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.[16][17][18] 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.[19][20]
The first reference to Israel in non-biblical sources is found in the
Merneptah Stele in
c. 1209 BCE. The inscription is very brief and says: "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not". The inscription refers to a
people, not an individual or
nation state,[25] who are located in central
Palestine[26] or the highlands of
Samaria.[27] Some Egyptologists suggest that Israel appeared in earlier topographical reliefs, dating to the
Nineteenth Dynasty (i.e. reign of
Ramesses II) or the
Eighteenth Dynasty,[28] but this reading remains controversial.[29][30]
In the Hebrew Bible, Israel first appears in Genesis 32:29, where an angel gives the name to
Jacob after the
latter fought with him.[31][32][33] The
folk etymology given in the text derives Israel from yisra, "to prevail over" or "to struggle with", and El, a Canaanite-
Mesopotamiancreator god that is tenuously identified with Yahweh.[34][35] However, modern scholarship interprets El as the subject, "El rules/struggles",[36][37][38] from sarar (שָׂרַר) 'to rule'[39] (cognate with sar (שַׂר) 'ruler',[40]Akkadianšarru 'ruler, king'[41]), which is likely cognate with the similar root sara (שׂרה) "fought, strove, contended".[42][43]
Afterwards, Israel referred to the
direct descendants of Jacob and
gentiles (i.e.
resident aliens) who assimilated in the Israelite community.[44][45]Hebrew is a similar ethnonym but it is usually applied whenever Israelites are economically disadvantaged or migrants. It might also refer to their descent from
Eber, the grandson of
Noah.[46][47][48][49]
In literature of the
Second Temple period, "Israel" included the members of the united monarchy, the northern kingdom, and eschatological Israel. "
Jew" (or "
Judean") was another popular ethnonym but it might refer to a geographically restricted sub-group or to the inhabitants of the southern kingdom of Judah.[51][52] In addition, works such as
Ezra-Nehemiah pioneered the idea of an "impermeable" distinction between Israel and gentiles, on a genealogical basis.[45] Other scholars argue that the distinction is based on religion.[53]
In
Judaism, "Israelite", broadly speaking, refers to a
lay member of the Jewish ethnoreligious group, as opposed to the priestly orders of
Kohanim and
Levites. In legal texts, such as the
Mishnah and
Gemara, ישראלי (Yisraeli), or Israelite, is used to describe Jews instead of יהודי (Yehudi), or Jew. In
Samaritanism, Samaritans are not Jews יהודים (Yehudim). Instead, they are Israelites, which includes their Jewish brethren, or Israelite Samaritans.[54][55][full citation needed][56]
Biblical narrative
The history of the Israelite people can be divided into these categories, according to the
Hebrew Bible:[57]
As a monarchic state, the Israelite tribes were united by the leadership of
Saul,
David and
Solomon. The reigns of Saul and David were marked by military victories and Israel's transition to a mini-empire with
vassal states.[60][61] Solomon's reign was relatively more peaceful and oversaw the construction of the
First Temple,[62] with the help of
Phoenician allies.[63] This Temple was where the
Ark of the Covenant was stored; its former location was the
City of David.[64]
The monarchic state was divided into two states,
Israel and
Judah, due to civil and religious disputes. Eventually, Israel and Judah met their demise after the
Assyrian and
Babylonian invasions respectively. According to the
Biblical prophets, these invasions were divine judgments for religious apostasy and corrupt leadership.
After the Babylonians invaded Judah, they deported most of its citizens to Babylon, where they lived as "exiles".
Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and established the
First Persian Empire in 539 BCE. [66] One year later, according to traditional dating, Cyrus
permitted the Judahites to return to their homeland.[66] This homeland was re-named as the
Province of Yehud, which eventually became a satrapy of
Eber-Nari.[66]
This period is covered by the entirety of the
Book of Daniel.
