History of ancient Israel and Judah

For the pre-history of the region, see Pre-history of the Southern Levant. For an overview of the history of the general region, see History of the Levant. For an overview of the history of the region called Palestine, see History of Palestine.

The Iron Age kingdom of Israel (blue) and kingdom of Judah (tan), with their neighbours (8th century BCE)

Israel and Judah were Iron Age kingdoms of the ancient Levant. The ancient history of Israel and Judah runs from the first mention of the name Israel in the archaeological record in c.1200 BCE to the end of a nominally independent Judean kingdom in the first century CE.

The two kingdoms arose on the easternmost coast of the Mediterranean, the westernmost part of the Fertile Crescent, between the ancient empires of Egypt to the south, Assyria, Babylonia, and later Persia to the north and east, and Greece and later Rome across the sea to the west. The area involved is relatively small, perhaps only 100 miles north to south and 40 or 50 miles east to west.

Israel and Judah emerged from the indigenous Canaanite culture of the Late bronze age, and were based on villages that formed and grew in the southern Levant highlands (i.e. today's definition for the region between the coastal plain and the Jordan Valley) between c.1200-1000 BCE. Israel became an important local power in the 9th and 8th centuries BCE before falling to the Assyrians; the southern kingdom, Judah, enjoyed a period of prosperity as a client-state of the greater empires of the region before a revolt against Babylon led to its destruction early in the 6th century. Judean exiles returned from Babylon early in the following Persian period, inaugurating the formative period in the development of a distinctive Judahite identity in the province of Yehud, as Judah was now called. Yehud was absorbed into the subsequent Greek-ruled kingdoms which followed the conquests of Alexander the Great. In the 2nd century BCE, the Jews revolted against Greek rule and created the Hasmonean kingdom, which became first a Roman client state and eventually passed under direct Roman rule.

Periods and chronology

(From Philip J. King, Lawrence E. Stager, "Life in biblical Israel")

• Late Bronze Age: 1550-1200 BCE
• Iron Age: 1200-586 BCE (divided into Iron Age I and Iron Age II)
• Babylonian: 586-539 BCE
• Persian: 539-332 BCE
• Hellenistic: 332-53 BCE

Late Bronze Age background (1550-1200 BCE)

The Canaanite god Ba'al, 14th-12th century BC (Louvre museum, Paris)

The eastern Mediterranean seaboard - the Levant - stretches 400 miles north to south from the Taurus Mountains to the Sinai desert, and 70 to 100 miles east to west between the sea and the Arabian desert. 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 Shephalah; like the plain this narrows as it goes northwards, ending in the promontory of Mount Carmel. East of the plain and the Shephalah is a mountainous ridge, the "hill country of Judah" in the south, the "hill country of Ephraim" north of that, then Galilee and the Lebanon mountains. 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 Mesopotamia. "The Levant thus constitutes a narrow corridor whose geographical setting made it a constant area of contention between more powerful entities".

In the 2nd millennium the Egyptians called the entire Levantine coast "Canaan"; in the bible of the first half of the 1st millennium Canaan can mean all of the land west of the Jordan river, or, more narrowly, the coastal strip. By Roman times - the second half of the millennium - the name Canaan was dropped in favour of "Philistia", "Land of the Philistines", while the northern and central coast was known as Phoenicia. Northeast of Canaan/Palestine was Aram, later called Syria after the Assyrians, who had likewise long since vanished.

Settlement during the Late Bronze was concentrated in the coastal plain and along major communication routes, with the central hill-country only sparsely inhabited; each city had its own ruler, constantly at odds with his neighbours and appealing to the Egyptians to adjudicate his differences. One of these Canaanite states was Jerusalem: letters from the Egyptian archives indicate that it followed the usual Late Bronze pattern of a small city with surrounding farmlands and villages; unlike most other Late Bronze city-states, there is no indication that it was destroyed at the end of the period.

Egyptian control over Canaan, and the system of Canaanite city-states, broke down during in the Late Bronze period, and Canaanite culture was thereafter gradually absorbed into that of the Philistines, Phoenicians and Israelites. The Philistines clearly represent the arrival of a considerable number of outsiders, probably from Cyprus, with their own non-indigenous culture; the Israelites are just as clearly indigenous to Canaan: to take language as just one indicator, Canaanite dialects of the 1st millennium divide into a core group made up of Phoenician and Israelite and a "fringe" group of Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite and Judaean, and it is impossible to distinguish between Hebrew and Canaanite inscriptions down to the 10th century. The process, nevertheless, was spread out over more than a century, and extended well into the following Iron Age period.

