to support the Jerusalem Temple that the Roman orator Cicero complained about it. With the exception of sectarian documents, nearly all Jewish texts produced at this time refer to all Jews, wherever they lived, as members of a global community that share a common heritage, a common God, and a common messianic future.
Read more on Jewish Review of Books: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-history/15383/origin-stories/