Persian Period (c. 539–331 BCE)
In 537–520 BCE,
Zerubbabel became Yehud's governor and started work on the
Second Temple, which was stopped.[67] In 520–516 BCE,
Haggai and
Zechariah goaded the Judahites to resume work on the Temple. Upon completion,
Joshua became its high priest.[67][67] In 458–433 BCE,
Ezra and
Nehemiah led another group of Judahites to Yehud, with
Artaxerxes's permission. Nehemiah rebuilt the temple after some unspecified disaster and removed foreign influence from the Judahite community.[68][69] That said, some Judahites elected to stay in Persia, where they
almost faced annihilation.[70][71]
Efforts to confirm the biblical ethnogenesis of Israel through
archaeology has largely been abandoned as unproductive.[18] Many scholars see the traditional narratives as
national myths with little historical value, but some posit that a small group of exiled Egyptians contributed to the Exodus narrative.[a]William G. Dever cautiously identifies this group with the
Tribe of Joseph, while
Richard Elliott Friedman identifies it with the
Tribe of Levi.[75][76]Josephus quoting
Manetho identifies them with the
Hyksos.[77][78] Other scholars believe that the Exodus narrative was a "
collective memory" of several events from the Bronze Age.[79][80]
Gary Rendsburg argues that some archaic biblical traditions and other circumstantial evidence point to the Israelites emerging from the
Shasu and other seminomadic peoples from the desert regions south of the
Levant, later settling in the highlands of Canaan.[86]
Origins
Several theories exist for the origins of historical Israelites. Some believe they descended from raiding groups, itinerant nomads such as
Habiru and
Shasu or impoverished Canaanites, who were forced to leave wealthy urban areas and live in the highlands.[90][26] The prevailing academic opinion is that the Israelites were a mixture of peoples predominately indigenous to Canaan, with additional input from an Egyptian matrix of peoples, which most likely inspired the Exodus narrative.[91][92][93] Israel's demographics were similar to the demographics of
Ammon,
Edom,
Moab and
Phoenicia.[92][94][page needed]
Genealogy was another ethnic marker. It was a matter of cultural self-identity rather than biological descent. For example, foreign clans could adopt the identity of other clans, which subsequently changed their status from "outsider" to "insider". This applied to Israelites from different tribes and gentiles.[45][95] Saul Oylan argued that foreigners automatically became Israelite if they lived in their territory, according to
Ezekiel 47:21–23.[96] That said, Israelites used genealogy to engage in
narcissism of small differences but also,
self-criticism since their ancestors included morally questionable characters such as Jacob. Both these traits represented the "complexities of the Jewish soul".[95]
In terms of appearance, the Israelites were described as ruddy and light-skinned[97][98][99][100], having full round beards [101] and straight protruding noses [102][103] like their west Semitic neighbors. However, rabbis described the Biblical Jews as being "midway between black and white" and having the "color of the boxwood tree".[104]Merneptah's
Karnak reliefs indicate that the early Israelites wore the same attire and hairstyles as non-Israelite Canaanites.[105][106][107] Dissenting from this,
Anson Rainey argued that the Israelites in the reliefs looked more similar to the Shasu.[108] Based on biblical literature, it is implied that the Israelites distinguished themselves from peoples like the Babylonians and Egyptians by not having long beards and chin tufts. However, these fashion practices were upper class customs.[101]
Early Israelite settlements
In the 12th century BCE, many Israelite settlements appeared in the central hill country of Canaan, which was formerly an open terrain. These settlements lacked evidence of pork consumption, compared to Philistine settlements, have
four-room houses and lived by an
egalitarian ethos, which was exemplified by the absence of elaborate tombs, governor's mansions, certain houses being bigger than others etc. They followed a
mixed economy, which prioritized
self-sufficiency,
cultivation of crops,
animal husbandry and
small-scalecraft production. New technologies such as
terraced farming,
silos for grain storage and
cisterns for rainwater collection were simultaneously introduced.[109]
These settlements were built by inhabitants of the "general Southland" (i.e. modern
