Israelites

The Israelites were a Hebrew-speaking people of the Ancient Near East who inhabited the Land of Israel during the monarchic period (11th to 7th centuries BC).

The word "Israelite" derives from the Biblical Hebrew ישראל (Standard: ; Tiberian: ). The Hebrew Bible etymologizes the name as from yisra "to prevail over", and el, "God, the divine". The ethnonym is attested as early as the 13th century BC in an Egyptian inscription. The eponymous biblical patriarch of the Israelites is Jacob, who was given the additional name "Israel" after wrestling with an angel. Jacob demands a blessing from the angel which he eventually receives, hence "prevailing over the divine." (Genesis 32:28-30)

The biblical term "Israelites" (or the Twelve Tribes or Children of Israel) means both a people, the descendants of the patriarch Jacob/Israel, and the historical population of the kingdom of Israel, or a follower of the God of Israel and Mosaic law. In Modern Hebrew usage, an Israelite is, broadly speaking, a lay member of the Jewish faith, as opposed to the priestly orders of Kohenim and Levites.

The name Hebrews is sometimes used synonymously with "Israelites". For the post-exilic period, beginning in the 5th century BCE, the remnants of the Israelites came to be referred to as Jews, named for the kingdom of Judah. This change is explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE). It replaced the title children of Israel.

Although most literary references to them are located in the Hebrew Bible, there is also abundant non-biblical archaeological and historical evidence of ancient Israel and Judah.

Terminology

Israel was the name given to the biblical patriarch Jacob after wrestling with an angel on the shores of the Jabbok, prior to a meeting with his brother Esau. Jacob had an intense rivalry with Esau, and this confrontation with the angel bears special significance in the story of the Israelites. This ysri3r is accompanied with the hieroglyphic determiner for "foreign people", and is placed in the northern part of the central highlands, roughly consistent with the location of the later kingdom of Israel.

The origins of the Israelites

The archaeological record indicates that the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged in the Early Iron Age from the Canaanite city-state culture of the Late Bronze Age, at the same time and in the same circumstances as the neighbouring states of Edom, Moab, Aram, and the Philistinian and Phoenician city-states. Throughout this formative period, (1200–1000 BCE), the highlands lack any sign of centralised authority; religiously, they lack any sign of temples, shrines, or centralised worship in general (although cult-objects associated with the Canaanite god El have been found); the pottery remains strongly in the local Late Bronze tradition; and the alphabet is early-Canaanite. The most commonly appealed to ethnic marker distinguishing Israelite villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether this can be taken as an ethnic marker remains a matter of dispute. Nevertheless, it is widely recognized that identification of the Israelites as a distinctive group is possible by means of archaeological evidence such as foodways, architecture, cultic practices, and material culture such as ceramics and large water pithoi.

The population of the central highlands during this same period was extremely sparse at the beginning, with some 25 villages and a population of about 12,000; by 1000 BC the number of villages had increased to 300 and the population to 55,000.

By c.850 BC inscriptions such as the Tel Dan stele and the Mesha stele indicate that a regionally important kingdom referred to by its neighbours as the House of Omri, after the ruling dynasty, and sometimes Samaria, after its capital, had emerged in the territory of the central highlands; there is no record of what this kingdom's own name for itself might have been, although in one Assyrian record the king is called "Ahab the Israelite." Records relating to Israel, in the sense of this northern kingdom, continue down to its destruction by the Assyrians towards the end of the 8th century.

The earliest probable mention of the southern kingdom is on the Tel Dan stele (c.850 BCE), where, according to the scholarly consensus, the House of David is mentioned alongside the House of Omri together with the mention of the death of a king whose reconstructed name can be equated with the name of a king mentioned in the bible. There is no further archaeological evidence until Babylonian records refer to it (as Yehud, the Aramaic equivalent of Judah) at the very end of the 7th century. The archaeological record also indicates that Jerusalem, from being no more than a small village, underwent a period of sudden and substantial growth in the period immediately following the destruction of Israel, c.722 BCE.

Three major theories on how the group of people became to be known as the Israelites have been proposed: # Rapid Conquest # Gradual Infiltration # Revolting Peasants

Evidence for these theories comes from biblical as well as extrabiblical sources. However, none of the theories can completely account for all the data. The rapid conquest model was put forth by William Albright and George E. Wright in an effort to combine archeological evidence with biblical narrative. In general, this model follows the Joshua 1-12 story with the defining characteristic of unified tribes triumphing in military conquest. However, modern archeology and scholarship, has subsequently criticized this theory, especially since the Judges account show independent tribal action rather than a unified national identity.