Iron Age (1200-586 BCE)

Iron Age I (1200-1000 BCE)

The Merneptah Stele (JE 31408), the earliest record of the name "Israel" (Cairo Museum)

The transition from the Late Bronze to Iron Age I was gradual rather than abrupt: Egypt continued to be a strong presence into the 12th century, and surviving Canaanite cities shared the territory with the cities of the newly-arrived Philistines in the southern plain. Further north along the coast the Phoenician cities continued from the Bronze into the Iron Age without interruption, while beyond the Jordan the states of Ammon and Moab (or at least polities which were precursors to those kingdoms) existed by the late 11th century.

Although longstanding tradition assigns Biblical texts to the eras they depict, the first known record of the name Israel occurs in the Merneptah stele, erected for Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah 1209 BCE, "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not." This Israel, identified as a people, was probably located in the northern part of the central highlands, when the Canaanite city-state system was beginning to collapse. At the same time the highlands, previously unpopulated, were beginning to fill with villages: surveys have identified more than 300 new settlements in the Palestinian highlands during Iron Age I, most of them in the northern regions, and the largest with a population of no more than 300. It is impossible to differentiate these "Israelite" villages from Canaanite sites of the same period on the basis of material culture - almost the sole marker distinguishing the two is an absence of pig bones, although whether this can be taken as an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute. There are no temples or shrines, although cult-objects associated with the Canaanite god El have been found. The population lived by farming and herding and were largely self-sufficient in economic terms, but generated a surplus which was could be traded for goods not locally available; writing was known but was not common. The north-central highlands during Iron Age I were divided into five major chiefdoms, with no sign of centralised authority. In the territory of the future kingdom of Judah the archaeological evidence indicates a similar society of village-like centres, but with more limited resources and a far smaller population.

Iron Age II (1000-586 BCE)

A reconstructed Israelite house, 10th-7th BCE. Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv.

Unusually favourable climatic conditions in the first two centuries of Iron Age II brought about an expansion of population, settlements and trade throughout the region. In the central highlands this resulted in unification in a kingdom with Samaria as its capital, possibly by the second half of the 10th century when an inscription of the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I, the biblical Shishak, records a series of campaigns directed at the area. It had clearly emerged by the middle of the 9th century BCE, when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III names "Ahab the Israelite" among his enemies at the battle of Qarqar (853 BCE), and the Mesha stele (c.830 BCE) left by a king of Moab celebrates his success in throwing off the oppression of the "House of Omri" (i.e. Israel) and the Tel Dan stele tells of the death of a king of Israel, probably Jehoram, at the hands of an Aramaen king (c.841 BCE). In the earlier part of this period Israel was apparently engaged in a three-way contest with Damascus and Tyre for control of the Jezreel Valley and Galilee in the north, and with Moab, Ammon and Damascus in the east for control of Gilead; from the middle of the 8th century it came into increasing conflict with the expanding neo-Assyrian empire, which first split its territory into several smaller units and then destroyed its capital, Samaria (722 BCE). Both the biblical and Assyrian sources speak of a massive deportation of the people of Israel and their replacement with an equally large number of forced settlers from other parts of the empire - such population exchanges were an established part of Assyrian imperial policy, a means of breaking the old power structure. The former Israel never again became an independent political entity.

Surface surveys indicate that during the 10th and 9th centuries the southern highlands were divided between a number of centres, none with clear primacy. Unification (i.e., state formation) seems to have occurred no earlier than the 9th century, a period when Jerusalem was dominated by Israel, but the subject is the centre of considerable controversy and there is no definite answer to the question of when Judah emerged. In the 7th century Jerusalem became a city with a population many times greater than before and clear dominance over its neighbours, probably in a cooperative arrangement with the Assyrians to establish Judah as a pro-Assyrian vassal state controlling the valuable olive industry. Judah prospered under Assyrian vassalage, (despite a disastrous rebellion against the Assyrian king Sennacherib), but in the last half of the 7th century Assyria suddenly collapsed, and the ensuing competition between the Egyptian and Neo-Babylonian empires for control of Palestine led to the destruction of Judah in a series of campaigns between 597 and 582 BCE.

Babylonian period (586-539 BCE)

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon

Babylonian Judah suffered a steep decline in both economy and population and lost the Negev, the Shephelah, and part of the Judean hill country, including Hebron, to encroachments from Edom and other neighbours. Jerusalem, while probably not totally abandoned, was much smaller than previously, and the town of Mizpah in Benjamin in the relatively unscathed northern section of the kingdom became the capital of the new Babylonian province of Yehud Medinata. (This was standard Babylonian practice: when the Philistine city of Ashkalon was conquered in 604 BCE, the political, religious and economic elite (but not the bulk of the population) was banished and the administrative centre shifted to a new location). There is also a strong probability that for most or all of the period the temple at Bethel in Benjamin replaced that at Jerusalem, boosting the prestige of Bethel's priests (the Aaronites) against those of Jerusalem (the Zadokites), now in exile in Babylon.

