There were still obstacles to overcome once Canaan was reached, but the Hebrews persevered until the Construction of the first Temple by King Solomon. This was followed by revolt and unrest and after Solomon's death; the now-Hebrew land was split into two kingdoms - Israel and Judah. The Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Israel and its ten tribes were exiled from the land in the 6th century B.C.E. Then in 586 B.C.E. the kingdom of Judah was conquered and the Temple destroyed by the Babylonians .
In 405 B.C.E. the Jews won a war for political independence from Syria and refused to given in to Greek cultural influences. They remained a separate entity under the Romans but their independence soon eroded after the unsuccessful revolt of 70 C.E. The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans was considered more catastrophic than that of the first, but from the ruins emerged the rabbinic movement.
The Jewish people had lost control politically but the rabbis emphasized that they still had control over their communal and spiritual lives. "They taught that by conformity in daily life to the Torah as elaborated in the rabbinic tradition, that through study, prayer and observance the individual Jew could achieve salvation while still waiting for God to bring about the Messianic redemption of all Israel. Thus institutionally the synagogue and the rabbinic study have replaced the destroyed Temple- .
Jews dispersed throughout the known world. Their adaptation to local customs (while maintaining their heritage) varied from country to country and even from city to city. In many cases their civil rights were eventually restricted.
"The civil emancipation of the European Jewry, a process complicated by lingering anti-Jewish sentiment, evoked different reformulations of Judaism in western and eastern Europe. In the west, Judaism was reformulated as a religious confession.
