Conquest and Settlement
An Essay on What We Don't Know.
(Source: http://www.jewishgates.org/history/index.stm)
There are two ways of viewing the history of the Hebrews in their early years (before the Divided Kingdom):
1. We can rely on Biblical accounts and add the hypotheses of different
Biblical scholars.
2. We can rely on archaeological evidence and outside source materials for the
period.
The second method is by far the easiest and shortest. If it weren't for the Bible, we would have no idea that the Hebrews ever existed in the 13th-9th centuries BCE. There is but one mention of them in outside sources. They created nothing original that has been found. They had no unique building style, pottery style, or visible life style. Their neighbors never mentioned them on stela or in writings. We have no written records by them from those centuries. Nothing.
As a result, we must rely a great deal upon the biblical texts. Some parts of the text correspond to archaeological finds. Whether the Hebrews were actually associated with those finds is not clear.
The biblical texts themselves are frequently contradictory. This has led scholars to theorize about what was actually going on. Are their theories correct? Who knows?
Given our paucity of actually-known data, it is astonishing how much has been written about the Hebrews' conquest and settlement of the Land of Canaan. All theories are based on two biblical books: Joshua and Judges.
The first (and only) mention of Israel in outside sources is found on the Merneptah stela. Merneptah was king of Egypt from 1224-1214 BCE. A stela was found in 1896 which stated (among other things) that in the fifth year of Merneptah's reign (1219 BCE), "Israel is laid waste, his seed is not." The word Israel includes the Egyptian sign for a people. This is the only proof that Israel ever existed. It also gives scholars a starting date for the Hebrews as a marauding group. They believe that the Hebrews began their attack against the middle section of Canaan from the east in 1234 BCE.
Parts of Canaan were apparently ripe for conquest. For the previous 200 years nomadic tribes and gangs of bandits had been attacking fields and villages, wrecking Canaan's economy. Frantic, the city-states had written to Egypt for help which never came. These pleas for help are called the Amarna Letters. Although the Canaanites had succeeded in holding off these attacks, they were tired and weak. They weren't capable of preventing the Hebrew conquest.
What did the Hebrews actually conquer? Historians don't know. The Book of Joshua describes the annihilation of cities and peoples which pop up later as powerful enemies of the Hebrews in the Book of Judges.
One thing is clear: the first city which Joshua and the Hebrews are said to
have conquered is confusing to archaeologists. Joshua Chapter 6 describes
precisely how the Hebrews conquered Jericho. Unfortunately, archaeological
explorations of ancient Jericho show that it wasn't occupied during the 13th or
12th centuries BCE. It was an abandoned site.
Scholars provide several explanations:
1. The archaeological evidence is wrong.
2. The Hebrews had heard about the famed city of Jericho and, when they
discovered the site empty, they took credit for its destruction.
3. The destruction by God (described in Joshua Chapter 6) was so thorough that
no archaeological evidence could be found by humans today. The lack of evidence
is proof of the historicity of the biblical account.
Joshua Chapter 8 describes the taking of Ai and Beth-El. Both appear to have been destroyed during this period. There's no indication, however, that the Hebrews did it. Most of the other cities described in Joshua 10-12 and Judges 1 as being destroyed and annihilated "reappear" whole and powerful later in the books of Judges and II Samuel.
Joshua 24 describes a special covenant ceremony at Shechem. There's no mention that Shechem was ever conquered by the Hebrews. This has led some scholars to suggest that there were clans of Hebrews who lived continuously in Shechem since the 17th century. Joshua didn't have to conquer the city because it was already occupied by Hebrews. Is there any archaeological indication of this? No.
Some biblical scholars have suggested that the ceremony described in Joshua 24 was an annual re-establishment of clan ties among the tribes. Is there any evidence for this? No.
