Israelites

This article is about the ancient ethno-religious group. For the citizens of modern Israel, see Israelis. For other uses, see Israelites (disambiguation).

The Israelites, also known as the Children of Israel,[a] were an ancient Semitic-speaking people who inhabited Canaan during the Iron Age.[3][4] They originated as the Hebrews and spoke an archaic variety of the Hebrew language that is commonly called Biblical Hebrew by association with the Hebrew Bible.[5][6][7] Their community consisted of the Twelve Tribes of Israel and was concentrated in Israel and Judah, which were two adjoined kingdoms whose capital cities were Samaria and Jerusalem, respectively.[8][9]

Tribes of Israel
The Tribes of Israel
  • Reuben
  • Simeon
  • Levi
  • Judah
  • Dan
  • Naphtali
  • Gad
  • Asher
  • Issachar
  • Zebulun
  • Joseph
    • Manasseh
    • Ephraim
  • Benjamin
Other tribes
  • Caleb
  • Keni
  • Rechab
  • Jerahmeel
Related topics
  • Leaders
  • Ten Lost Tribes
  • Jews
  • Samaritans

Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanite populations and other peoples of the ancient Near East.[10][11][6] The Israelite religion revolved around Yahweh, who was an ancient Semitic god with lesser significance in the broader Canaanite religion.[12][13] Around 720 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, triggering the Assyrian captivity; and around 586 BCE, the Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire, triggering the Babylonian captivity.[9] While most of Israel's population was irreversibly dispossessed as a result of Assyrian resettlement policy, Judah's population was rehabilitated by the Achaemenid Empire following the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE.[14][15]

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites were the descendants of Jacob (later known as Israel), who was a son of Isaac and thereby a grandson of Abraham. Due to a severe drought in Canaan, Jacob and his twelve sons migrated to Egypt, where each son became the progenitor and namesake of an Israelite tribe. These tribes came to constitute a distinct nation, which was enslaved by "the Pharaoh" before being led out of Egypt by the Hebrew prophet Moses, whose successor Joshua oversaw the Israelite conquest of Canaan. After taking control of Canaan, they established a kritarchy and eventually founded the United Monarchy, which split into independent Israel in the north and independent Judah in the south. Scholars generally consider the Hebrew Bible's narrative to be part of the Israelites' national myth,[16] but believe that there is a "historical core" to some of the events in it.[17][18][19][20] The historicity of the United Monarchy is widely disputed.[21][22] In the context of Hebrew scripture, Canaan is also variously described as the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, Zion, or the Holy Land.

Historically, Jews and Samaritans have been two closely related ethno-religious groups descended from the Israelites; Jews trace their ancestry to the tribes that inhabited the Kingdom of Judah, namely Judah, Benjamin, and partially Levi, while Samaritans trace their ancestry to the tribes that inhabited the Kingdom of Israel and remained after the Assyrian captivity, namely Ephraim, Manasseh, and partially Levi. Furthermore, Judaism and Samaritanism are fundamentally rooted in Israelite religious and cultural traditions.[23][24][25][26] There are several other groups claiming affiliation with the Israelites, but most of them have unproven lineage and are not recognized as either Jewish or Samaritan.

  1. ^ "Israelite". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 23 November 2021.
  2. ^ "Israelite". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Baron, Salo W. (1937). Social and Religious History of the Jews. Vol. 1. p. 338.
  5. ^ Shaw, Ian (2002). "Israel, Israelites". In Shaw, Ian; Jameson, Robert (eds.). A Dictionary of Archaeology. Wiley Blackwell. p. 313. ISBN 978-0-631-23583-5.
  6. ^ a b Faust, Avraham (2023). "The Birth of Israel". In Hoyland, Robert G.; Williamson, H. G. M. (eds.). The Oxford History of the Holy Land. Oxford University Press. pp. 5–33. ISBN 978-0-19-288687-3.
  7. ^ Bienkowski, Piotr; Millard, Alan (2000). British Museum Dictionary of the Ancient Near East. British Museum Press. pp. 157–158. ISBN 9780714111414.
  8. ^ Broshi, Magen (2001). Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls. Bloomsbury. p. 174. ISBN 978-1-84127-201-6.
  9. ^ a b 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.
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ Frevel, Christian. History of Ancient Israel. Atlanta, Georgia. SBL Press. 2023. p. 33. ISBN 9781628375138. "Israel developed in the land and not outside of it (in Egypt, in the desert, etc.)."
  12. ^ Steiner, Richard C. (1997). "Ancient Hebrew". In Hetzron, Robert (ed.). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. pp. 145–173. ISBN 978-0-415-05767-7.
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference :9 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Stökl, Jonathan; Waerzegger, Caroline (2015). Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 7–11, 30, 226.
  15. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 3 (2nd ed.). p. 27.
  16. ^ 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.
  17. ^ 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 ...".
  18. ^ 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."
  19. ^ Na'aman 2011, pp. 62–69.
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference :04 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ 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.
  22. ^ 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 archaeological 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'.
  23. ^ Adams, Hannah (1840). The history of the Jews: from the destruction of Jerusalem to the present time. Duncan and Malcolm and Wertheim. OCLC 894671497.
  24. ^ Brenner, Michael (2010). A short history of the Jews. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14351-4. OCLC 463855870.
  25. ^ Ostrer, Harry (2012). Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People. Oxford University Press USA. ISBN 978-1-280-87519-9. OCLC 798209542.
  26. ^ 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.


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