Ancient Israel and Judah

Ancient Israel and Judah were two Israelite kingdoms that existed in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Their history began with the early appearance of the Israelites in Canaan's hill country. The earliest documented mention of "Israel" as a people appears on the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription dating back to around 1208 BCE. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient Israelite culture evolved from the pre-existing Canaanite civilization. During the Iron Age II period, two Israelite kingdoms emerged, covering much of Canaan: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.

According to the Hebrew Bible, a "United Monarchy" consisting of Israel and Judah existed as early as the 11th century BCE, under the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon; the great kingdom later was separated into two smaller kingdoms: Israel, containing the cities of Shechem and Samaria, in the north, and Judah, containing Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple, in the south. The historicity of the United Monarchy is debated—as there are no archaeological remains of it that are accepted as consensus—but historians and archaeologists agree that Israel and Judah existed as separate kingdoms by and ,Finkelstein, Israel, (2020). "Saul and Highlands of Benjamin Update: The Role of Jerusalem", in Joachim J. Krause, Omer Sergi, and Kristin Weingart (eds.), Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel: Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives, SBL Press, Atlanta, GA, p. 48, footnote 57: "...They became territorial kingdoms later, Israel in the first half of the ninth century BCE and Judah in its second half..." respectively.The Pitcher Is Broken: Memorial Essays for Gosta W. Ahlstrom, Steven W. Holloway, Lowell K. Handy, Continuum, 1 May 1995 Quote: "For Israel, the description of the battle of Qarqar in the Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III (mid-ninth century) and for Judah, a Tiglath-pileser III text mentioning (Jeho-) Ahaz of Judah (IIR67 = K. 3751), dated 734–733, are the earliest published to date." The kingdoms' history is known in greater detail than that of other kingdoms in the Levant, primarily due to the selective narratives in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, which were included in the Bible.

The northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. While the Kingdom of Judah remained intact during this time, it became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire. However, Jewish revolts against the Babylonians led to the destruction of Judah in 586 BCE, under the rule of Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. According to the biblical account, the armies of Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem between 589 and 586 BCE, which led to the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the exile of the Jews to Babylon; this event was also recorded in the Babylonian Chronicles. The exilic period saw the development of the Israelite religion towards a monotheistic Judaism.

The exile ended with the fall of Babylon to the Achaemenid Empire . Subsequently, the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great issued a proclamation known as the Edict of Cyrus, which authorized and encouraged exiled Jews to return to Judah.Harper's Bible Dictionary, ed. by Achtemeier, etc., Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1985, p. 103 Cyrus' proclamation began the exiles' return to Zion, inaugurating the formative period in which a more distinctive Jewish identity developed in the Persian province of Yehud. During this time, the destroyed Solomon's Temple was replaced by the Second Temple, marking the beginning of the Second Temple period.

Periods

In archaeological terms, the history covered in this article falls within the Iron Age, which is commonly divided into two main phases (noting that precise dates are subject to scholarly debate):

Iron Age I: 1150The Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities,Megiddo. in Archaeology & History of the Land of the Bible International MA in Ancient Israel Studies, Tel Aviv University: "...Megiddo has...a fascinating picture of state-formation and social evolution in the Bronze Age (ca. 3500-1150 B.C.) and Iron Age (ca. 1150-600 B.C.)..."–950 BCEFinkelstein, Israel, (2019).First Israel, Core Israel, United (Northern) Israel, in Near Eastern Archaeology 82.1 (2019), p. 8: "...The late Iron I system came to an end during the tenth century BCE..." Iron Age II: 950Finkelstein, Israel, and Eli Piasetzky, 2010. "The Iron I/IIA Transition in the Levant: A Reply to Mazar and Bronk Ramsey and a New Perspective", in Radiocarbon, Vol 52, No. 4, The Arizona Board of Regents in behalf of the University of Arizona, pp. 1667 and 1674: "The Iron I/IIA transition occurred during the second half of the 10th century...We propose that the late Iron I cities came to an end in a gradual process and interpret this proposal with Bayesian Model II...The process results in a transition date of 915-898 BCE (68% range), or 927-879 BCE (95% range)..."–586 BCE

Alternate terminology for this timeframe includes:

First Temple period (or Israelite period): ()Jerusalem in the First Temple period (c.1000-586 B.C.E.) , Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies, Bar-Ilan University, last modified 1997, accessed 11 February 2019

These periods correspond to the emergence, development, and eventual fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The Iron Age II ends with the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 587/6 BCE. Following Iron Age II, periods are often named after dominant imperial powers. For example, the Babylonian period (586–539 BCE) is named for the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which conquered Judah and exiled much of its population. The return to Zion and the construction of the Second Temple marked the beginning of the Second Temple period (70 CE).

Background

Geography The eastern Mediterranean seaboard stretches north to south from the Taurus Mountains to the Sinai Peninsula, and east to west between the sea and the Arabian Desert.Miller 1986, p. 36.