In response to what is found in Judges, Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth advanced the gradual infiltration theory of Israelite emergence. They propose that instead of a rapid military conquest, a gradual infiltration of pastoral nomads from settled highlands eventually come to conflict with coastal areas. Eventually the individual tribes “unify” under charismatic leadership (such as Gideon or Deborah; Judges 4-6) and shared heritage and religious practice. George E. Mendenhall wrote that while plausible, the transformation of the nomadic existence to one of sedentary nature had nothing to do with the tribes of Israel.

Alternatively, as proposed by Mendenhall and defended by Norman K Gottwald, a peasant class revolted against the upper class upon hearing stories of similarly oppressed people who came out of Egypt. He suggests that the impetus for joining into a unified group of people was not only for egalitarian purposes but also for some measure of peace .. Extrabiblical evidence of the politically unstable environment is highlighted by the Amarna letters, which show city-states constantly warring with each other.

Biblical Israel

;Pentateuch The Torah traces the Israelites to the patriarch Jacob, grandson of Abraham, who was renamed Israel after a mystical incident in which he wrestles all night with an angel of God. Jacob's twelve sons (in order), Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin, become the ancestors of twelve tribes, with the exception of Joseph, whose two sons Mannasseh and Ephraim become tribal eponyms.

Jacob and his sons are forced by famine to go down into Egypt. When they arrive they and their families are 70 in number, but within four generations they have increased to 600,000 men of fighting age, and the Pharaoh of Egypt, alarmed, first enslaves them and then orders the death of all male Hebrew children. The God of Israel reveals his name to Moses, a Hebrew of the line of Levi; Moses leads the Israelites out of bondage and into the desert, where God gives them their laws and the Israelites agree to become his people. Nevertheless, the Israelites lack complete faith in God, and the generation which left Egypt is not permitted to enter the Promised Land.

;Former Prophets Following the death of the generation of Moses a new generation, led by Joshua, enters Canaan and takes possession of the land in accordance with the curse placed upon Canaan by Noah. Yet even now the Israelites lack strength in God in the face of the peoples of the land, and periods of weakness and backsliding alternate with periods of resilience under a succession of Judges. Eventually the Israelites ask for a king, and God gives them Saul. David, the youngest (divinely favoured) son of Jesse of Bethlehem would succeed Saul. Under David the Israelites establish the kingdom of God, and under David's son Solomon they build the Temple where God takes his earthly dwelling among them. Yet Solomon sins by allowing his foreign wives to worship their own gods, and so on his death the kingdom is divided in two.

The kings of the northern kingdom of Israel are uniformly bad, permitting the worship of other gods and failing to enforce the worship of God alone, and so God eventually allows them to be conquered and dispersed among the peoples of the earth; in their place strangers settle the northern land. In Judah some kings are good and enforce the worship of God alone, but many are bad and permit other gods, even in the Temple itself, and at length God allows the Judah to fall to her enemies, the people taken into captivity in Babylon, the land left empty and desolate, and the Temple itself destroyed.

;Ezra-Nehemiah-Chronicles Yet despite these events God does not forget his people, but sends Cyrus, king of Persia as his messiah to deliver them from bondage. The Israelites are allowed to return to Judah and Benjamin, the Temple is rebuilt, the priestly orders restored, and the service of sacrifice resumed. Through the offices of the sage Ezra Israel is constituted as a holy community, holding itself apart from all other peoples, bound by the Law.

Hasmonean conversions

After the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 Judah (Hebrew: יְהוּדָה Yehuda) remained a province of the Persian empire. This continued into the following Hellenistic period, when Yehud was a province sometimes of Ptolemaic Egypt and sometimes of Seleucid Syria, but in the early part of the 2nd century BC a revolt against the Seleucids led to the establishment of an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty. The Hasmoneans adopted a deliberate policy of imitating and reconstituting the Davidic kingdom, and as part of this forcibly converted to Judaism their neighbours in the Land of Israel. The new Israelites included Nabatean groups such as the Zabadeans and Itureans, the peoples of the former Philistine cities, the people of Galilee, and the Moabites, Ammonites and Edomites.

