Was Judaism morally advanced for its time period?

No.

It was just what you would expect for a group of Bronze Age humans. If anything, the ethics and morals of their neighbours, and older cultures in Mesopotamia such as the Sumerians and Babylonians were “more advanced” if you want to call it that. A better way would be to say it would be ‘more humanitarian’. There were several “social codes” in use by these “city states” the most widely known now being “The code of Hammurabi”, the oldest we have an example of, is the “Code of Ur-Nammu” but there were even earlier ones such as the “Code of Urukagina”.

The Hebrews did not invent codes or laws of social behaviour nor did they have “the best ones”, they simply adapted long existing ‘laws’ that other humans had created, adopted and codified.

Was Judaism morally advanced for its time period?

“It’s time period”? When do you suppose that was?

We’re still here. We’ve been working to advance morally and in every other way for probably about 3,500 years. We’ve gone forwards. We’ve gone backwards. We’ve gone sideways a few times, usually when we were more concerned with staying alive. But we’re still at it.

Perhaps you’re asking whether the Torah was morally advanced for the time period in which we got it. The answer is quite a mixed bag. On the one hand, the rejection in Genesis of human sacrifice was quite ahead of its time, as the practice persisted among the nations for centuries thereafter. The injunction to treat foreigners among us the same as we would our own people was also quite an advance, as was the justification, “for you were strangers in Egypt”, one of the earliest applications of the “Golden Rule” in Abrahamic thought.

On the other hand, that same principle of treating the stranger decently took quite a beating with the treatment of slaves, which was greatly improved for Israelites but not much at all for Gentile slaves. The treatment of women— abominable and intolerable by modern Western standards— may or may not have been some improvement over the neighboring nations at the time, since we don’t have a whole lot of direct evidence.

When you’re trying to make systemic changes, whether to a person’s character or to a whole culture, you need to take a two-pronged approach. You need to establish baby steps that are actually achievable. But to insure that it doesn’t stop there, you need to establish guide stars, wholly unachievable in the moment but worth working toward for generations. This is the tack we often take when understanding our traditions. It’s a mixed bag of baby steps and dimly perceived guide stars.

Dictionaries define "Judaism" as The monotheistic religion of the Jews, since the founding principle of Judaism was the unique belief in One ethical God. At the time of Abraham the Hebrew, the world was full of pagan cults; they were polytheistic, worshiping multiple deities and lacking moral character. Their gods were described as adulterers and killers, and their rites were accompanied by things such as human sacrifice, "sacred" prostitution, and animal worship. Abraham was the first to advance the idea of ethical monotheism: the worship of One God, and the appropriate ethical code of conduct.

• The concept of morality was founded by the Hebrew religion, including the dignity and value of every person. It is the responsibility of the community to support the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger passing through. Compare this to other ancient societies in which only mature, land-owning male citizens had rights.
• Agriculture in the Holy Land included tithes to be given to the Levites and Kohens, thus providing for a scholarly class of people. One of the tithes was given to the poor, thus obviating the existence of starvation.
• Government is accountable to a higher authority. In other ancient societies, the monarch was all-powerful. Among the Israelites, however, the king was under the constant scrutiny of the Divinely-informed prophets, who didn't hesitate to castigate him publicly for any misstep in the sight of God. And, other than for the crime of rebellion, the king couldn't punish any citizen by his own decision. He was obligated by the Torah-procedures like everyone else (Talmud, Sanhedrin 19a).
• Under the law of Judaism, everyone had recourse to the courts. A child, widow, wife, poor person, etc., could initiate legal action against any citizen to redress perpetrated harm.
• A robber repays double to his victim, or works it off. Unlike other ancient societies, in Judaism debtors are not imprisoned or harmed. They are made to sell property and/or work to repay what they owe. Compare this to the Roman practice by which anyone could accuse a man of owing them money and the debtor could be killed (Roman Twelve Tables of Law, 3:10).

Quote:

"I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation ... fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations" (John Adams, 2nd President of the United States).

"Certainly, the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights, but we cannot be sure. All the great conceptual discoveries of the human intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they had been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both Divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and of collective conscience, and social responsibility" (Paul Johnson, Christian historian, author of A History of the Jews and A History of Christianity).

First, we should identify the most important time period for this question. Because we can read the entire Bible in a short period of time, we tend to compress the periods it portrays, but it was actually written over a period of several centuries and comprises ancient representations of events in the distant past.

The genocide and theft of land under Joshua represent a legendary period that did not really exist. Stories of the moral disgrace of King David and his contemporaries were written long after they would have lived and probably do not reflect actual history. These stories may simply reflect the moral standards of the periods in which these stories were created.

When we go to the monarchic period, we are told that the kings of Israel committed human sacrifice, as did some of the kings of Judah, but this was probably not unusual for the Ancient Near East during this time period. Biblical passages written after the Babylonian Exile demonstrate an abhorrence of child sacrifice, so the lesson must have been learnt and the post-Exilic Jews were as advanced in this respect as their neighbours. By way of comparison, Barry B. Powell, in Classical Myth, describes the almost total lack of historical evidence for human sacrifices in Greece:

Although human sacrifice is often mentioned in myths, it appears to have been highly uncommon during the historical period, and archaeology has produced only two clear examples from the Bronze Age* (from Crete).

The focus of the Bible is on correct worship, rather than on setting higher moral standards. For example, the biblical rules for treatment of women and slaves may be abhorrent by modern standards but were probably little different from those of other nations of these periods.

* The Bronze Age being the centuries prior to 1200 BCE and therefore prior to the introduction of Judaism.

Women were chattel that were only occasionally taken seriously. Slavery was not only permitted, but specifically rules were included that allowed a slave-owner to beat their slave as long as they didn’t die right away. Genocide was not just permitted, but commanded. A rapist only needed to pay the father financially and he not only got away with rape, but got continued access to his victim as his new wife.

Compare that to now. Religious Jews and secular Jews alike condemn slavery and genocide. (And no, Israel is not committing genocide, but that’s an entirely separate discussion).

Like Christianity and Islam, Judaism has changed during its history. Most Jews will acknowledge that there are parts of their scriptures that are, by modern standards, pretty darn horrific.

Of course. Even our own ancestors knew murder was wrong long before the covenant at Sinai literally wrote it in stone.

The rabbis discussing Jewish law in the Torah acknowledge that most of these laws were basic common sense and required no intervention from God to establish. Murder is contraindicated by the most basic of human instincts-- that of self-preservation and security.

Any society that would tolerate its members murdering each other would rapidly lose coherence. The most basic elements of human morality come from the fact that we are a social species and religion telling people not to commit murder is just like reminding people not to poke their own eyes out with sticks.

No! The ancient Egyptian religion or spirituality preceded Judaism by about a 1000 years. It’s all in the Book of Coming or Going Forth By Day(Book of The Dead) and it is spelled out in 42 Principles of Maat and the 10 Principles of Virtue.

Also check out Leviticus, chap.19, for instance the famous “love thy neighbor as thyself” but also::

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I יהוה am your God.Y

You shall not steal; you shall not deal deceitfully or falsely with one another.

You shall not swear falsely by My name, profaning the name of your God: I am יהוה.

You shall not defraud your fellow.

You shall not commit robbery.

The wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning.

You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind. You shall fear your God: I am יהוה.

You shall not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich; judge your kin fairly.

Do not deal basely with members of your people. Do not profit by the blood of your fellow [Israelite]: I am יהוה. You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kin but incur no guilt on their account. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people.