The coastal plain of the southern Levant, broad in the south and narrowing to the north, is backed in its southernmost portion by a zone of foothills, the Shephelah; like the plain, this narrows as it goes northwards, ending in the promontory of Mount Carmel. East of the plain and the Shephelah is a mountainous ridge, the "hill country of Judea" in the south, the "hill country of Mount Ephraim" north of that, then Galilee and Mount Lebanon.

To the east again lie the steep-sided valley occupied by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and the wadi of the Arabah, which continues down to the eastern arm of the Red Sea. Beyond the plateau is the Syrian desert separating the Levant from Mesopotamia. To the southwest is Egypt; to the northeast, Upper Mesopotamia.Coogan 1998, pp. 4–7.

The location and geographical characteristics of the narrow Levant made the area a battleground among the powerful entities that surrounded it.Coogan 1998, pp. 4–7.

Late Bronze Age Canaan

Ancient Israel emerged during the late second millennium BCE. Canaan, as the region was known in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1500–1200 BCE), was then a patchwork of city-states under the imperial domination of the New Kingdom of Egypt. During this period, Canaan was a shadow of what it had been centuries earlier: many cities were abandoned, others shrank in size, and the total settled population was probably not much more than a hundred thousand.Finkelstein 2001, p. 78. Settlement was concentrated in cities along the coastal plain and along major communication routes; the central and northern hill country which would later become the biblical kingdom of Israel was only sparsely inhabited.Killebrew (2005), pp. 38–39. The Amarna letters, discovered in Egypt, offer insight into regional politics and mention cities such as Ashkelon, Hazor, Gezer, Shechem, Jerusalem, and Megiddo. Several of these city-states were embroiled in rivalries and territorial disputes, with local rulers like Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem and Lab'ayu of Shechem appealing to the pharaoh for assistance against neighboring leaders.

Alongside the city-states, Late Bronze Age texts mention other groups inhabiting the region. The 'Apiru were a marginalized social class that included migrants, mercenaries, and others living on the fringes of society. As the word 'Apiru is possibly related linguistically to the term "Hebrew," early scholars equated them with the Israelites, but most now view any connection as indirect: while some early Israelites may have come from Apiru-like backgrounds, the term "Hebrew" later developed into a distinct ethnic identity. The Shasu, often associated with pastoralist groups east of the Dead Sea, are sometimes linked to early Israel—particularly due to an Egyptian reference that names them alongside a term resembling Yahweh, which some scholars see as a reference to the Israelite deity. Some texts describe these groups as tribal or settled communities, possibly indicating ethnic identities and suggesting that the Egyptians may have grouped diverse populations under a single label.

Late Bronze Age collapse Around 1200 BCE, the entire Eastern Mediterranean was impacted by the Late Bronze Age collapse, a period of widespread upheaval marked by population movements, invasions, urban destruction, and the fall of major powers, including the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire, and Egypt's New Kingdom. Scholars attribute these disruptions to war, famine, plague, climate change, invasions, or a combination of factors. Canaan was affected too,Killebrew 2005, pp. 10–16. its large cities were devastated, setting the stage for a new era in the region's history. The process was gradual,McNutt (1999), p. 47. and some Canaanite cities survived into Iron Age I.Golden 2004a, p. 155.

Around 1140 BCE, Egypt lost control over Canaan, and various groups of Sea Peoples settled along its coastal regions. Among them were the Peleset, who are widely considered to be the biblical Philistines, settling in the southern coastal plain, west of Judah. Their material culture, genetic evidence, and the biblical narrative all point to an Aegean or Cypriot origin. It is in this later part of the Late Bronze Age that a people called Israel are first attested.

Origins of ancient Israel

Biblical account

The Hebrew Bible chronicles the descent of the Israelites from the Patriarchs. The Book of Genesis describes how Abraham, under God's guidance, migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan and entered into a covenant with God, who promised to make his descendants a chosen people and grant them the land of Canaan as an eternal inheritance. The narrative continues with the lives of his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, who was renamed Israel after wrestling with an angel. The twelve sons of Israel moved to Egypt during a famine, and their descendants, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, were enslaved by the pharaoh. After generations of bondage, Moses, an Israelite from the Tribe of Levi raised in the Egyptian court, led the Israelites out during The Exodus—their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Following a miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, and forty years of wandering in the wilderness, Moses died as the Israelites reached the threshold of Canaan. Under his successor Joshua, the Israelites crossed the Jordan River and began the conquest of Canaan. The land was allotted among the tribes and distributed to families as inheritance, but in the absence of centralized authority, the tribes were left to confront local populations on their own. During the era of the Judges (as the Bible calls it), the Israelites existed as a loose tribal confederation in the hill country, without a centralized government, but with judges. The Book of Judges is thought to reflect early Israelite tribal society.

Archaeological and scholarly perspectives