particularism

…all animistic religions is their particularism, a quality opposite to the universalism of the “great religions,” which conceive the individual as subject to global powers and personal destiny.

…and the notion of God’s special choice of Israel. In the Hellenistic Age (323 bce–3rd century ce), the dispersion of the Jews throughout the kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean and the Roman Empire reinforced this universalistic tendency. But the attempts of foreign rulers, especially the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes…