Antoun Ananias makes the case for Judaism almost entirely being copied from other religions, with the exception of Isaiah, which was a supernatural revenge fantasy against the many conquerors and overlords of Judea, and that Isaiah itself was written by several authors about 100 BCE. The Hebrews were a minor tribal entity that emerged in Judea circa 1000 BCE and lasted about 200 years having Chieftains, not Kings, and about whose religion we know nothing at all. He concludes that Judaism and Christianity are competing irrationalist cults both following the narrative from Isaiah, [one saying the Messiah has come once and will come again later, and the other saying the Messiah hasn't come at all yet] and the world would and will eventually be better off without either. If it hadn't been for Christianity's success is becoming a world religion, Judaism and all of its fantastical claims about what happened during the First Temple period--which lack any evidence in archeology--would have been long ago forgotten. [Even at the start of the Hasmonean Kingdom, whose midpoint was when Isaiah was written according to Dr Ananias, Judea proper was a rather small region surrounding Jerusalem and the original much smaller Second Temple which was later greatly expanded by the Roman vassal Herod the Great, whose father was an Idumean--a descendant of the Edomites to the southeast of Judea and whose land was one of many territories conquered by the Hasmonians. The Hasmonean Kingdom lasted 103 years until it was conquered, this time by the Romans]. Commenters state that this was all common knowledge 50 years ago and seems to have been forgotten because of Zionism which attempts to revive the image of a mythical ancient world of Hebrews sprawling across the Levant which never existed. In fact, I myself first heard these things about 50 years ago, from some guy I met in college (a White history major btw) and I couldn't believe it.
https://medium.com/@antounananias/why-judaism-is-plagiarism-cba5efb0c825
I see that others claim that Isaiah was written starting in the 8th century (by the actual "Prophet Isaiah") and ending in the 5th century. I have not seen and I doubt there is any physical evidence for this. In fact, the earliest known copy of the Book of Isaiah is from the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls date from 250 to 125 BCE, and it seems like they also have the earliest known copies of the other books in the Torah or Old Testament, except for small fragments of blessings found in earlier writings. According to legend, the rest of the Torah et all had been passed down verbally before that.
Recently I have been fond of the idea that the Torah was conceived and composed (if not written down) during or immediately after Babylonian captivity and the Persian release, written to create the myths that the Jews being "returned" to Judea would live by as a religious sect (explicitly not a country or nation) occupying the land near the country Egypt which Persia sought to conquer. They were written so as to be compatible with monotheistic Persian Zoroastrianism, to indicate that the Jews had a glorious civilization long before, but it all had come to a bad end before, and that they must now wait for a Messiah from God to have another such kingdom again. It also included a myth of Egyptian captivity to make the Jews hate the Egyptians. It all fits so perfectly with the Persian intent to conquer Egypt, which they did not long after, I figured the Persians inspired or paid for these compositions to provide a faux history for the "returning" Jews to live by. Though it is also said they were composed in Babylonian captivity to help preserve a nationalist sentiment.
But there is no evidence the books were written even that soon after the events they supposedly describe from 1400-800 BCE including the Egyptian captivity, for which there is no widely accepted evidence, though some claim there is (I found this link in a comment and am discouraged that it is just a video interview of dubious value rather than serious writing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeI2-YPDTXk
If indeed the books of the Torah were actually composed and written from 300-125 BCE which was before, during or immediately before the Hasmonean Kingdom, it seems more like they were intended to glorify the new Judean priestly and warrior class, instill nationalism, and to motivate and justify the forthcoming Hasmonean* conquests, effectively claiming that the ancestors of the Jews had previously ruled over some of these same lands beyond Judea proper in a glorious ancient kingdom promised to them by God (ie, conquered and stolen by them way back then) that they were only seeking to "restore." But there is no physical evidence at all of any of the conquests as described in the Torah.
