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 eponymous progenitor of an Israelite tribe. These tribes consolidated into a nation and were enslaved in Egypt before being liberated by 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 Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Scholars generally consider the Hebrew Bible's narrative to be part of the Israelites' national myth,[13] but believe that there is a "historical core" to some of the events in it.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn[14] The historicity of the United Monarchy is widely disputed.[15][16] 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 regarded as two closely related ethno-religious groups descended from the Israelites.[17] 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.[18][19][20][21] 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.
In the Hebrew Bible, Israel first appears in Template:Bibleverse, where an angel renames Jacob to Israel after Jacob fought with him.[27][28][29] According to the folk etymology given in the text, Israel is derived from yisra, "to prevail over" or "to struggle with", and El, a Canaanite-Mesopotamiancreator god that is tenuously identified with Yahweh.[30]Template:Sfn However, modern scholarship interprets El as the subject, "El rules/struggles",[31][32][33] from sarar (Template:Lang) 'to rule'[34] (cognate with sar (Template:Lang) 'ruler',[35]Akkadianšarru 'ruler, king'[36]), which is likely cognate with the similar root sara (Template:Lang) "fought, strove, contended".[37][38] Dr. Tzemah Yoreh clarifies that Israel is a combination of 'to strive with' (ש.ר.ה) and 'God' (אל) and that Jacob's name alternates between Jacob and Israel in the biblical narrative, even after his renaming, due to the authors having different opinions about Jacob's moral character.[39] The gradual ethnonymic shift from "Israelites" to "Jews", regardless of their descent from Judah is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE) of the Tanakh.[40]
Biblically, the Israelites referred to the descendants of Israel, a view that was reinforced by Second Temple Judaism, although gentiles could fully assimilate into the Israelite community.[41][42] They referred to themselves as the sons of Israel, which could possibly refer to citizenship rather than blood descent, especially after Israel's biological family transitioned from a clan to a society (Template:Bibleverse).[43] The Israelite identity is alternatively interpreted as being based on religious allegiance, especially through worship of Yahweh or 'covenantal circumcision'.[44][45][46][47][48] There's also contentious evidence of Israelite tribal status being acquired through self-declared allegiance, residency within assigned tribal territory (Template:Bibleverse) or forceful absorption by a greater Israelite tribe.[42][9][49] Jason A. Staples argues that the Israelites referred to the northern Israelite tribes, especially in the Nevi'im, although it's also inclusive of the other tribes in other contexts.[50]
Theologians suggest that Canaan always belonged to the Israelites but was initially usurped by the descendants of Canaan, resulting in their conquest by Israel as divine punishment.[60] Israelite presence in Canaan was also established before Joshua's conquests according to a few biblical traditions.[61][62]
The history of the Israelite people can be divided into these categories, according to the Hebrew Bible:[63]
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.[66][67] Solomon's reign was relatively more peaceful and oversaw the construction of the First Temple,Template:Sfn with the help of Phoenician allies.[68] This Temple was where the Ark of the Covenant was stored; its former location was the City of David.[69]
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.Template:Sfn One year later, according to traditional dating, Cyrus permitted the Judahites to return to their homeland.Template:Sfn This homeland was re-named as the Province of Yehud, which eventually became a satrapy of Eber-Nari.Template:Sfn
This period is covered by the entirety of the Book of Daniel.
Persian period
In 537–520 BCE, Zerubbabel became Yehud's governor and started work on the Second Temple, which was stopped.Template:Sfn In 520–516 BCE, Haggai and Zechariah goaded the Judahites to resume work on the Temple. Upon completion, Joshua became its high priest.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.[71]Template:Sfn That said, some Judahites elected to stay in Persia, where they almost faced annihilation.[72][73]
Several theories exist for the origins of historical Israelites. Some believe they descend 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.[85][23]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] 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.[87][88][89] Israel's demographics were similar to the demographics of Ammon, Edom, Moab and Phoenicia.[88]Template:SfnTemplate:Page needed
Besides their focus on Yahweh worship, Israelite cultural markers were defined by body, food, and time, including male circumcision, avoidance of pork consumption and marking time based on the Exodus, the reigns of Israelite kings, and Sabbath observance. The first two markers were observed by neighbouring west Semites besides the Philistines, who were of Mycenaean Greek origin. As a result, intermarriage with other Semites was common.[9] But what distinguished Israelite circumcision from non-Israelite circumcision was its emphasis on 'correct' timing.[90][91] Israelite circumcision also served as a mnemonic sign for the circumcised, where their 'unnatural' erect circumcised penis would remind them to behave differently in sexual matters.[90]Yom-Tov Lipmann-Muhlhausen suggests that Israelite identity was based on faith and adherence to sex-appropriate commandments. For men, it was circumcision. For women, it was ritual sacrifice after childbirth (Template:Bibleverse).[48]
Genealogy was another ethnic marker. While it was likely that Israelite identity was not exclusively based on blood descent,[42][9][49] the 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".[9]
Names were significant in Israelite culture and indicated one's destiny and inherent character. Thus, a name change indicated a 'divine transformation' in one's 'destines, characters and natures'. These beliefs aligned with the Near Eastern cultural milieu, where names were 'intimately bound up with the very essence of being and inextricably intertwined with personality'.[91]
In terms of appearance, rabbis described the Biblical Jews as being "midway between black and white" and having the "color of the boxwood tree".Template:Sfn Assuming Yurco's debated claim that the Israelites are depicted in reliefs from Merneptah's temple at Karnak is correct,[92] the early Israelites may have wore the same attire and hairstyles as non-Israelite Canaanites.[93][94] Dissenting from this, Anson Rainey argued that the Israelites in the reliefs looked more similar to the Shasu.[95] 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.[96]
Early highland settlements in Canaan
Template:Further
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, had 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.[97]
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.[97][98] 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.[97]