The Babylonian conquest entailed not just the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, but the liquidation of the entire infrastructure which had sustained Judah for centuries. The most significant casualty was the State ideology of "Zion theology," the idea that Yahweh, the god of Israel, had chosen Jerusalem for his dwelling-place and that the Davidic dynasty would reign there forever. The fall of the city and the end of Davidic kingship forced the leaders of the exile community - kings, priests, scribes and prophets - to reformulate the concepts of community, faith and politics. The exile community in Babylon thus became the source of significant portions of the Hebrew bible: Isaiah 40-55, Ezekiel, the final version of Jeremiah, the work of the Priestly source in the Pentateuch, and the final form of the history of Israel from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings Theologically, they were responsible for the doctrines of individual responsibility and universalism (the concept that one god controls the entire world), and for the increased emphasis on purity and holiness. Most significantly, the trauma of the exile experience led to the development of a strong sense of identity as a people distinct from other peoples, and increased emphasis on symbols such as circumcision and Sabbath-observance to maintain that separation.

The concentration of the biblical literature on the experience of the exiles in Babylon disguises the fact that the great majority of the population remained in Judah, and for them life after the fall of Jerusalem probably went on much as it had before. It may even have improved, as they were rewarded with the land and property of the deportees, much to the anger of the exile community in Babylon. The assassination of the Babylonian governor around 582 BCE by a disaffected member of the former royal house of David provoked a Babylonian crack-down, possibly reflected in the Book of Lamentations, but the situation seems to have soon stabilised again. Nevertheless, the unwalled cities and towns that remained were subject to slave raids by the Phoenicians and intervention in their internal affairs from Samaritans, Arabs and Ammonites.

Persian period (539-332 BCE)

Judah, known as Yehud, was a province of the Persian empire until its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. Its population probably never more than about 30,000, and that of Jerusalem no more than about 1,500, most of them connected in some way to the Temple. Nevertheless, the Persian era, and especially the period 538-400 BCE, laid the foundations of later Jewish and Christian religion and the beginnings of a scriptural canon. Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the everyday language during the Persian era, although it continued to be used for religious and literary purposes.

Cyrus was succeeded as king by Cambyses, who added Egypt to the empire, incidentally transforming Yehud and the Philistine plain into an important frontier zone; Cambyses's death in 522 was followed by a period of widespread unrest until Darius the Great succeeded in consolidating his grip on the throne in about 521. These events coincided with the first return of exiles from Babylon and the reconstruction of the Temple. Darius also introduced a reform of the administrative arrangements of the empire including the collection, codification and administration of local law codes, and it is reasonable to suppose that this policy lay behind the redaction of the Jewish Torah. After 404 BCE the Persians lost control of Egypt, which now became Persia's main enemy outside Europe, causing the Persian authorities to tighten their administrative control over Yehud and the rest of Palestine.

According to the biblical history, one of the first acts of Cyrus, the Persian conqueror of Babylon, was to commission the Jewish exiles to return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem; the course of events after this is somewhat confused, but the broad outline is clear: an exile community, led by Zerubbabel, a prince of the royal line of David, and Joshua, of the line of the High Priests, returned to Jerusalem, where, with the assistance of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah and in the face of resistance from the "people of the land," they rebuilt the Temple and reinstituted the worship of Yahweh in the sixth year of Darius, equivalent to 515 BCE. This suggestion that the Persians experimented with ruling Yehud as a Dividic client-kingdom under descendants of Jehoiachin cannot be verified, but it would be in keeping with the situation in some other parts of the empire. The restoration lasted only a few years: by the mid-5th century the prophets and kings had disappeared, and Yehud became in practice a theocracy, ruled by hereditary High Priests and a Persian-appointed governor, frequently Jewish, charged with keeping order and seeing that tribute was paid.

In 445 BCE Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem with the status of governor and, according to the biblical history, a mission from the Persian king (Artaxerxes I) to restore the walls of the city; it seems probable that he was in fact sent by the Babylonian Jewish diaspora, far more uncompromising than the Jews of Yehud, with the aim of rooting out compromise and integration between them and those among whom they lived.

The biblical history mentions tension between the returnees and those who had remained in Yehud, the former rebuffing the attempt of the "peoples of the land" to participate in the rebuilding of the Temple; this attitude was based partly on the exclusivism which the exiles had developed while in Babylon and, probably, partly on disputes over property.