*The Hasmonean dynasty was begun by military leaders within the Judean priestly class, the Maccabees, when Judea was a province of the Seleucid Empire--which itself was a spinoff of the earlier Greek empire. Eventually the Hasmonians secured their sovereign independence, but for only 47 years before the Romans finished defeating and annexing them and other remaining Seleucid fragments. The Hasmonean empire was hated by many of the peoples it conquered and ruled and was in the midst of a civil war between rival Hasmonean brothers when the Romans defeated them. The Romans formally replaced the Hasmonean rulers with King Herod, an Idumean, in 37 BCE, though at first they gave the new Roman province which included Hasmonean conquests the name Judeah, now effectively the "greater Judea" that the Hasmoneans had conquered and were barely holding on to.
Antoun gives his better sourced and recounted version of the history of the Pentateuch, Tanakh, and Torah and related events here:
https://medium.com/@antounananias/the-aramaic-gospels-vs-the-fake-gospels-2ac1e9073067
The fact that the previous attempted restoration of the Torah's mythological past under the Hasmonean Kingdom lasted only 103 years (and only 47 years as a sovereign nation) gives some hope regarding the shortness of the continued existence of the current one, which is widely and justifiably hated except by most Ashkenazi "Jews" (who Antoun and others such as Shlomo Sand) claim have no descent from the original Judeans.
I would characterize Ashkenazi descent from ancient Judeans not as nonexistant but rather as minimal and little more than other Europeans, noting that DNA doesn't actually provide a total record of descent because the original DNA can be almost entirely lost by genetic segregation after a few generations of mixing, and after 2000 years even slight mixing over time results in everyone being related somehow despite a lack of distinctive markers which may have been lost. My maternal family of Jacobson (Christians) claims descent from Jerusalem through James the Just who was definitely a real historical figure, himself a Judean high priest in Jerusalem assassinated on orders of the highest priest Ananus ben Ananus, which was a critical historical event ultimately leading to the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans. As the descendants of James the Just were Jewish Christians, they were likely spared by Rome, as well as allowed a free ticket to the empire, so this bloodline has a higher probability of having been preserved than others from Jerusalem at the time which may have been extinguished through war or slavery. Since pretty much all Europeans are related going back 2000 years, I've decided there is most likely some truth in our descent from James the Just, but not exclusive to me and my immediate ancestral family but shared by nearly all Europeans now. That is the way human descent actually works over a large number of generations, and it is on that basis that Ashkenazis are not excluded from Judean descent either even if their descent originated from only a handful of Judean founders mixed with Germans which would not be demonstrable with genetics at this point.
While all Europeans must have some Judean descent, the people with the most ancient Judean descent are the Palestinians and Samaritans of today. They are close enough related to ancient Judeans that you can indeed usually find many of the distinctive genetic markers in them, despite two millennia of mixing and genetic segregation.
So Jews have no exclusive claim to Judean ancestry, possibly minimal anyway, and "Jewishness" is a religious ethnicity not so much uniquely connected to Judean ancestry as connected to Judaism, a levantine cult whose foundations were written down between 300 and 100 BCE to create nationalistic fervor and to fuel regional conquests, but maintained and spread ever since by its antagonistic relationship with the more popular levantine cult of Christianity.
In my youth, I found Judaism much more attractive than Christianity because it did not require me to believe in the Jesus divinity and resurrection story, which I detested having to memorize and recite. I also often found Jewish people I knew to be more like minded and wanted to be part of their club instead of mine. Judaism seemed based on largely reasonable behavioral rules, which I had largely imbibed anyway through Christianity, rather than professed beliefs which seemed fake to me. I only became disenchanted about converting to Judaism when I learned about the Nakba when I was 13 and none of my Jewish friends could give me an adequate explanation of it. (Though I didn't dump my Jewish friends because of that, and I continued having mostly Jewish or partly Jewish friends, and having fascinations and sometimes dates with Jewish or partly Jewish girls for the rest of my life.). Now I would not tie Judaism unequivocally to Israeli Apartheid and Genocide, I fully respect Jewish Antizionism and see that as the truest form of Judaism, but there just doesn't seem to be a good reason for me to be immersed in Judaism anymore as opposed to religions or philosophies simply emphasizing care, love. and respect for others, like humanism, Freethinking, and Unitarian Universalism. Such religions and philosophies can be quite clear about what religious traditions they are quoting from, and can freely pick and choose the best from all of them, and avoid the problematic parts.