"Israelites" in modern Judaism

In the Hellenistic and early Roman periods (i.e., around the time of Christ), and despite the exclusivism championed by the Book of Ezra, (contradicted by other biblical books from the same time, such as Ruth), Judaism became a proselytising religion. As proselytised (and conquered) groups were assimilated into the Israelite lineage the old tribal divisions fell into disuse, and the major divisions within Judaism thus became:

Kohanim (descended from the lineage of Aaron, the first High Priest in the time of Moses)

Levites (other descendants of Levi)

Israelites

This threefold division of the Jewish people persists to this day. To avoid confusion with the broader use of the term Israelite or the modern term Israeli, a member of the Israelite, as opposed to Levite or Aaronite, lineage is usually referred to as a Yisrael (an Israel) and not a Yisraeli (which could mean Israelite in the broader sense or in modern Hebrew, an Israeli).

Modern groups descendant from the Israelites

Jews

Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים‎, Yehudim), also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation. Converts to Judaism, whose numbers have been historically very small, whose status as Jews within the Jewish nation is equal to those born into it; and, although few in number, have been absorbed into the Jewish people throughout the millennia. There are distinct ethnic divisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, and subsequent independent evolutions. According to the Books of Chronicles chapter 9 line 2, the Jews who took part in The Return to Zion (whom modern Jews are originated from) are stated to be from the Tribe of Judah (alongside the Tribe of Simeon that were absorbed into it), the Tribe of Benjamin, the Tribe of Levi (Levites and Priests) and also from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (which some biblical scholars consider to be a referring name describing the remaining population of the Northern Kingdom of Israel from all ten tribes who were not exiled during the famous Ten tribes exile; they had stayed to live in their homes and later joined the Israelites of the Kingdom of Judah at the time of King Hezekiah, and formed the Jews of the Babylonian Exile era).

Ashkenazi Jews

Ashkenaz is the Hebrew word for "Germany". There are several populations which have lived in Germany at some point in the past 1,000 years and fall under the umbrella term for the group. Some Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of Jews who migrated into northern France and Germany around 800–1000 CE, and were later sent into Eastern Europe. Many Ashkenazic Jews are also Sephardic in origin as a result of diaspora from the Spanish Inquisition. In this sense "Ashkenazi" refers to religious practice, appropriated over time, rather than to a strict ethno-geographic division.

Sephardic Jews

Sephardim are Jews whose ancestors lived in Spain or Portugal, where they lived for possibly as much as two millennia before being expelled in 1492 by the Catholic Monarchs (see Alhambra decree); they subsequently migrated to North Africa Maghreb and Ottoman Empire (both at the time considered safe havens for Jews). In the Ottoman Empire the Sephardim mostly settled in the European portion of the Empire, and mainly in the major cities such as: Constantinople, Thessaloniki and Bursa. Thessaloniki, which today is to be found in modern-day Greece, had a large and flourishing Sephardic community as was the community of Maltese Jews in Malta. Others settled in Italy, the Netherlands and Latin America. A large population of Sephardic refugees who fled via the Netherlands as Marranos eventually settled in Hamburg and Altona Germany in the early 16th century, eventually appropriating Ashkenazic Jewish rituals into their religious practice (see above). One famous figure from the Sephardic Ashkenazic population is Glückel of Hameln. Others among those who settled in the Netherlands, were some who would again relocate to the United States, establishing the country's first organized community of Jews and erecting the United States' first synagogue. Other Sephardim remained in Spain and Portugal as anusim (forced converts to Catholicism), which would also be the fate for those who had migrated to Spanish and Portuguese ruled Latin America.

Mizrachi Jews

Mizrahim are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus. The term Mizrahi is used in Israel in the language of politics, media and some social scientists for Jews from the Arab world and adjacent, primarily Muslim-majority countries. This includes Iraqi Jews, Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, Maghreb Jews , Yemenite Jews, Persian Jews, Afghan Jews, Bukharian Jews, Kurdish Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews and Ethiopian Jews.

Yemenite Jews

Temanim are Jews living in Yemen whose geographic and social isolation from the rest of the Jewish community allowed them to develop a liturgy and set of practices that are significantly distinct from those of other Oriental Jewish groups; they themselves comprise three distinctly different groups, though the distinction is one of religious law and liturgy rather than of ethnicity.

