Judaism, then, is here taken to represent that later development of
the Religion of Israel which began with the reorganisation after the
Babylonian Exile (444 B.C.), and was crystallised by the Roman Exile
(during the first centuries of the Christian Era). The exact period
which will be here seized as a starting-point is the moment when the
people of Israel were losing, never so far to regain, their territorial
association with Palestine, and were becoming (what they have ever since
been) a community as distinct from a nation. They remained, it is true,
a distinct race, and this is still in a sense true. Yet at various
periods a number of proselytes have been admitted, and in other ways
the purity of the race has been affected. At all events territorial
nationality ceased from a date which may be roughly fixed at 135 A.D.,
when the last desperate revolt under Bar-Cochba failed, and Hadrian drew
his Roman plough over the city of Jerusalem and the Temple area. A new
city with a new name arose on the ruins. The ruins afterwards reasserted
themselves, and Aelia Capitolina as a designation of Jerusalem is familiar
only to archaeologists.

But though the name of Hadrian's new city has faded, the effect of
its foundation remained. Aelia Capitolina, with its market-places and
theatre, replaced the olden narrow-streeted town; a House of Venus reared
its stately form in the north, and a Sanctuary to Jupiter covered, in the
east, the site of the former Temple. Heathen colonists were introduced,
and the Jew, who was to become in future centuries an alien everywhere,
was made by Hadrian an alien in his fatherland. For the Roman Emperor
denied to Jews the right of entry into Jerusalem. Thus Hadrian completed
the work of Titus, and Judaism was divorced from its local habitation.
More unreservedly than during the Babylonian Exile, Judaism in the Roman
Exile perforce became the religion of a community and not of a state;