Judaism

===Historical Jewish groupings (to 1700)===
Around the 1st century CE, there were several small Jewish sects: the [[Pharisees]], [[Sadducees]], [[Zealots]], [[Essenes]], and [[early Christianity|Christians]]. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, these sects vanished.{{sfn|Schiffman|2003|p=}}<ref>{{cite book|author1=Sara E. Karesh|author2=Mitchell M. Hurvitz|title=Encyclopedia of Judaism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z2cCZBDm8F8C&pg=PA444|year=2005|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=978-0-8160-6982-8|pages=444–|quote=The Sadducees disappeared when the second Temple was destroyed in the year 70 C.E and Pharisaic Judaism became the preeminent Jewish sect.|access-date=5 April 2018|archive-date=10 February 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230210203459/https://books.google.com/books?id=Z2cCZBDm8F8C&pg=PA444|url-status=live}}</ref> Christianity survived, but by breaking with Judaism and [[Schism (religion)|becoming a separate religion]]; the [[Pharisees]] survived but in the form of [[Rabbinic Judaism]] (today, known simply as "Judaism").{{sfn|Schiffman|2003|p=}} The [[Sadducees]] rejected the [[Revelation|divine inspiration]] of the [[Nevi'im|Prophets]] and the [[Ketuvim|Writings]], relying only on the [[Torah]] as divinely inspired. Consequently, a number of other core tenets of the Pharisees' belief system (which became the basis for modern Judaism), were also dismissed by the Sadducees. (The [[Samaritans]] practiced a similar religion, which is traditionally considered separate from Judaism.)

Like the Sadducees who relied only on the Torah, some Jews in the 8th and 9th centuries rejected the authority and divine inspiration of the oral law as recorded in the [[Mishnah]] (and developed by later rabbis in the two Talmuds), relying instead only upon the Tanakh. These included the [[Isunians]], the [[Yudganites]], the [[Malikites]],{{Clarify|reason=|date=September 2021|text=|pre-text=|post-text=}} and others. They soon developed oral traditions of their own, which differed from the rabbinic traditions, and eventually formed the [[Karaism|Karaite]] sect. Karaites exist in small numbers today, mostly living in Israel. Rabbinical and Karaite Jews each hold that the others are Jews, but that the other faith is erroneous.

Over a long time, Jews formed distinct ethnic groups in several different geographic areas—amongst others, the Ashkenazi Jews (of [[Central Europe|central]] and Eastern Europe), the [[Sephardi Jews]] (of Spain, Portugal, and North Africa), the [[Beta Israel]] of Ethiopia, the [[Yemenite Jews]] from the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and the [[Cochin Jews|Malabari and Cochin Jews]] from Kerala . Many of these groups have developed differences in their prayers, traditions and accepted canons; however, these distinctions are mainly the result of their being formed at some cultural distance from normative (rabbinic) Judaism, rather than based on any doctrinal dispute.