Karaite Jews

Karaim are Jews living mostly in Egypt, Iraq, Crimea and Israel. They are distinguished by the form of Judaism they observe. Rabbinic Jews of varying ethnicities have affiliated with the Karaite community throughout the millennia. As such, Karaite Jews are less a Jewish ethnic division, than they are members of a particular branch of Judaism. Karaite Judaism recognizes the Tanakh as the single religious authority of the Jewish people. Linguistic principles and contextual exegesis are used in arriving at the correct meaning of the Torah. Karaite Jews strive to adhere to the plain or most obvious understanding of the text when interpreting the Tanakh. By contrast, Rabbinical Judaism regards an Oral Law (codified and recorded in the Mishnah and Talmuds) as being equally binding on Jews, and mandated by God. In Rabbinical Judaism, the Oral Law forms the basis of religion, morality, and Jewish life. Karaite Jews rely on the use of sound reasoning and the application of linguistic tools to determine the correct meaning of the Tanakh; while Rabbinical Judaism looks toward the Oral law codified in the Talmud, to provide the Jewish community with an accurate understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures.

There are approximately 50,000 adherents of Karaite Judaism, most of whom live in Israel, but exact numbers are not known, as most Karaites have not participated in any religious censuses. The differences between Karaite and Rabbinic Judaism go back more than a thousand years. Rabbinical Judaism originates from the Pharisees of the Second Temple period. Karaite Judaism may have its origins in the Sadducees of the same era. Unlike the Sadducees who recognized only the Torah as binding, Karaite Jews hold the entire Hebrew Bible to be a religious authority. As such, the vast majority of Karaites believe in the resurrection of the dead. Karaite Jews are widely regarded as being halachically Jewish by the Orthodox Rabbinate. Similarly, members of the rabbinic community are considered to be Jews by the Moetzet Hakhamim, if they are patrilineally Jewish.

Anusim

During the Jewish diaspora, Jews who lived in Christian Europe were usually attacked by the local population and were portrayed by many Anti-semites motives, many of them were forced to convert to Christianity by the local population or by the religious leadership, and were called by Jews: "Anusim" ('forced-ones'), they continued practicing Judaism in secret, while living outside as ordinary Christians. The most known case of "Anusim" was the one of the Jews of Spain and Jews of Portugal (although "Anusim" were also in other European countries). On the Muslim countries, many Jews were forced to convert to Islam by force over the years since the rise of the Islamic religion, and the most known case of those conversion was the case of Mashhad Jews, that lived as ordinary Muslims in Persia but kept practicing Judaism, and eventually made an Aliyah and returned being Jewish in Israel. Many Anusim's descendants left Judaism over the years. On December 2008, genetic test showed that 19.8% of the Iberian Peninsula are originated from the Anusim.

Samaritans

The Samaritans, who were once a comparatively large group but are now a very small ethnic and religious group of not more than about 700 people who live in Israel and the West Bank, regard themselves as descendants of the tribes of Ephraim (named by them as Aphrime) and Manasseh (named by them as Manatch). Samaritans adhere to a version of the Torah, known as the Samaritan Pentateuch, which differs in some respects from the Masoretic text, sometimes in important ways, and less so from the Septuagint.

Samaritans do not regard the Tanakh as an accurate or truthful history, and regard only Moses as a prophet. They have their own version of Hebrew and their own script for writing Hebrew, which, is descended directly from the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, unlike the Jewish script for writing Hebrew which is a stylized form of the Aramaic alphabet the Jews adopted during their captivity in Babylonia.

The Samaritans consider themselves Bnei Yisrael ("Children of Israel" or "Israelites"), but do not regard themselves to be Yehudim (Jews). They view this term "Jews" as a designation for followers of Judaism, which they assert is a related but altered and amended religion brought back by the exiled Israelite returnees which is not the true religion of the ancient Israelites, which according to them, Samaritanism is.

Judaism regards the Samaritans as descendants of the northern tribesmen whom the Assyrians settled in the territory they conquered from the kingdom of Israel. Since one of those tribes was the Cutheans, this is the name used for the Samaritans in the Talmud. Both the Bible and external sources such as Josephus record intermarriage between Jews and Samaritans in the Hellenistic period.

Modern DNA evidence has proven both most of the world's Jews and the Samaritans have a common ancestral lineage to the Israelites, largely on the paternal lines in both cases. Maternally, both Jews and Samaritans have very low rates of intermarriage with local host (for Jews, local populations in their host diaspora regions) or alien (for Samaritans, foreigners resettled in their midst in attempts by ruling foreign elites to obliterate national identities) populations. Both populations' DNA results indicates that both groups had a high percentage of marriage inside their own community than perform an interfaith marriage.