Sinai and the southern parts of
Israel and
Jordan), who abandoned their pastoral-nomadic ways. Canaanites who lived outside the central hill country were tenuously identified as Danites, Asherites, Zebulunites, Issacharites, Naphtalites and Gadites. These inhabitants do not have a significant history of migration besides the Danites, who allegedly originate from the
Sea Peoples, particularly the
Dan(an)u.[109][110] Nonetheless, they intermingled with the former nomads, due to socioeconomic and military factors. Their interest in Yahwism and its concern for the underprivileged was another factor. Possible allusions to this historical reality in the Hebrew Bible include the aforementioned tribes, except for Issachar and Zebulun, descending from
Bilhah and
Zilpah, who were viewed as "secondary additions" to Israel.[109]
El worship was central to early Israelite culture but currently, the number of El worshippers in Israel is unknown. It is more likely that different Israelite locales held different views about El and had 'small-scale'
sacred spaces.[34][35]
The historicity of the United Monarchy is heavily debated among archaeologists and biblical scholars: biblical maximalists and centrists (
Kenneth Kitchen,
William G. Dever,
Amihai Mazar,
Baruch Halpern and others) argue that the biblical account is more or less accurate, biblical minimalists (
Israel Finkelstein,
Ze'ev Herzog,
Thomas L. Thompson and others) argue that Israel and Judah never split from a singular state. The debate has not been resolved but recent archaeological discoveries by
Eilat Mazar and
Yosef Garfinkel show some support for the existence of the United Monarchy.[19]
From 850 BCE onwards, a series of inscriptions mention the "
House of David". They came from Israel's neighbors.[112][113]
Compared to the United Monarchy, the historicity of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah is widely accepted by historians and archaeologists.[114]: 169–195 [115] Their destruction by the Assyrians and Babylonians respectively is also confirmed by archaeological evidence and extrabiblical sources.[12][116][117][118][119][114]: 306 Christian Frevel argues that Yahwism was rooted in the culture of the Kingdom of Israel, who introduced it to the Kingdom of Judah via
Ahab's expansions and sociopolitical cooperation, which was prompted by
Hazael's conquests.[120]
Frevel has also argued that Judah was a 'vassal-like' state to Israel, under the
Omrides.[120] This theory has been rejected by other scholars, who argue that the archaeological evidence seems to indicate that Judah was an independent socio-political entity for most of the 9th century BCE.[121]
Avraham Faust argues that there was continued adherence to the 'ethos of egalitarianism and simplicity' in the Iron Age II (10th-6th century BCE). For example, there is minimal evidence for temples and complex tomb burials, despite Israel and Judah being more densely populated than the Late Bronze Age. Four-room houses remained the norm. In addition, royal inscriptions were scarce, along with imported and decorated pottery.[122]
The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the
Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720
BCE.[123] The records of
Sargon II of
Assyria indicate that he deported part of the population to Assyria. This deportation became the basis for the
Jewish idea of the
Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Some Israelites migrated to the southern kingdom of Judah,[124] while those Israelites that remained in Samaria, concentrated mainly around
Mount Gerizim, came to be known as
Samaritans.[125][126] Foreign groups were also settled by the Assyrians in the territories of the conquered kingdom.[126]
The exiled Israelites from non-Judean regions faced assimilation into the Assyrian population, unlike their counterparts from Judea.[127] While historical records indicate the disappearance of Israelite tribes from Galilee and Transjordan, it's plausible that many Israelites from Samaria survived and remained in the region.[128] These survivors, contrary to Jewish tradition,[129] are believed to have become the ancestors of the Samaritans, who followed
Samaritanism. Research indicates that only a portion of this population intermarried with Mesopotamians settlers.[130][131] In their native
Samaritan Hebrew, the Samaritans identify as "Israel", "B'nai Israel" or "Shamerim/Shomerim" (i.e. "Guardians/Keepers/Watchers").[132][133][134][135]