The careers of Ezra and Nehemiah in the 5th century were a kind of religious colonisation in reverse, an attempt by one of the many Jewish factions in Babylon to create a self-segregated, ritually pure society inspired by the prophesies of Ezekiel and his followers.

Samaria, the former Israel, was far richer and more heavily populated than Yehud.

Hellenistic period (332 - 54 BCE)

The extent of the Hasmonean kingdom

Iudaea Province and surrounding area in the 1st century

The Hellenistic period of Jewish history began in 332 BCE when Alexander the Great conquered Persia. Upon his death in 323 BCE, his empire was divided among his generals. At first, Judea was ruled by the Egyptian-Hellenic Ptolemies, but in 198 BCE,the Syrian-Hellenic Seleucid Empire, under Antiochus III, seized control over Judea.

The Hellenistic Period saw the canonization of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), according to one theory, see Development of the Jewish canon for details, and the emergence of extra-Biblical sacred traditions. The earliest evidence of a Jewish mysticism tradition surrounds the book of Ezekiel, written during the Babylonian Exile. Virtually all known mystical texts, however, were written at the end of the Second Temple period. Scholars like Gershom Scholem have discerned within the esoteric traditions of the Kabbalah(Jewish Mysticism, which were restricted to sages), the influence of Persian beliefs, Platonic philosophy and Gnosticism.

2 Esdras 14:45-46, which was written in the second century CE, declares: "Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first, and let the worthy and the unworthy read them; but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people." This is the first known reference to the canonized Hebrew Bible, and the seventy non-canonical texts may have been mystical; the Talmud suggests other mystical traditions which may have their roots in Second Temple Judaism.

The Near East was cosmopolitan, especially during the Hellenistic period. Several languages were used, and the matter of the lingua franca is still subject of some debate. The Jews almost certainly spoke Aramaic among themselves. Greek was at least to some extent a trade language in the region, and indeed throughout the entire eastern portion of the Mediterranean. Judaism was rapidly changing, reacting and adapting to a larger political, cultural, and intellectual world, and in turn drawing the interests of non-Jews. Historian Shaye Cohen observed:

All the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period, of both the diaspora and the land of Israel, were Hellenized, that is, were integral parts of the culture of the ancient world. Some varieties of Judaism were more hellenized than others, but none was an island unto itself. It is a mistake to imagine that the land of Palestine preserved a "pure" form of Judaism and that the diaspora was the home of adulterated or diluted forms of Judaism. The term "Hellenistic Judaism" makes sense, then, only as a chronological indicator for the period from Alexander the Great to the Macabees or perhaps to the Roman conquests of the first century BCE. As a descriptive term for a certain type of Judaism, however, it is meaningless because all the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period were "Hellenistic." (Cohen 1987: 37)

Cultural Struggles with Hellenism

Many Jews lived in the Diaspora, and the Judean provinces of Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee were populated by many Gentiles (who often showed an interest in Judaism, see Proselytes). Jews had to grapple with the values of Hellenism and Hellenistic philosophy, which were often directly at odds with their own values and traditions. Broadly, Hellenistic culture saw itself as a civilizor, bringing civilized values and ways to peoples they thought of as insular or either backwards or degenerate.

For example, Greek-style bath houses were built in sight of the Temple in Jerusalem, for instance, and even in that city the gymnasium became a center of social, athletic, and intellectual life. Many Jews, including some of the more aristocratic priests, embraced these institutions, although Jews who did so were often looked down upon due to their circumcision, which Jews saw as the mark of their covenant with God, but which Hellenistic culture viewed as an aesthetic defacement of the body. Consequently, some Jews began to abandon the practice of circumcision, while others bridled at Greek domination.

At the same time that Jews were confronting the cultural differences at their door, they had to confront a paradox in their own tradition: their Torah laws applied only to them, and to proselytes, but their God, they believed, was the one and only God of all. This situation led to new interpretations of the Torah, some of which were influenced by Hellenic thought and in response to Gentile interest in Judaism, for example see Noahide Law. It was in this period that many concepts from early Greek philosophy entered or influenced Judaism, as well as debates and sects within the religion and culture of the time.

In 331 BCE Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire. Upon his death in 323 BCE his empire disintegrated, and the province of Yehud became part of the kingdom of Egypt, ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty. Ptolemaic rule was mild: Alexandria became the city with the largest Jewish population in the world, and Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt (281-246 BCE) promoted Jewish culture, sponsoring the Septuagint translation of the Torah. This period also saw the beginning of the Pharisees and other Jewish Second Temple parties such as the Sadducees and Essenes. But in the early 2nd century BCE Yehud fell to the Seleucid Syrian ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (174-163 BCE), who, in contrast to the tolerance shown by the Ptolemids, attempted complete Hellenization of the Jews. His desecration of the Temple sparked a national rebellion, which ended in the expulsion of the Syrians and the re-consecration of the Temple under the Maccabees

The kingdom established by the Maccabees was a conscious attempt to revive the Judah described in the bible: a Jewish monarchy ruled from Jerusalem and stretching over all the territories once ruled by David and Solomon. In order to carry out this project the Hasmonean kings conquered (and forcibly converted to Judaism) the one-time Moabites, Edomites and Ammonites, as well as the lost kingdom of Israel.

