JUDAISM (2100 BC) Abraham. To Jews Palestine is the site of the ancient kingdom of Israel and the land traditionally promised to them by God. Long after the time of Abraham, an agricultural crisis led the Israelites to move to Egypt, where they were originally made welcome but later turned into slaves. After more than 400 years they were freed from Egyptian bondage and led back to Palestine, or Canaan, as it was called then. This release from Egypt is believed to have taken place about the 13th century BC. Over the next several centuries Israel became a moderately powerful nation in the Middle East, particularly under its first three kings Saul, David, and Solomon.

After Solomon's death, the kingdom was divided in two parts. The northern segment of Israel was overrun by the Assyrian Empire late in the 8th century BC, and the southern part (known as the nation of Judah) was conquered by the Babylonians early in the 6th century. When the southern kingdom ended with the carrying off of most of the remaining Israelites to Babylon, the nation's days as a political and military power were virtually over.

This Babylonian captivity began what is called the Diaspora, or dispersion. From that time until the present, the Jewish people were dispersed throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East and the Mediterranean region.

Some Jews were allowed to return to their homeland beginning in the 6th century BC. From that time on, however, the region was under the domination of one foreign power after another, with the exception of a brief period of independence in the 2nd century. In the 1st century BC, the region was incorporated into the Roman Empire as Palestine.

It is Israel's firm conviction that the one God, creator of the universe, was active in every phase of its history: God called Abraham and told him to go to Canaan to become the father of a nation. God released the people from Egypt and led them back to Canaan because He chose to select Israel from all the nations of the world and use it as the vehicle for bringing knowledge of Him to the rest of the nations.

This arrangement between God and Israel is called a covenant (solemn agreement). God promised to make Israel a great nation, and, in response, Israel was to be obedient to Him forever.

The issue of human death was never clearly defined in Israel. There was no question of the body's dying and an immortal soul's going off by itself, because the individual was believed to be a unit, not a composite of body, mind, and soul. The whole man died; but Israelites did not believe that death meant extinction. The dead continued to exist in a kind of netherworld called sheol, where they had no experience of any kind. This concept, while not very clear, laid the groundwork for the later belief in the resurrection of the body from the dead.

The whole law can be summed up as total devotion to God and love for one's neighbor. The statutes, as collected in the book of Leviticus, specify all the many ways these two injunctions are to be carried out, and the regulations are extremely detailed, governing the minutest aspects of daily living along with the larger arena of social interaction.