With the fall of Babylon to the rising
Achaemenid Persian Empire, king
Cyrus the Great issued a proclamation known as the
Edict of Cyrus, encouraging the exiles to
return to their homeland after the Persians raised it as an autonomous Jewish-governed province named
Yehud. Under the Persians (
c. 539–332 BCE), the returned Jewish population restored the city and rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem. The
Cyrus Cylinder is controversially cited as evidence for Cyrus allowing the Judeans to return.[140][141] The returnees showed a "heightened sense" of their ethnic identity and shunned
exogamy, which was treated as a "permissive reality" in Babylon.[142][143] Circumcision was no longer a significant ethnic marker, with increased emphasis on genealogical descent or faith in Yahweh.[144][145]
In 332 BCE, the Achaemenid Empire fell to
Alexander the Great, and the region was later incorporated into the
Ptolemaic Kingdom (
c. 301–200 BCE) and the
Seleucid Empire (
c. 200–167 BCE). The
Maccabean Revolt against Seleucid rule ushered in a period of nominal independence for the Jewish people under the
Hasmonean dynasty (140–37 BCE). Initially operating semi-autonomously within the Seleucid sphere, the Hasmoneans gradually asserted full independence through military conquest and diplomacy, establishing themselves as the final sovereign Jewish rulers before a prolonged hiatus in Jewish sovereignty in the region.[146][147][148][149] Some scholars argue that Jews also engaged in active missionary efforts in the
Greco-Roman world, which led to conversions.[150][151][152][153] Several scholars, such as
Scot McKnight and
Martin Goodman, reject this view while holding that conversions occasionally occurred.[154] A similar diaspora existed for Samaritans but their existence is poorly documented.[155]
In 63 BCE, the
Roman Republic conquered the kingdom. In 37 BCE, the Romans appointed
Herod the Great as king of
a vassal Judea. In 6 CE, Judea was fully incorporated into the
Roman Empire as the
province of Judaea. During this period, the main areas of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel were Judea,
Galilee and
Perea, while the Samaritans had their demographic center in
Samaria. Growing dissatisfaction with Roman rule and civil disturbances eventually led to the
First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), resulting in the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, which ended the
Second Temple period. This event marked a cataclysmic moment in Jewish history,[156] prompting a reconfiguration of Jewish identity and practice to ensure continuity. The cessation of Temple worship and disapperance of Temple-based sects[157] facilitated the rise of
Rabbinic Judaism, which stemmed from the
Pharisaic school of Second Temple Judaism, emphasizing
communal synagogue worship and
Torah study, eventually becoming the predominant expression of Judaism.[158][156][159][160] Concurrently,
Christianitybegan to diverge from Judaism, evolving into a predominantly
Gentile religion.[161] Decades later, the
Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE) further diminished the Jewish presence in
Judea, leading to a geographical shift of Jewish life to Galilee and
Babylonia, with smaller communities scattered across the
Mediterranean.
A 2004 study (by Shen et al.) comparing Samaritans to several Jewish populations (including
Ashkenazi Jews,
Iraqi Jews,
Libyan Jews,
Moroccan Jews, and
Yemenite Jews) found that "the principal components analysis suggested a common ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in what is today identified as the paternally inherited Israelite high priesthood (
Cohanim), with a common ancestor projected to the time of the
Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel."[173]
A 2020 study (by Agranat-Tamr et al.) stated that there was genetic continuity between Bronze Age and Iron Age southern Levantines, which included the Israelites and Judahites. They could be "modeled as a mixture of local earlier
Neolithic populations and populations from the northeastern part of the Near East (e.g.
Zagros Mountains,
Caucasians/
Armenians and possibly,
Hurrians). Reasons for the continuity include resilience from the
Bronze Age collapse, which was mostly true for inland cities such as
Tel Megiddo and
Tel Abel Beth Maacah. Elsewhere,
European-related and
East African-related components were added to the population, from a north-south and south-north gradient respectively.