Generally, the Jews accepted foreign rule when they were only required to pay tribute, and otherwise allowed to govern themselves internally. Nevertheless, Jews were divided between those favoring hellenization and those opposing it, and were divided over allegiance to the Ptolemies or Seleucids. When the High Priest Simon II died in 175 BCE, conflict broke out between supporters of his son Onias III (who opposed hellenization, and favored the Ptolemies) and his son Jason (who favored hellenization, and favored the Seleucids). A period of political intrigue followed, with priests such as Menelaus bribing the king to win the High Priesthood, and accusations of murder of competing contenders for the title. The result was a brief civil war.

Huge numbers of Jews flocked to Jason's side, and in 167 BCE the Seleucid king Antiochus IV invaded Judea, entered the Temple, and stripped it of money and ceremonial objects. Jason fled to Egypt, and Antiochus imposed a program of forced hellenization, requiring Jews to abandon their own laws and customs under threat of slaughter. At this point Mattathias and his five sons, John, Eleazar, Simon, Jonathan, and Judah Maccabee, priests of the Hasmon family living in the rural village of Modein (pronounced "Mo-Ah-Dein"), assumed leadership of a bloody and ultimately successful revolt against the Seleucids.

Judah liberated Jerusalem in 165 BCE and restored the Temple. Fighting continued, and Judah and his brother Jonathan were killed. In 141 BCE an assembly of priests and others affirmed Simon as high priest and leader, in effect establishing the Hasmonean dynasty. When Simon was killed in 135 BCE, his son (and Judah's nephew) John Hyrcanus took his place as high priest and king.

The Hasmonean kingdom

After defeating the Seleucid forces, John Hyrcanus established a new monarchy in the form of the priestly Hasmonean dynasty in 152 BCE — thus establishing priests as political as well as religious authorities. Although the Hasmoneans were popularly seen as heroes and leaders for resisting the Seleucids, some regarded their reign as lacking the religious legitimacy conferred by descent from the Davidic dynasty of the First Temple Era.

Sadducees, Essenes, and Pharisees

The rift between the priests and the sages grew during the Hellenistic period, when the Jews faced new political and cultural struggles. Around this time the Sadducee party emerged as the party of the priests and allied elites (the name Sadducee comes from Zadok, the high priest of the first Temple).

The Essenes were another early mystical-religious movement, who are believed to have rejected either the Seleucid appointed high priests, or the Hasmonean high priests, as illegitimate. Ultimately, they rejected the Second Temple, arguing that the Essene community was itself the new Temple, and that obedience to the law represented a new form of sacrifice.

Although their lack of concern for the Second Temple alienated the Essenes from the great mass of Jews, their notion that the sacred could exist outside of the Temple was shared by another group, the Pharisees ("separatists"), based within the community of scribes and sages. The meaning of the name is unclear; it may refer to their rejection of Hellenic culture or to their objection to the Hasmonean monopoly on power.

During the Hasmonean period, the Sadducees and Pharisees functioned primarily as political parties (the Essenes not being as politically oriented). The political rift between the Sadducees and Pharisees became evident when Pharisees demanded that the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannai choose between being king and being High Priest in the traditional manner. This demand led to a brief civil war that ended with a bloody repression of the Pharisees, although at his deathbed the king called for a reconciliation between the two parties. Alexander was succeeded by his widow, whose brother was a leading Pharisee. Upon her death her elder son, Hyrcanus II, sought Pharisee support, and her younger son, Aristobulus, sought the support of the Sadducees.

In 64 BCE the Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem and made the Jewish kingdom a client of Rome. In 57-55 BCE Aulus Gabinius, proconsul of Syria, split it into Galilee, Samaria & Judea, with 5 district Sanhedrin/Synedrion (councils of law). In 40-39 BCE Herod the Great was appointed King of the Jews by the Roman Senate, but in 6 CE his successor, Herod Archelaus, ethnarch of Judea, was deposed by the emperor Augustus and his territories annexed as Iudaea Province under direct Roman administration: this marked the end Judah as an even theoretically independent kingdom.

