In week three of the course, you will be studying the history of early Judaism, the first of the Western world's three major monotheistic religions. The early Hebrews were completely insignificant from a political, economic or philosophic point-of-view; however, their development of a religion, which can be characterized as ethical monotheism, proved to be of utmost importance to the future development of religions within the Western world. The Hebrews migrated sometime in the second millennium from Mesopotamia to Palestine. That migration was not necessarily a successful one, and there was a period of time spent in enslavement in ancient Egypt. Eventually the Hebrews did settle down and create a formal political state in Palestine in the tenth century bce, but that political state lasted less than a century, as the Hebrews split into two separate states and then later were conquered by Babylonians and Assyrians, resulting in the destruction and scattering of the traditional twelve tribes. The real importance of the Hebrews was their development of a monotheistic religion. It is important to remember that this religion evolved over a long period of time, probably close to a thousand years. The religion was not a revealed religion, such as Christianity or Islam, both of which were connected with revelations to a specific individual. Judaism evolved over time and eventually reached its finished stage in the fifth century bce. The religion, based on the principles of ethical monotheism, required the belief in one god (monotheism), an all powerful, universal God, who demanded ethical behavior on the part of all people. This principle of ethical monotheism, which, by the way, was largely a result of the work of the prophets in the seventh, eight and ninth centuries, was critical in that it shifted responsibility from the community to the individual. What does that mean? Earlier in the religion, the community was responsible for the proper performance of religious ceremony, ritual and sacrifice. If that ceremony, ritual and sacrifice were not properly performed, then the community as a whole suffered. With the new religious conception, it was not the community that was responsible for proper performance of ritual, but it was the individual (rich or poor, strong or weak, leader or follower--all equal before the law) who was responsible for his or her own behavior. If a person did not follow the ethical guidelines of the religion, and the most common guidelines were those contained in the Ten Commandments, it was the individual who would suffer. So, this focus on the individual, this focus on individual behavior and individual responsibility, became one of the key fundamental principles of future developments in the West.