Late Neolithic and
Bronze Age Europeans and
Somalis were used as representatives.[174]
^"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 ..." "Archaeology does not really contribute to the debate over the historicity or even historical background of the Exodus itself, but if there was indeed such a group, it contributed the Exodus story to that of all Israel. While I agree that it is most likely that there was such a group, I must stress that this is based on an overall understanding of the development of collective memory and of the authorship of the texts (and their editorial process). Archaeology, unfortunately, cannot directly contribute (yet?) to the study of this specific group of Israel's ancestors."[74]
^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.
ISBN978-0-19-288687-3.
^Rendsburg, Gary (2008). "Israel without the Bible". In Frederick E. Greenspahn. The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press. pp. 11–12.
^
abMark 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.
^Gnuse, Robert Karl (1997). No Other Gods: Emergent Monotheism in Israel. England: Sheffield Academic Press. pp. 28, 31.
ISBN1-85075-657-0.
^Haran, Menahem (1996).
Texts, Temples and Traditions. Eisenbrauns.
ISBN978-1-57506-003-3. It is also clear that there were polytheistic Yahwists in ancient Israel who worshiped YHWH along with other deities
^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."
^
abDever, William (2001).
What Did the Biblical Writers Know, and When Did They Know It?. Eerdmans. pp. 98–99.
ISBN3-927120-37-5. 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.
^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.
ISBN978-0-19-997846-5.
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.
OCLC894671497.
^Brenner, Michael (2010). A short history of the Jews. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
ISBN978-0-691-14351-4.
OCLC463855870.
^Van der Veern, Peter, et al. "Israel in Canaan (Long) Before Pharaoh Merenptah? A Fresh Look at Berlin Statue Pedestal Relief 21687". Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections. pp. 15–25.
^Romer, Thomas (2015). The Invention of God, Harvard. p. 75.
^Dijkstra, Meindert (2017). "Canaan in the Transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age from an Egyptian Perspective". In Grabbe, Lester, ed. The Land of Canaan in the Late Bronze Age. Bloomsbury. p. 62, n. 17
^Flavius Josephus -
Antiquities of The Jews, Book I, Chapter VI, Paragraph 4:
Greek: Ἀρφαξάδου δὲ παῖς γίνεται Σάλης, τοῦ δὲ Ἕβερος, ἀφ᾽ οὗ τοὺς Ἰουδαίους Ἑβραίους ἀρχῆθεν ἐκάλουν: Ἕβερος δὲ Ἰούκταν καὶ Φάλεγον ἐγέννησεν: ἐκλήθη δὲ Φάλεγος, ἐπειδὴ κατὰ τὸν ἀποδασμὸν τῶν οἰκήσεων τίκτεται: φαλὲκ γὰρ τὸν μερισμὸν Ἑβραῖοι καλοῦσιν.,
lit. 'Sala was the son of Arphaxad; and his son was Heber, from whom they originally called the Jews Hebrews. Heber begat Joetan and Phaleg: he was called Phaleg, because he was born at the dispersion of the nations to their several countries; for Phaleg among the Hebrews signifies division.'
^Cate, Robert L. (1990). "Israelite". In Mills, Watson E.; Bullard, Roger Aubrey.
Mercer Dictionary of the Bible. Mercer University Press. p. 420.
^Van Maaren, John (23 May 2022). "The Ethnic Boundary Making Model: Preliminary Marks". The Boundaries of Jewishness in the Southern Levant 200 BCE – 132 CE. De Gruyter. p. 5.
^Danker, Frederick W. "Ioudaios", in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. third edition University of Chicago Press.
ISBN978-0-226-03933-6
^John Bowman (1977). Samaritan Documents Relating to Their History, Religion and Life. Pittsburgh Original Texts and Translations Series No. 2.
ISBN0-915138-27-1.