Religion

It is generally accepted among modern scholars that the narrative of Israel's history found in the biblical Books of Kings is not an accurate reflection of the religious world of Iron Age Judah and Israel. Contrary to the biblical picture, Israelite monotheism was not a primordial condition, but the end result of a gradual process which began with the normal beliefs and practices of the ancient world.

Israel and Judah inherited the religion of late first-millennium Canaan, and Canaanite religion in turn had its roots in the religion of second-millennium Ugarit. In the 2nd millennium, polytheism was expressed through the concepts of the divine council and the divine family, a single entity with four levels: the chief god and his wife (El (deity) and Asherah); the seventy divine children or "stars of El" (including Baal, Astarte, Anat, probably Resheph, as well as the sun-goddess Shapshu and the moon-god Yerak); the head helper of the divine household, Kothar wa-Hasis; and the servants of the divine household, including the messenger-gods who would later appear as the "angels" of the Hebrew bible.

In the earliest stage, Yahweh was one of the seventy children of El, each of whom was the patron deity of one of the seventy nations. This is illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint texts of Deuteronomy 32:8-9, in which El, as the head of the divine assembly, gives member of the divine family a nation of his own, "according to the number of the divine sons": Israel is the portion of Yahweh. The later Masoretic text, evidently uncomfortable with the polytheism expressed by the phrase, altered it to "according to the number of the children of Israel"

Between the eighth to the sixth centuries El became identified with Yahweh, Yahweh-El became the husband of the goddess Asherah, and the other gods and the divine messengers gradually became mere expressions of Yahweh's power. Yahweh is cast in the role of the Divine King ruling over all the other deities, as in Psalm 29:2, where the "sons of God" are called upon to worship Yahweh; and as Ezekiel 8-10 suggests, the Temple itself became Yahweh's palace, populated by those in his retinue.

It is in this period that the earliest clear monotheistic statements appear in the Bible, for example in the apparently seventh-century Deuteronomy 4:35, 39, 1 Samuel 2:2, 2 Samuel 7:22, 2 Kings 19:15, 19 (= Isaiah 37:16, 20), and Jeremiah 16:19, 20 and the sixth-century portion of Isaiah 43:10-11, 44:6, 8, 45:5-7, 14, 18, 21, and 46:9. Because many of the passages involved appear in works associated with either Deuteronomy, the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua through Kings) or in Jeremiah, most recent scholarly treatments have suggested that a Deuteronomistic movement of this period developed the idea of monotheism as a response to the religious issues of the time.

The first factor behind this development involves changes in Israel's social structure. At Ugarit, social identity was strongest at the level of the family: legal documents, for example, were often made between the sons of one family and the sons of another. Ugarit's religion, with its divine family headed by El and Asherah, mirrored this human reality. The same was true in ancient Israel through most of the monarchy - for example, the story of Achan in Joshua 8 suggests an extended family as the major social unit. However, the family lineages went through traumatic changes beginning in the eighth century due to major social stratification, followed by Assyrian incursions. In the seventh and sixth centuries, we begin to see expressions of individual identity (Deuteronomy 26:16; Jeremiah 31:29-30; Ezekiel 18). A culture with a diminished lineage system, deteriorating over a long period from the ninth or eighth century onward, less embedded in traditional family patrimonies, might be more predisposed both to hold the individual accountable for his behavior, and to see an individual deity accountable for the cosmos. In short, the rise of the individual as the basic social unit led to the rise of a single god replacing a divine family.

The second major factor was the rise of the neo-Assyrian and neo-Babylonian empires. As long as Israel was, from its own perspective, part of a community of similar small nations, it made sense to see the Israelite pantheon on par with the other nations, each one with its own patron god - the picture described with Deuteronomy 32:8-9. The assumption behind this worldview was that each nation was as powerful as its patron god. However, the neo-Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom in ca. 722 challenged this, for if the neo-Assyrian empire were so powerful, so must be its god; and conversely, if Israel could be conquered (and later Judah, c. 586), it implied that Yahweh in turn was a minor divinity. The crisis was met by separating the heavenly power and earthly kingdoms. Even though Assyria and Babylon were so powerful, the new monotheistic thinking in Israel reasoned, this did not mean that the god of Israel and Judah was weak. Assyria had not succeeded because of the power of its god Marduk; it was Yahweh who was using Assyria to punish and purify the one nation which Yahweh had chosen.

By the post-Exilic period, full monotheism had emerged: Yahweh was the sole God, not just of Israel, but of the whole world. If the nations were tools of Yahweh, then the new king who would come to redeem Israel might not be a Judean as taught in older literature (e.g. Psalm 2). Now, even a foreigner such as Cyrus the Persian could serve as the Lord's anointed (Isaiah 44:28, 45:1). One god stood behind all the world's history.

