Judaism's origin reflects the myth of history. Judaism is based on the Old Testament, which is common in all bibles used throughout many forms of Christianity as well as Judaism. The Old Testament is full of stories that deliver powerful messages of how the world was created. In Judaism, God is the divine storyteller in the history of the creation story. .
Adam and Eve were the first living things created. After they ate forbidden fruit, they were banned from the Garden of Eden. As punishment for disobeying God, he sent a terrible flood in which Noah gathered all of the animals in a magnificent arc to save them. Another story was when God sent Moses to free the Jews from slavery. The book of Exodus is another great story of Judaism history. In this book, Moses led his people out of Egypt and received the covenant at Mt Sinai. The Jews roamed the desert for forty years and didn't find the Promised Land until Moses died. For two hundred years, they didn't have a solid form of government. The Jews realized they needed a king with an army to defend their nation. God then appointed Saul as the first king of Israel. .
The formative era followed the biblical era. The destruction of the temple occurred in 70 CE. The Pharisees survived through this and provided new leadership. They wanted to change the priestly model into something that would allow them to practice Judaism in a new land. The Pharisees said that all of the men of the house were priests and the table was the altar. This was the transition from the written torah to the oral tradition. This new priestly tradition established rules that focused on acts of mercy and justice. Rabbinic Judaism emerged between the second and fifth century and the oral torah was written in to what became known as the Talmud. Hillel and Shammai both were teachers of the oral torah. The applied their teachings to everyday life but Shammai's teachings were much stricter while Hillel's were more lenient.