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The Israelites (/ˈɪzrəlaɪts, -riə-/;[1][2] Hebrew: בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, Bənēy Yīsrāʾēl, transl. 'Children of Israel') were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan.[3][4][5][6]
The name of Israel first appears in the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt, dated to about 1200 BCE. Modern archaeology suggests that the Israelites branched out from the Canaanites through the development of Yahwism, a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centred on the national god Yahweh.[7][8][9][10][11]
Because of this, they can be described as an ethnoreligious group.[12] They spoke an archaic form of the Hebrew language, which was a regional variety of the Canaanite language, known today as Biblical Hebrew.[13] In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged. The Kingdom of Israel, with its capital at Samaria, fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE;[14] while the Kingdom of Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem, was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE.[15] Some of the Judean population was exiled to Babylon, but returned to Israel after Cyrus the Great conquered the region.[16][17]
According to the Bible, the Israelites are the descendants of Jacob, a patriarch who was later renamed as Israel. Following a severe drought in Canaan, Jacob and his twelve sons fled to Egypt, where they eventually formed the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The Israelites were later led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses and conquered Canaan under Joshua's leadership, who was Moses's successor. Most modern scholars agree that the Torah does not provide an authentic account of the Israelites' origins, and instead view it as constituting their national myth. However, it is supposed that there may be a "historical core" to the narrative.[18][19][20] The Bible also portrays the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as the successors of an earlier United Kingdom of Israel, though the historicity of the latter is disputed.[21][22]
Jews and Samaritans both trace their ancestry to the ancient Israelites.[23][24][25][26] Jews trace their ancestry to tribes that inhabited the Kingdom of Judah, including Judah, Benjamin and partially Levi, while the Samaritans claim their lineage from the remaining members of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Levi who were not deported in the Assyrian captivity after the fall of Israel. Other groups have also claimed affiliation with the Israelites.
- ^ "Israelite". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 23 November 2021.
- ^ "Israelite". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary.
- ^ Finkelstein, Israel. "Ethnicity and origin of the Iron I settlers in the Highlands of Canaan: Can the real Israel stand up?" The Biblical Archaeologist 59.4 (1996): 198–212.
- ^ Finkelstein, Israel. The archaeology of the Israelite settlement. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988.
- ^ Finkelstein, Israel, and Nadav Na'aman, eds. From nomadism to monarchy: archaeological and historical aspects of early Israel. Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1994.
- ^ Finkelstein, Israel. "The archaeology of the United Monarchy: an alternative view". Levant 28.1 (1996): 177–187.
- ^ Mark Smith in "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" states "Despite the long regnant model that the Canaanites and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Israelites and Canaanites in the Iron I period (c. 1200–1000 BCE). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture ... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period." (pp. 6–7). Smith, Mark (2002). The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel. Eerdmans.
- ^ Rendsberg, Gary (2008). "Israel without the Bible". In Frederick E. Greenspahn. The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press. pp. 3–5.
- ^ Gnuse, Robert Karl (1997). No Other Gods: Emergent Monotheism in Israel. England: Sheffield Academic Press. pp. 28, 31. ISBN 1-85075-657-0.
- ^ Haran, Menahem (1996). Texts, Temples and Traditions. Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-1-57506-003-3.
It is also clear that there were polytheistic Yahwists in ancient Israel who worshiped YHWH along with other deities
- ^ Collins, Steven; Holden, Joseph M. (18 February 2020). The Harvest Handbook of Bible Lands: A Panoramic Survey of the History, Geography, and Culture of the Scriptures. Harvest House. ISBN 978-0-7369-7542-1.
At its inception, early Yahwism had animistic and polytheistic elements
- ^ Sparks, Kenton L. (1998). Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expression in the Hebrew Bible. Eisenbrauns. pp. 146–148. ISBN 978-1-57506-033-0.
- ^ Steiner, Richard C. (1997). "Ancient Hebrew". In Hetzron, Robert (ed.). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. pp. 145–173. ISBN 978-0-415-05767-7.
- ^ Broshi, Maguen (2001). Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls. Bloomsbury. p. 174. ISBN 978-1-84127-201-6. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2022.
- ^ Faust, Avraham (29 August 2012). Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period. Society of Biblical Literature. p. 1. doi:10.2307/j.ctt5vjz28. ISBN 978-1-58983-641-9.
- ^ Stökl, Jonathan; Waerzegger, Caroline (2015). Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 7–11, 30, 226.
- ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 3 (2nd ed.). p. 27.
- ^ Faust 2015, p.476: "While there is a consensus among scholars that the Exodus did not take place in the manner described in the Bible, surprisingly most scholars agree that the narrative has a historical core, and that some of the highland settlers came, one way or another, from Egypt ...".
- ^ Redmount 2001, p. 61: "A few authorities have concluded that the core events of the Exodus saga are entirely literary fabrications. But most biblical scholars still subscribe to some variation of the Documentary Hypothesis, and support the basic historicity of the biblical narrative."
- ^ Dever, William (2001). What Did the Biblical Writers Know, and When Did They Know It?. Eerdmans. pp. 98–99. ISBN 3-927120-37-5.
After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible 'historical figures' ... archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus has similarly been discarded as a fruitless pursuit.
- ^ Thomas, Zachary (22 April 2016). "Debating the United Monarchy: Let's See How Far We've Come". Biblical Theology Bulletin. 46 (2): 59–69. doi:10.1177/0146107916639208. ISSN 0146-1079. S2CID 147053561.
- ^ Lipschits, Oded (2014). "The history of Israel in the biblical period". In Berlin, Adele; Brettler, Marc Zvi (eds.). The Jewish Study Bible (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 2107–2119. ISBN 978-0-19-997846-5. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved 16 May 2022.
As this essay will show, however, the premonarchic period long ago became a literary description of the mythological roots, the early beginnings of the nation and the way to describe the right of Israel on its land. The archeological evidence also does not support the existence of a united monarchy under David and Solomon as described in the Bible, so the rubric of 'united monarchy' is best abandoned, although it remains useful for discussing how the Bible views the Israelite past. ... Although the kingdom of Judah is mentioned in some ancient inscriptions, they never suggest that it was part of a unit comprised of Israel and Judah. There are no extrabiblical indications of a united monarchy called 'Israel'.
- ^ Adams, Hannah (1840). The history of the Jews: from the destruction of Jerusalem to the present time. Duncan and Malcolm and Wertheim. OCLC 894671497.
- ^ Brenner, Michael (2010). A short history of the Jews. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14351-4. OCLC 463855870.
- ^ Ostrer, Harry (2012). Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People. Oxford University Press USA. ISBN 978-1-280-87519-9. OCLC 798209542.
- ^ Kartveit, Magnar (1 January 2014). "Review of Knoppers, Gary N., Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of Their Early Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013)". Journal of Hebrew Scriptures. 14. doi:10.5508/jhs.2014.v14.r25. ISSN 1203-1542.