^Friedman, Richard Elliott (12 September 2017).
The Exodus. HarperCollins.
ISBN978-0-06-256526-6.
Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
^K. L. Noll (2001).
Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction.
Archived 1 July 2023 at the
Wayback Machine A&C Black. p. 164: "It would seem that, in the eyes of Merneptah's artisans, Israel was a Canaanite group indistinguishable from all other Canaanite groups." "It is likely that Merneptah's Israel was a group of Canaanites located in the Jezreel Valley."
^Moore Cross, Frank (1997). Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in History of the Religion of Israel. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 62.
ISBN0-674-09176-0.
^Kuzar, Ron (2001). Hebrew and Zionism: a discourse analytic cultural study. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 235.
ISBN3-11-016993-2.
^Rendsburg, Gary A. (2020).
"Israelite Origins". In Averbeck, Richard E.; Younger (Jr.), K. Lawson (eds.). "An Excellent Fortress for His Armies, a Refuge for the People": Egyptological, Archaeological, and Biblical Studies in Honor of James K. Hoffmeier. Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 327–339.
ISBN978-1-57506-994-4.
^Gabriel, Richard A. (2003).
The Military History of Ancient Israel. Greenwood. p. 63: "The ethnically mixed character of the Israelites is reflected even more clearly in the foreign names of the group's leadership. Moses himself, of course, has an Egyptian name. But so do Hophni, Phinehas, Hur, and Merari, the son of Levi."
^Hasel, Michael G. (2003). Nakhai, Beth Alpert (ed.). "Merenptah's Inscription and Reliefs and the Origin of Israel (The Near East in the Southwest: Essays in Honor of William G. Dever)". Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 58. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research: 27–36.
ISBN0-89757-065-0.
JSTOR3768554.
^Rainey, Anson F. (2001). "Israel in Merenptah's Inscription and Reliefs". Israel Exploration Journal. 51 (1): 57–75.
ISSN0021-2059.
JSTOR27926956.
^
abcRendsburg, Gary A. (2021).
"The Emergence of Israel in Canaan". In John Merill; Hershel Shanks (eds.). Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple. Biblical Archaeology Society. pp. 59–91.
ISBN978-1-880317-23-5.
^Mark W. Bartusch, Understanding Dan: an exegetical study of a biblical city, tribe and ancestor, Volume 379 of Journal for the study of the Old Testament: Supplement series, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003
^Delitzsch, Friedrich; McCormack, Joseph; Carruth, William Herbert; Robinson, Lydia Gillingham (1906).
Babel and Bible;. Chicago: The Open Court. p. 78.
^Lyman, Stanford M. (1998). "The Lost Tribes of Israel as a Problem in History and Sociology". International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. 12 (1): 7–42.
doi:
10.1023/A:1025902603291.
JSTOR20019954.
S2CID141243508.
^Pummer, Reinhard (2016). The Samaritans: A Profile. Eerdmans. p. 13.
ISBN978-0-8028-6768-1.
^Cline, Eric H. (2008). From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible. National Geographic (US).
ISBN978-1-4262-0208-7.
^Shen, Peidong; Lavi, Tal; Kivisild, Toomas; Chou, Vivian; Sengun, Deniz; Gefel, Dov; Shpirer, Issac; Woolf, Eilon; Hillel, Jossi; Feldman, Marcus W.; Oefner, Peter J. (2004). "Reconstruction of patrilineages and matrilineages of Samaritans and other Israeli populations from Y-Chromosome and mitochondrial DNA sequence Variation". Human Mutation. 24 (3): 248–260.
doi:
10.1002/humu.20077.
ISSN1059-7794.
PMID15300852.
S2CID1571356.
^Bowman, John (8 February 1963). "BANŪ ISRĀ'ĪL IN THE QUR'ĀN". Islamic Studies. 2 (4). Islamic Research Institute: 447–455.
