ion adherents, lie in the state religion of the ancient kingdom of Judah, which came to an end in 586B.C.E. (Coogan 1998). The three essential elements of Judaism are God, Torah, and Israel. It is the oldest monotheistic faith, believing that "God has entered into a special relationship, or covenant, with one people, the Jews, or Israel, and given them the task of being a 'light to the nations'" (Coogan 1998). The earliest known reference to the Israelites is an inscription on the Israel Stela, which was erected by the pharaoh Merneptah of Egypt who ruled 1213-1203 BCE. This indicates that during this era an ethnic entity named Israel existed in the central highlands of Canaan (Coogan 1998).
             Judaism conceives of God as transcendent, above nature and the world, yet God communicates with people through various media, such as the kabbalistic tradition, which holds that God has voluntarily relinquished some control over the world, granting free will on humanity, thus allowing the opportunity to prove its own level of maturity (Coogan 1998). Because the God of Judaism is formless, invisible, and beyond the capacity of humans to comprehend, it has, since its earliest days, avoided artistic portrayals that might be confused with attempts to depict the deity (Coogan 1998).
             As Erich Unger points out in the January 2003 issue of Shofar, "The Jewish religion is not a 'profession of articles of faith.' It is a world view and a system of morals, but it is also a social order with its own law, its government, its politics...a program at once spiritual and worldly for a people...Judaism is a 'secular religion'" (Unger 2003).
             Generally speaking, Gentiles have for more than a thousand years thought of the Jews in terms of "the Jewish people," not in terms of a religious party, such as "the Catholics" or the "Lutherans," but typically as "the People ...