Do we know anything about the relationships between the tribes? No. But that hasn't stopped scholars from speculating at great length about it. It has been suggested that the tribes were a loosely-united confederation. This confederation met annually to re-establish its ties. Other than that, they didn't have much to do with one another. It would appear from the book of Judges that they didn't even like one another very much.
Some scholars believe that the ten northern tribes (later to be called Israel) never even went into Egypt. They had common ancestry with the southern tribes (later to be called Judah), but they had very little else in common. Is there hard evidence for any of this? No.
According to some scholars, the yearly re-affirmation ceremony of the Hebrews took place at Shiloh, their central shrine. The incidents of the Benjaminites in Judges 21:19 and of Hannah in I Samuel 1 are believed to have occurred at such re-union ceremonies.
Except for that (possible) annual get-together, however, there is no indication that the separate tribes had anything to do with one another. Each was independent and self-supporting. As a matter of fact, there are several ugly stories in the book of Judges which show that they didn't even like one another very much.
Every once in a while, however, a major crisis would hit a specific tribe. At those times the tribe (or tribes) would give a cry for help, and a charismatic leader would appear. This leader was usually able to briefly unite the tribes against the common enemy, the day would be saved, and the ties among the tribes would fade until the next crisis.
These charismatic military leaders were called judges, and their stories are found in the Book of Judges.
Is there any truth to the tale about Echud, a lefty, craftily killing his foe with a concealed sword (Judges 3)? Who knows?
Was there a civil war between Yotam and Avimelech (Judges 9) ? Who knows?
Did Jephtha really sacrifice his daughter (Judges 11)? Who knows?
Who was Samson and what did he do against the Philistines (Judges 13-16)? Who knows?
Did Gideon successfully unite the Hebrews against the Midianites at Ein Charod (Judges 7)? Who knows?
Did Deborah and Barak unite the Hebrews against the king of Hatzor? Did Sisera's chariots get bogged down? Did Yael pound a tent peg through his head? Did Deborah sing a victory war song (Judges 4-5)? Who knows?
Were the Benjaminites as terrible as they're described (Judges 19-21)? Probably....
One story in the book of Judges has been partially substantiated by archaeological evidence. The Philistines, a powerful union of five city states (Gaza, Ashdod, Gath, Ashkelon, and Ekron) along the Canaanite coastline, persecuted the southern tribes. They were well-organized ,and they had a powerful weapon: iron. Iron goes through bronze, and this enabled them to subjugate some of the Hebrews some of the time.
The Philistines came originally from Crete (They were called by the Egyptians "The Sea Raiders"). They had their own distinctive pottery style, so archaeologists can note the time period and area of their control.
One of the southern tribes, Dan, found the situation so terrible with the Philistines, that they moved north. (Judges 18) They founded a city called Dan. Archaeologists found a large occupied town there dating to the 12th and 11th centuries. They believe it belonged to the tribe of Dan.
There is no outside evidence supporting the stories about the priest Eli and
his sons and their use of the ark of the covenant in battle against the
Philistines. (I Samuel 2- 7)
Saddest of all, there is no outside evidence supporting the stories about
the rise of Hebrew kingship and the united kingdom.
Saul, First King of Israel
Our knowledge of the "history" of the first king of Israel comes from I Samuel. Since it was written during the time of King Solomon (rival tribe/families of the first king), its veracity is suspect.
Be that as may be, according to the Book of Samuel, Saul was the first king of the Hebrews. He got the job by accident, and one wonders if he might not have been better off if had never accepted it. Saul came from the tribe of Benjamin in the south, but he was already famous as a general during among the northern tribes for he had acted as a judge and saved some cities by temporarily uniting some tribes against the Ammonites.
The Hebrews had been putting pressure on the prophet Samuel to provide them with a king. They recognized that their weakness in their struggle against the Philistines was organization, a central authority. They had to unify, and a king seemed the best method.
Samuel, a prophet (mouthpiece for God), was already a kind of unifying force, but he wasn't militarily-oriented. The people went to Samuel with their demand. They noted that all the successful nations surrounding them had kings and they wanted one as well.