Other groups identifying as descendants of Israelites

Beta Israel

The Beta Israel, otherwise known as the Falasha, is a group from Ethiopia, most of whom now live in Israel. Though they are reputed by many scholars and themselves to be descended from the Tribe of Dan, most genetic evidence shows the group to be more likely converts of local Ethiopian origin. They have a long history of practicing such Jewish traditions as kashrut, Shabbat and Passover. For this reason, their Jewishness was accepted by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Israeli government in 1975. They emigrated to Israel en masse during the 1980s and 1990s, as Jews, under the Law of Return. Some who claim to be Beta Israel still live in Ethiopia.

Bene Israel

Bene Israel are Jews originally from Maharashtra state in India, who now live in Israel.

Bnei Menashe

The Bnei Menashe is a group of people in India who claim to be descendants of the half-tribe of Manasseh. A DNA study claiming evidence that the group had Middle Eastern descendency met with criticism of its methodology. Hillel Halkin speculates based on the available evidence that the overwhelming majority of the Bneu Menashe are not descended from the Levant, but that small numbers of them probably are. As of 2005, members who have studied Hebrew, observe the Sabbath, and adhere to other Jewish laws, received the support of the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel in arranging formal conversion to Judaism. Some have converted and emigrated to Israel under the Law of Return.

Bnei Efraim

The group called Bene Ephraim of India claim descent from the Tribe of Ephraim.

The Lemba

The Lemba group has an oral tradition which claims that they are descendants of Jewish people (with an emphasis on their male ancestors) who moved out of Jerusalem, traveled to Yemen and from there reached Africa. In 2002, DNA tests on their Y-Chromosome confirmed the tradition and found that 50% of the Lemba males have Middle Eastern origin, and the Buba Clan (which is referred to as a leading clan in the Lemba society) were found to have the Cohen Gene (CMH), which is found in members of the priest clan of modern day Jews as well. This may confirm their connection to the Jewish people. The Halakhic Jewish status of the Lemba is disputed and are not officially recognized by Israel as descended Jews.

Black Hebrews

The Black Hebrew Israelites (also Black Hebrews, African Hebrew Israelites, and Hebrew Israelites) are an American movement, mostly of Black African ancestry, who believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites. Black Hebrews adhere in varying degrees to the religious beliefs and practices of mainstream Judaism, but are generally not accepted as Jews by the greater Jewish community. Many Black Hebrews consider themselves, and not mainstream Jews, to be the only authentic descendants of the ancient Israelites. Many choose to self-identify as Hebrew Israelites or Black Hebrews rather than as Jews.

Rastafari

Some Rastas believe that the black races are the lost Israelites – literally or spiritually. They interpret the Bible as implying that Haile Selassie was the returned Messiah, who would lead the world's peoples of African descent into a promised land of full emancipation and divine justice. There are some Rastafarians that believe they are Jews by descent through Ras Tafari, Ras Tafari being a descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba via Menelik I. One Rastafari order named The Twelve Tribes of Israel, imposes a metaphysical astrology whereby Aries is Reuben, Aquarius is Joseph, etc. The Twelve Tribes of Israel differ from most Rastafari Mansions (sects) because they believe that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior, while other Mansions claim that Haile Selassie I is the true God. With his famous early reggae song The Israelites, Desmond Dekker immortalised the Rastafari concept of themselves as the Lost Children of Israel. However, sometimes people native to Africa are identified with descendants of Ham, where as the Old Testament of the Bible states that Abraham is descended from Shem.

Pashtun

Some Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan refer to themselves as the Bani Israel (Arabic term for Israelite), House of Israel, or Beit Israel, they claim to be the patriarchal historical descendants of the "ten lost tribes" of the northern Kingdom of Israel which were taken into captivity by Assyria. Israel is planning to fund a genetic study to determine whether there is a link between the lost tribes of Israel and the Pashtuns.

See also

Bible

British Israelism

Gentile

Half Jewish

House of Israel (Ghana)

Israeli Jews

Israelis

Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

Noahides

Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg

Shavei Israel

Tribal allotments of Israel

References and notes

External links

Philip Davies, "The Origin of Biblical Israel'' (Journal of Hebrew Studies)

William G. Dever, "Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?" (Eerdmans, 2003)

Category:Semitic peoples Category:Jewish history Category:Ancient peoples Category:Ethnonyms Category:Jews