Israelites & Judahites

Origins

Israel first appears as a people on Pharaoh Merneptah's victory stele, dated about 1208 BCE.¹ Archaeological surveys record a wave of small highland villages across the central hill country in Iron Age I (c. 1200–1000 BCE), and most scholars now hold that the early Israelites emerged largely from indigenous Canaanite and pastoral populations rather than through an external conquest.³² By the ninth century BCE two Hebrew kingdoms are attested epigraphically: the northern 'House of Omri', named on the Moabite Mesha Stele, and a southern Judahite line, the 'House of David', on the Aramaic Tel Dan Stele.⁴⁵

Religious life

Israelite religion (Yahwism) centred on Yahweh as national deity, worshipped at local shrines and, increasingly, at the Jerusalem Temple built under the Judahite monarchy.⁶ Most scholars judge that early Israelite belief was not strictly monotheistic: Yahweh was venerated alongside other deities, and inscriptions and biblical polemic attest the goddess Asherah as a consort figure.⁶⁷ Exclusive worship of Yahweh advanced through the centralising reforms associated with King Josiah in the late seventh century BCE, and thoroughgoing monotheism crystallised only around the sixth-century exile.⁷ Priestly sacrifice, festival pilgrimage and prophecy structured religious life.⁷

Language & culture

The Israelites spoke Biblical Hebrew, a Canaanite (Northwest Semitic) language written first in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet; early witnesses include the tenth-century Gezer Calendar, royal storage-jar seals and the Siloam tunnel inscription of Hezekiah's Jerusalem.⁸ Hebrew was the vehicle of the monarchic-era literature later collected in the Hebrew Bible.⁸ From the sixth century BCE, Imperial Aramaic — the administrative lingua franca of the Babylonian and Persian empires — spread widely; Late Biblical Hebrew shows heavy Aramaic influence in vocabulary and syntax, and the square Aramaic script eventually displaced Paleo-Hebrew for writing Hebrew.⁹

Relations with neighbours

Israel and Judah sat within a crowded Canaanite and Transjordanian world, contending with Philistine cities on the coast and with the neighbouring kingdoms of Moab, Ammon, Edom and the Aramean states.⁴ The Moabite king Mesha's stele records his revolt against Israelite domination under the House of Omri.⁴ From the eighth century the region fell under the shadow of Mesopotamian empires: Judah became an Assyrian vassal, and Sennacherib's annals boast of shutting King Hezekiah in Jerusalem 'like a caged bird' during the campaign of 701 BCE, after which Judah paid heavy tribute.¹⁰

Decline & dispersal

The northern kingdom of Israel fell to Assyria: Samaria was captured about 722 BCE and Sargon II's annals claim the deportation of 27,290 of its inhabitants, ending the northern polity.¹¹ Judah survived as a vassal until the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem and its First Temple in 586 BCE and deported much of the population to Babylonia.¹² In 538 BCE, after the Persian conquest, Cyrus the Great permitted the exiles to return; they rebuilt the Temple and reorganised as the self-governing province of Yehud.¹³ Modern genetic studies trace substantial ancestry in most sampled Jewish diaspora communities to the Levant, but do not identify these particular deportations and returns as the mechanism.¹⁴

Notable figures

• David — Biblical king; traditional founder of Judah's Davidic dynasty. In biblical tradition David founded the Judahite royal dynasty; a phrase on the ninth-century Tel Dan Stele is widely read as 'House of David,' evidence for a dynasty or polity bearing his name rather than for every detail of the biblical biography.⁵
• Omri (?–874 BCE) — King of Israel, founder of the Omride dynasty. Founder of Israel's Omride dynasty (reigned c. 885–874 BCE) and builder of Samaria; the Assyrians long called the northern kingdom 'the House of Omri' (Bit-Humri).⁴
• Hezekiah (741 BCE–687 BCE) — King of Judah. King of Judah (reigned c. 715–686 BCE) who withstood Sennacherib's 701 BCE siege; he cut the Siloam water tunnel and fortified Jerusalem.¹⁵
• Josiah (648 BCE–609 BCE) — King of Judah, cultic reformer. King of Judah (reigned c. 640–609 BCE) whose centralising reforms advanced exclusive worship of Yahweh at Jerusalem; killed at Megiddo by Pharaoh Necho.⁷
• Zerubbabel — Davidic governor of Persian-era Yehud. Davidic-line governor of Persian-period Yehud who led an early return of exiles from Babylon and oversaw rebuilding of the Second Temple, dedicated about 515 BCE.¹³

Key events

• 1208 BCE Israel named on the Merneptah Stele. Pharaoh Merneptah's victory stele lists 'Israel' among defeated peoples of Canaan — the earliest known attestation of the name Israel.¹
• 900 BCE Separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah. By the ninth century BCE, Israel in the north and Judah in the south were separate kingdoms; the biblical account presents this political landscape as the result of a division after a united monarchy.²
• 722 BCE Assyrian conquest of Samaria. Assyria captured Samaria c. 722 BCE, ending the kingdom of Israel and deporting its people; Sargon II's annals claim 27,290 inhabitants led away.¹¹
• 701 BCE Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem. The Assyrian king Sennacherib devastated Judah and besieged Jerusalem in 701 BCE, trapping Hezekiah 'like a caged bird'; the city held out but paid heavy tribute.¹⁰
• 586 BCE Destruction of the First Temple. Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon razed Jerusalem and its Temple in 586 BCE and deported much of Judah's population, beginning the Babylonian exile.¹²
• 538 BCE Return under Cyrus. Cyrus the Great of Persia permitted the Judean exiles to return c. 538 BCE and rebuild the Temple; Judah was reconstituted as the province of Yehud.¹³

Where they lived

• Land of Israel · 1200 BCE
• Samaria (Kingdom of Israel) · 1200–720 BCE