JSTOR20832712. This tiny community called by the Jews and the Christians, the Samaritans, call themselves Israel or Shomerim, the Keepers (of the Torah, i.e., Tawr?t).
^"The Samaritan Identity". The Israelite Samaritan Community in Israel. Retrieved 15 September 2023. Our real name is, 'Bene- Yisrael Ha -Shamerem (D'nU- -D'7nU) - in Hebrew , which means 'The Keepers', or to be precise, the Israelite - Keepers, as we observe the ancient Israelite tradition, since the time of our prophet Moses and the people of Israel. The modern terms, 'Samaritans' and 'Jews', given by the Assyrians, indicate the settlement of the Samaritans in the area of Samaria, and the Jews in the area of Judah.
^"The Keepers: Israelite Samaritan Identity". Israelite Samaritan Information Institute. 26 May 2020. Retrieved 15 September 2023. We are not Samaritans; this is what the Assyrians called the people of Samaria. We, The Keepers, Sons of Israel, Keepers of the Word of the Torah, never adopted the name Samaritans. Our forefathers only used the name when speaking to outsiders about our community. Through the ages we have referred to ourselves as The Keepers.
^Spielvogel, Jackson J. (2008). Western Civilization: Volume A: To 1500. Wadsworth Publishing. p. 36.
ISBN978-0-495-50288-3. The people of Judah survived, eventually becoming known as the Jews and giving their name to Judaism, the religion of Yahweh, the Israelite God.
^Helyer, Larry R.; McDonald, Lee Martin (2013). "The Hasmoneans and the Hasmonean Era". In Green, Joel B.; McDonald, Lee Martin (eds.).
The World of the New Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts. Baker Academic. pp. 45–47.
ISBN978-0-8010-9861-1.
OCLC961153992. The ensuing power struggle left Hyrcanus with a free hand in Judea, and he quickly reasserted Jewish sovereignty... Hyrcanus then engaged in a series of military campaigns aimed at territorial expansion. He first conquered areas in the Transjordan. He then turned his attention to Samaria, which had long separated Judea from the northern Jewish settlements in Lower Galilee. In the south, Adora and Marisa were conquered; (Aristobulus') primary accomplishment was annexing and Judaizing the region of Iturea, located between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains
^Ben-Sasson, H.H. (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. p. 226.
ISBN0-674-39731-2. The expansion of Hasmonean Judea took place gradually. Under Jonathan, Judea annexed southern Samaria and began to expand in the direction of the coast plain... The main ethnic changes were the work of John Hyrcanus... it was in his days and those of his son Aristobulus that the annexation of Idumea, Samaria and Galilee and the consolidation of Jewish settlement in Trans-Jordan was completed. Alexander Jannai, continuing the work of his predecessors, expanded Judean rule to the entire coastal plain, from the Carmel to the Egyptian border... and to additional areas in Trans-Jordan, including some of the Greek cities there.
^Smith, Morton (1999), Sturdy, John; Davies, W. D.; Horbury, William (eds.),
"The Gentiles in Judaism 125 BCE - 66 CE", The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 3: The Early Roman Period, The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 192–249,
doi:
10.1017/chol9780521243773.008,
ISBN978-0-521-24377-3, retrieved 20 March 2023, These changes accompanied and were partially caused by the great extension of the Judaeans' contacts with the peoples around them. Many historians have chronicled the Hasmonaeans' territorial acquisitions. In sum, it took them twenty-five years to win control of the tiny territory of Judaea and get rid of the Seleucid colony of royalist Jews (with, presumably, gentile officials and garrison) in Jerusalem. [...] However, in the last years before its fall, the Hasmonaeans were already strong enough to acquire, partly by negotiation, partly by conquest, a little territory north and south of Judaea and a corridor on the west to the coast at Jaffa/Joppa. This was briefly taken from them by Antiochus Sidetes, but soon regained, and in the half century from Sidetes' death in 129 to Alexander Jannaeus' death in 76 they overran most of Palestine and much of western and northern Transjordan. First John Hyrcanus took over the hills of southern and central Palestine (Idumaea and the territories of Shechem, Samaria and Scythopolis) in 128–104; then his son, Aristobulus I, took Galilee in 104–103, and Aristobulus' brother and successor, Jannaeus, in about eighteen years of warfare (103–96, 86–76) conquered and reconquered the coastal plain, the northern Negev, and western edge of Transjordan.