Samuel tried to dissuade them, but they insisted that the way to unity and power was to have a central political and military authority, a king.
Samuel gave in and selected the man whom most tribes already knew was a good general, Saul. As king, Saul succeeded in holding off the Philistines and even pushed them back on occasion. He was a pure general-king. He wasn't interested in expansion, in glory; he just wanted to keep his small kingdom together and at peace with outside enemies. He spent his entire life trying to accomplish that goal, and he was only partially successful.
One of his major problems was that he never succeeded in bridging the split between the northern ten tribes and the three southern tribes. The two sides worked together against a common enemy, but they never became very close, and they maintained their separate identities.
Saul was a simple king; he wasn't fancy or ornate. He lived in a couple of fortresses without a palace. He had no real capital, no nationalist spirit. He was interested in simply trying to keep order, and that took all of his time. The major organizational difference that took place during his reign was the elevation of tribal heads to noblemen. The people still (maybe) held their yearly re-union ceremony, but the leaders of the tribes ate together with the king, thus setting up a potential unity in the kingdom which, unfortunately, never advanced beyond the king's table.
Saul had a son named Jonathan, whom everyone expected to take over at his father's death, thus establishing a dynasty. Jonathan was an excellent warrior and was respected by other soliders.
It was during the reign of Saul (from about 1010 BCE-990 BCE) that the famous story of the battle against Goliath, the Philistine hero and David (the Hebrew) took place in the valley of Elah, nestled between two hills south west of Jerusalem.
The end of the story of Saul and his family took place in Yizrael Valley. The Philistines were making trouble again. Saul was a sick man and his followers were depressed, but he organized his army and headed off for battle. The Philistines camped inthe valley, and Saul camped his men at Ein Charod. Saul feared that he might lose so he went in secret to a witch in the town of Ein Dor (an illegal lady, for Saul had forbidden all sorcery in his land). There, he asked her to call up the prophet Samuel from the dead. Samuel appeared and gave Saul even more depressing news than he had expected. He and his sons would die in the battle, and the Hebrews would be smashed. Saul, who hadn't been feeling very well from the start, went back to his tent feeling lousy.
The battle took place, the Hebrews were doing badly; Jonathan, Saul's son was killed by archers on Mount Gilboa; and Saul was wounded. In despair, Saul commanded his servant to kill him, but the servant (in despair) killed himself instead. Saul killed himself.
The Philistines found all the bodies (no longer despairing) on top of Mount Gilboa, took them, stripped them, cut off Saul's head, and hung the bodies on the wall of Beit Shean. The situation was once again grim for the Hebrews. They needed a unifying leader, and they soon found one.
King David
While it is admittedly strange that the book of I Samuel hardly ever
mentions Samuel, and II Samuel begins after Samuel is already dead; it is
equally interesting that while the book is supposedly describing the reign of
Saul, the major figure is David as a youth.
This is not surprising because the Books of Samuel were written during the time of King Solomon, David's son; It's David's PR men who released the story, not Saul's. This position was exacerbated by I Chronicles, a post-Exile book, which glorifies David completely.
If we look at the events described in I Samuel, we see that the scribes leaned over backwards to make David into a hero of the kingdom, and to make Saul as bad as possible. This is not fair to Saul, and I shall try to correct the wrong done to the Hebrew's first king by describing David's early life as it might have been told by Saul's press men if he had won.
While Saul was king and having trouble with the Philistines, a good ambitious soldier named David started becoming popular with the army. He was credited with killing Goliath (although in II Samuel 21, a Benjaminite named Elchana is named as the hero). He rose in power quickly. He related well with the common peasant folk, and soon stories were told across the land about his prowess in battle. He entered Saul's court and enchanted one and all with his singing and playing. He married the king's daughter, and the people began speaking about him as being greater than Saul.