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.[30]Template:Sfn
Himbaza et al. (2012) states that Israelite households were typically ill-equipped to handle conflicts between family members, which may explain the harsh sexual taboos enforced against acts like incest, homosexuality, polygamy etc. in Template:Bibleverse. While the death penalty was legislated for these 'secret crimes', they functioned as a warning, where offenders would confess out of fear and make appropriate reparations.[99]
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, while 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.[15]
From 850 BCE onwards, a series of inscriptions mention the "House of David". They came from Israel's neighbours.Template:Sfn[101]
Compared to the United Monarchy, the historicity of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah is widely accepted by historians and archaeologists.[102]Template:Rp[103] Their destruction by the Assyrians and Babylonians respectively is also confirmed by archaeological evidence and extrabiblical sources.[104][105][106][107][108][102]Template:Rp
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.[109] Frevel has also argued that Judah was a 'vassal-like' state to Israel, under the Omrides.[109] 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.[110]
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 of 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.[111] According to William G. Dever, Israelite identity in the 9th-8th centuries BCE can be identified through a combination of archaeological and cultural traits that distinguish them from their neighbours. These traits include being born and living within the territorial borders of Israel or Judah, speaking Hebrew, living in specific house types, using locally produced pottery, and following particular burial practices. Israelites were also part of a rural kin-based society, and adhered to Yahwism, though not necessarily in a monotheistic way. Their material culture was simple but distinct, and their societal organization was centered around family and inheritance. These traits, while shared with some neighbouring peoples, were uniquely Israelite in their specific combination.[112]
Wars with Assyria and Babylonia
The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE.Template:Sfn The records of Sargon II of Assyria indicate that he deported part of the population to Assyria. Some Israelites migrated to the southern kingdom of Judah,[113] while those that remained in Samaria, concentrated mainly around Mount Gerizim, developed a new ethnic identity as Samaritans.Template:Sfn[114] Foreign groups were also settled by the Assyrians in the territories of the conquered kingdom.[114] Research indicates that only a portion of the surviving Israelite population intermarried with Mesopotamians settlers.[115][116] In their native Samaritan Hebrew, the Samaritans identify as "Israel", "B'nai Israel" or "Shamerim/Shomerim" (i.e. "Guardians/Keepers/Watchers").Template:Sfn[117][118][119] Despite this, belief in the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel emerged because of the heavy assimilation faced by Samarian deportees.[120]
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 (Template:Circa), 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.[125][126] The returnees showed a "heightened sense" of their ethnic identity and shunned exogamy, which was treated as a "permissive reality" in Babylon.[127][128] Circumcision was no longer a significant ethnic marker, with increased emphasis on genealogical descent or faith in Yahweh.[44][45] Jason A. Staples argues that the majority of contemporary Jews, regardless of theology, wished for the reunion of northern Israelites and southern Jews and did not completely appropriate the Israel identity for themselves.[129][130]
In 332 BCE, the Achaemenid Empire fell to Alexander the Great, and the region was later incorporated into the Ptolemaic Kingdom (Template:Circa) and the Seleucid Empire (Template:Circa). 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.[131][132][133][134] Some scholars argue that Jews also engaged in active missionary efforts in the Greco-Roman world, which led to conversions.[135][136][137][138] Several scholars, such as Scot McKnight and Martin Goodman, reject this view while holding that conversions occasionally occurred.[139] A similar diaspora existed for Samaritans but their existence is poorly documented.[140]
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,[141] prompting a reconfiguration of Jewish identity and practice to ensure continuity. The cessation of Temple worship and disappearance of Temple-based sects[142] 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.[143][141][144][145] Concurrently, Christianitybegan to diverge from Judaism, evolving into a predominantly Gentile religion.[146] 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.
As of 2024, only one study has directly examined ancient Israelite genetic material. The analysis examined First Temple-era skeletal remains excavated in Abu Ghosh, and showed one male individual belonging to the J2Y-DNA haplogroup, a set of closely related DNA sequences thought to have originated in the Caucasus or Eastern Anatolia, as well as the T1a and H87mitochondrial DNA haplogroups, the former of which has also been detected among Canaanites, and the latter in Basques, Tunisian Arabs, and Iraqis, suggesting a Mediterranean, Near Eastern, or perhaps Arabian origin.[147]
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."[148]
A 2020 study (by Agranat-Tamr et al.) stated that there was genetic continuity between the 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.[149]
A 2025 study (by Lipson et al.) suggested that the patrilineal origins of ancient Israelites were likely to be genetically heterogeneous. In addition, various Y haplogroups associated with the Cohanim, which were of ancient Near Eastern origin, were due to non-biological Israelite descendants of Cohanim adopting the Cohanim identity. They might've also arose due to sporadic non-paternity events, especially with Judeans or foreigners like Babylonians, Greco-Romans etc. However, at least two Cohen branches (CB-01 and CB-02) appear to trace back to 'early 1st millennium BCE priestly ancestors'.[150]
↑ 6.06.1Mark 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.
↑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.)."
↑Steiner, Richard C. (1997). "Ancient Hebrew". In Hetzron, Robert (ed.). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. pp. 145–173. Template:ISBN.
↑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
↑Issar, A. S. Strike the Rock and There Shall Come Water: Climate Changes, Water Resources and History of the Lands of the Bible, p. 67. Springer. 2014.
↑K. L. Noll (2001). Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction. Template:Webarchive 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."
↑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."
↑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
↑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, Template:ISBN. "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."
↑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."
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