^Ben-Eliyahu, Eyal (30 April 2019).
Identity and Territory: Jewish Perceptions of Space in Antiquity. Univ of California Press. p. 13.
ISBN978-0-520-29360-1.
OCLC1103519319. From the beginning of the Second Temple period until the Muslim conquest—the land was part of imperial space. This was true from the early Persian period, as well as the time of Ptolemy and the Seleucids. The only exception was the Hasmonean Kingdom, with its sovereign Jewish rule—first over Judah and later, in Alexander Jannaeus's prime, extending to the coast, the north, and the eastern banks of the Jordan.
^A. T. Kraabel, J. Andrew Overman, Robert S. MacLennan, Diaspora Jews and Judaism: essays in honor of, and in dialogue with, A. Thomas Kraabel (1992),
Scholars Press,
ISBN978-15-55406-96-7. "As pious gentiles, the God-fearers stood somewhere between Greco-Roman piety and Jewish piety in the synagogue. In his classic but now somewhat outdated study titled Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Harvard scholar George Foot Moore argued that the existence of the God-fearers provides evidence for the synagogue's own missionary work outside of Palestine during the first century C.E. The God-fearers were the result of this Jewish missionary movement."
^
abKaresh, Sara E. (2006).
Encyclopedia of Judaism. Facts On File.
ISBN1-78785-171-0.
OCLC1162305378. Until the modern period, the destruction of the Temple was the most cataclysmic moment in the history of the Jewish people. Without the Temple, the Sadducees no longer had any claim to authority, and they faded away. The sage Yochanan ben Zakkai, with permission from Rome, set up the outpost of Yavneh to continue develop of Pharisaic, or rabbinic, Judaism.
^Gil, Moshe. [1983] 1997. A History of Palestine, 634–1099. Cambridge University Press. pp. 222–3: "
David Ben-Gurion and
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi claimed that the population at the time of the Arab conquest was mainly Christian, of Jewish origins, which underwent conversion to avoid a tax burden, basing their argument on 'the fact that at the time of the Arab conquest, the population of Palestine was mainly Christian, and that during the Crusaders' conquest some four hundred years later, it was mainly Muslim. As neither the Byzantines nor the Muslims carried out any large-scale population resettlement projects, the Christians were the offspring of the Jewish and Samaritan farmers who converted to Christianity in the Byzantine period; while the Muslim fellaheen in Palestine in modern times are descendants of those Christians who were the descendants of Jews, and had turned to Islam before the Crusaders' conquest."
Faust, Avraham (2015).
"The Emergence of Iron Age Israel: On Origins and Habitus". In Levy, Thomas E.; Schneider, Thomas; Propp, William H. C. (eds.). Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience. Springer. pp. 467–482.
ISBN978-3-319-04768-3.
Archived from the original on 21 October 2021. Retrieved 31 March 2023.
Joffe, Alexander H. (2002). "The Rise of Secondary States in the Iron Age Levant". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 45 (4): 425–467.
doi:
10.1163/156852002320939311.
JSTOR3632872.
Coote, Robert B.; Whitelam, Keith W. (1986). "The Emergence of Israel: Social Transformation and State Formation Following the Decline in Late Bronze Age Trade". Semeia (37): 107–47.
Mazar, Amihay (2007). "The Divided Monarchy: Comments on Some Archaeological Issues". In Schmidt, Brian B. (ed.).
The Quest for the Historical Israel. Society of Biblical Literature.
ISBN978-1-58983-277-0.
Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 14 August 2015.