Biblical Israel

The "Israel" of the Persian period included descendants of the inhabitants of the old kingdom of Judah, returnees from the Babylonian exile community, Mesopotamians who had joined them or had been exiled themselves to Samaria at a far earlier period, Samaritans and others.

See also

Time periods in the region of Palestine Bible Biblical archaeology Canaan Jew Israelites United Monarchy Chronology of the Bible Hebrew Bible Jewish diaspora Yehud Medinata History of Levant History of Israel Kingdom of Judah Israelite Old Testament Tanakh Torah Timeline of Christianity

Notable people Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Benjamin, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Gideon, Deborah, Samson, Samuel Kings of Israel Main: List of the Kings of Israel Saul, Ish-bosheth, David, Solomon, Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Ahab Ahaziah, Jehoram, Jehu, Elisha, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II, Zachariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah, Hoshea Kings of Judah Main: List of the Kings of Judah Rehoboam, Abijam, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, Jehoash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, Zedekiah

Further reading

Books ABC

• Albertz, R, "A History of Israelite Religion" (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994, original German edition Vanderhoek & Ruprecht, 1992)
• Albertz, R, "Israel in exile: the history and literature of the sixth century B.C.E." (Society of Biblical Literature, 2003)
• Albertz, R, and Becking, B, eds., "Yahwism After the Exile: Perspectives on Israelite Religion in the Persian Era" (Koninklijke Van Gorcum, 2003)
• Avery-Peck, Alan, and Neusner, Jacob, (eds), "The Blackwell Companion to Judaism (Blackwell, 2003)
• Barstad, Hans M., "History and the Hebrew Bible (Mohr Siebeck, 2008)
• Becking, B., and Korpal, M.C.A., eds, "The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times (Brill, 1999)
• Becking, B., ed., et al, "Only one god?: monotheism in ancient Israel and the veneration of the goddess Asherah" (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001)
• Bedford, Peter Ross, "Temple restoration in early Achaemenid Judah" (Brill, 2001)
• Berquist, Jon L., "Approaching Yehud: new approaches to the study of the Persian period" (Society of Biblical Literature, 2007)
• Blenkinsopp, Joseph, and Lipschitz, Oded (eds), "Judah and the Judeans in the neo-Babylonian period" (Eisenbrauns, 2003)
• Blenkinsopp, Joseph, "Judaism, the first phase: the place of Ezra and Nehemiah in the origins of Judaism" (Eerdmans, 2009)
• Blenkinsopp, Joseph, "Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary" (Eerdmans, 1988)
• Boadt, Lawrence, "Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction" (Paulist Press, 1984)
• Brettler, Marc Zvi, "The Creation of History in Ancient Israel" (Routledge, 1995), and also review at Dannyreviews.com
• Coogan, Michael D. (ed), "The Oxford History of the Biblical World (Oxford University Press, 1998)
• Cook, Stephen L., "The social roots of biblical Yahwism" (Society of Biblical Literature, 2004)

Books DEF

• Davies, Philip R., "The Origin of Biblical Israel", Journal of Hebrew Scriptures (art. 47, vol9, 2009)
• Davies, Philip R., and Clines, David, "The World of Genesis" (Sheffield, 1998)
• Davies, Philip R., "Scribes and Schools" (Westminster John Knox, 1998). See also review by Marc Brettler
• Davies, Philip R., "In Search of Ancient Israel" (Sheffield, 1992)
• Day, John (ed), "In search of pre-exilic Israel: proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar" (T&T Clark International, 2004)
• Day, John, "Yahweh and the gods and goddesses of Canaan" (Sheffield Academic Press, 2002)
• Dever, William, "What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?" (Eerdman's, 2001)
• Dever, William, "Did God have a wife?: archaeology and folk religion in ancient Israel" (Eerdmans, 2005)
• Dever, William, "Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?" (Eerdman's, 2003)
• Edelman, Diana, (ed), "The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms" (Kok Pharos, 1995)
• Finkelstein, Israel; Mazar, Amihay; Schmidt, Brian B., "The Quest for the Historical Israel" (Society of Biblical Literature, 2007)

