I understand about The Holy Spirit,

@ThePatientAnarchist That's another reason why I think it's incorrect to say Judaism came before Christianity. Most of the interpretations of Yahwism that are accepted in Judaism come from the Talmud. Before the Talmud and the Bible, Yahwism was less structured, more like the Pagan religions.

@BohoBabe Yeah, there are many different academic opinions about all that. It is clear though from the New Testament that, at least when it was written, there was already something resembling what we know as Judaism, and that early Christians saw that Judaism as the background that they came from.

@ThePatientAnarchist I think it's more accurate to say that Christianity and later Judaism both came from Yahwism, which was the folk religion of the Hebrews. The Hebrews were polytheistic, but they believed Yahweh was the god of their folk. It was much later, after the Rabbis and the Talmud, that Jews as followers of Judaism became legit monotheistic.

Which I still find kinda strange. Like I know no religions make sense, but do Jews believe they have to keep religious traditions because Yahweh wants them to, but the non-jewish peoples don't have any gods, so they can do whatever?

@BohoBabe This is all mixed up. First of all "Yahweh" is not a Jewish name for God. It is an academic hypothesis about how the name י-ה-ו-ה might have been pronounced in ancient times. The Jewish tradition is not to pronounce that name at all, because of its sacredness; we use substitutes like "Adonai".

There is every reason to believe that Jews were generally monotheistic by the time of the Hasmonean kingdom. Before that, different historians have different ideas.

Again, if you read the New Testament, it's clear that there was something like what we know as Judaism, which Jesus and his followers practiced, and which was the milieu that Christianity came from.

The traditional Jewish belief is that God gave the Jewish people specific laws to live by, which do not apply to other peoples. How the relationship between other peoples and God works is basically their business.
There is, however, also a notion of 7 "Noachide laws" -- laws given to all the descendants of Noah, i.e. all humans. Judaism being polyvocal there is not total agreement about what these are, but a common list is: (1) not to worship idols; (2) not to blaspheme the name of God; (3) to establish courts of justice; (4) not to murder; (5) not to commit adultery (6) not to rob, (7) not to cut off part of a living animal to eat. [Jewish Encyclopedia].
Aside from these specifics, there was a sense among many medieval rabbis that Christians and Muslims generally respected God and followed moral principles.

@ThePatientAnarchist Well yeah, Jewishness wasn't a thing during the time of the Hebrews. Judaism came much later.
This is actually another point for Judaism having started with the Talmud. The tradition of not pronouncing Yahweh's name comes from the Mishnah, not the Tanakh.

So it is hard to tell exactly when the Judeans became monotheistic. There's even debate over if it started with Christianity because there were disagreements at the time over the exact nature of the trinity.
My take is that if Christianity isn't considered monotheistic, then the first monotheistic religion of the Yahwist tradition is Judaism.

Judaism grew out of Yahwism. So sure, we can say it was an early form of Judaism, but it was different enough to be a separate religion. Same goes for Christianity and Samaritanism.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the interpretation of the Seven Laws of Noah. The reason I find it strange is because it's so common for modern Jews to believe that Yahweh is the god of the Jews specifically. So like, why would this god care what other people do, as long as they're not messing with his people?
It is interesting because it shows how religions evolves. Judaism is monotheistic with polytheistic roots. So the interpretation that the Seven Laws apply to everyone, it's kinda like finding a way to have a universal morality with one god while also having special laws for the Jews.

@BohoBabe whatever