Books GHI

• Gnuse, Robert Karl, "No other gods: emergent monotheism in Israel" (Sheffield Academic Press, 1997)
• Golden, Jonathan M., "Ancient Canaan and Israel: An Introduction" (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Golden, Jonathan M., "Ancient Canaan and Israel: new perspectives" (ABC-CLIO, 2004)
• Grabbe, Lester L. (ed), "Did Moses speak Attic?: Jewish historiography and scripture in the Hellenistic period" (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001)
• Grabbe, Lester L. (ed), "Israel in Transition: from late Bronze II to Iron IIa (c. 1250-850 B.C.E.)" (T&T Clarke International, 2008)
• Grabbe, Lester L. "A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period" (T&T Clark, 2004)
• Grabbe, Lester L. (ed), "Can a 'History of Israel' be Written?" (Sheffield Academic Press, 1997)
• Gravett, Sandra L., "An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible: A Thematic Approach" (Westminster John Knox, 2008)
• Grisanti, Michael A., and Howard, David M., (eds), "Giving the Sense:Understanding and Using Old Testament Historical Texts" (Kregel Publications, 2003)
• Hughes, Jeremy, "Secrets of the times: myth and history in biblical chronology" (Sheffield Academic Press, 1990)

Books JKL

• Killebrew, Ann E., "Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, and Early Israel, 1300-1100 BCE" (Society of Biblical Literature, 2005)
• King, Philip J., and Stager, Lawrence E., "Life in biblical Israel" (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001)
• Lemche, Niels Peter, "The Israelites in History and Tradition" (Westminster John Knox, 1998)
• Levine, Lee I., "Jerusalem: portrait of the city in the second Temple period (538 B.C.E.-70 C.E.)" (Jewish Publication Society, 2002)
• Lipschitz, Oded, "The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem" (Eisenbrauns, 2005)
• Lipschitz, Oded, and Oeming, Manfred (eds), "Judah and the Judeans in the Persian period" (Eisenbrauns, 2006)
• Lipschitz, Oded, and Oeming, Manfred (eds), "Judah and the Judeans in the fourth century B.C.E." (Eisenbrauns, 2006)

Books MNOP

• McNutt, Paula, "Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel" (Westminster John Knox, 1999)
• Middlemas, Jill Anne, "The troubles of templeless Judah" (Oxford University Press, 2005)
• Miller, Patrick D., "The religion of ancient Israel" (Westminster John Knox Press, 2000)
• Miller, Robert D., "Chieftains of the Highland Clans: A History of Israel in the 12th and 11th centuries BC" (Eerdman's, 2005)
• Miller, James Maxwell, and Hayes, John Haralson, "A history of ancient Israel and Judah" (Westminster John Knox, 1986)
• Na'aman, Nadav, "Ancient Israel and its neighbours" (Eisenbrauns. 2005)
• Nodet, Étienne, "A search for the origins of Judaism: from Joshua to the Mishnah" (Sheffield Academic Press, 1999, original edition Editions du Cerf, 1997)
• Penchansky, David, "Twilight of the gods: polytheism in the Hebrew Bible" (Westminster John Knox Press, 2005)
• Provan, Iain William, Long, V. Philips, Longman, Tremper, "A Biblical History of Israel" (Westminster John Knox, 2003)

Books QRST

• Ska, Jean-Louis, "Introduction to reading the Pentateuch" (Eisenbrauns, 2006)
• Smith, Mark S., and Miller, Patrick D., "The Early History of God" (HarpurSanFrancisco, 2002)
• Soggin, Michael J., "An Introduction to the History of Israel and Judah (Paideia, 1998)
• Sparks, Kenton L., "Ethnicity and identity in ancient Israel" (Eisenbrauns, 1998)
• Stackert, Jeffrey, "Rewriting the Torah: literary revision in Deuteronomy and the holiness code" (Mohr Siebeck, 2007)
• Thompson, Thomas L., "Early History of the Israelite People" (Brill, 1992)
• Thompson, Thomas L., "The historicity of the patriarchal narratives: the quest for the historical Abraham" (Trinity Press, 2002)
• Toorn, K. van der; Becking, Bob; Horst, Pieter Willem van der, "Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible" (2nd ed., Koninklijke Brill, 1999)
• Whitelam, Keith W., "The Invention of Ancient Israel" (Routledge, 1996)

UVWXYZ

• Van der Toorn, K., "Family religion in Babylonia, Syria, and Israel" (Brill, 1996)
• Van der Toorn, K., Becking, Bob, and Van der Horst, Pieter Willem, "Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible" (Koninklijke Brill, 1999)
• Vanderkam, James, "An introduction to early Judaism" (Eerdmans, 2001)
• Vaughn, Andrew G., and Killebrew, Ann E., (eds), "Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period" (Sheffield, 1992)
• Zevit, Ziony, "The religions of ancient Israel: a synthesis of parallactic approaches" (Continuum, 2001)

Articles

• Eli Kavon, "Did the Maccabees Betray the Hanukka Revolution?" (The Jerusalem Post, 26 December 2005)
• Efrain Velazquez, "The Persian Period and the Origins of 'Israel': Beyond the Myths", (Bible and Interpretation, July 2009)