David was apparently listening to this praise for he began dreaming about being king. Saul, sensing the danger having this young upstart around, tried to do away with him. David fled to the desert of Judea by the spring of Ein Gedi. He organized a band of cutthroats, robbers, murderers, and political discontents. He and this motley crew arranged with the villagers that they would receive payment from the farmers in exchange for not stealing their property.
Saul, hearing about this banditry in the south-east of his kingdom, collected an army and headed into the desert to do away with David. David and his band ran away and played hide-and-seek until the situation became too hot for him. He fled to the Philistines and hired himself out as a mercenary.
The Philistine king gave David his own city, Ziglag, and charged him with the job of raiding Judean villages; David could keep the plunder.
The Bible defends this action by stating that David didn't really join the
Philistines at all; he just pretended to. Instead of attacking Judean
settlements, David attacked Philistine and foreign villages along the border of
Judah, thus winning the love and gratitude of the Judeans and fooling the
Philistines for Seven Years.
The area in question is less than 20 square miles; either the Philistines were tremendously stupid or something is suspicious about the Biblical account. It seems more logical to assume that David raided Judean villages during this period, and the Biblical writers cleaned the story up.
David barely missed having to fight against Saul at Gilboa, which would have been disastrous for him. If he had lost, Saul would have executed him as a traitor; if he had won, he would have been identified with the enemy: the people would never have accepted him as their king.
Fortunately for him, the Philistine kings feared that David might turn against them in a crisis and told him to go home.
When the Philistines smashed the Hebrews at Mount Gilboa, they had establish a government to rule Israel and Judah which would be under their power, but not openly. They knew that conquered people always make less trouble if one of their own people is the official ruler. They needed an accepted Hebrew who would also work for them. David was ready and available. He was an ideal choice: the hero of famous battle legends, the son-in-law of the late Hebrew king, the folk hero of the people. He was also one of the Philistine's lackeys.
So, with the blessings of the Philistines, David became king of Judah. He ruled from Hebron, long-associated with the Patriarchs, the site of the Machpelah. At first, he was not accepted by the northern tribes. After a two-year civil war, the north finally acknowledged David as king
David was king for forty years until about 960 BCE. He was the man most responsible for making the Hebrew tribes into an identifiable nation, accepted by the Big Powers (Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia) as an equal. He was both a great general and an amazing statesman. He knew that he had to have a united kingdom for the Hebrews to have any influence in world politics. His reputation had already been damaged because of the two-year civil war. So long as he kept his capital in the south, the north would accept his rule only because he (and the Philistines) had the power to force "unity." They viewed themselves as a vassel state of the south, but didn't identify with the kingdom of David.
The same was true of the south. David's plundering of Judean villages had taken their toll on his reputation. According to David Rosenblum, David might not have been a Judean at all; he might have been a Canaanite, which made his position even more tenuous.
David had to find and make a capital which wasn't identified with either the north or the south, that both kingdoms would recognize as a neutral capital (very similar to the founding of Washington D.C.). Between the northern and southern kingdoms lay the strong, Jebusite fortress, Jerusalem. It was officially in the region of the tribe of Benjamin, King Saul's tribe.
David decided to conquer the city and make it his capital, thus bringing the two kingdoms together at his new neutral city. The city, protected on all four sides by deep valleys, was impossible to take by normal attack. It had, after all, already survived almost two hundred years while surrounded by unfriendly tribes. To try to storm the city through the valleys was suicide. However, the Jebusite city had one weakness: Jerusalem got its water from a fresh-water spring, the Spring of Gihon, whose source lay outside the city walls cleverly hidden away from enemy eyes. The water ran from the spring through a channel into the city to the Pool of Shiloah. The Jebusites thought that both the spring and the channel were hidden so well that no one outside the city would discover them. They were wrong. David sent his men up through the tunnel and took the city practically without a fight.
Having conquered Jerusalem, David now had to make it into an important Hebrew city, a place where all the people would come together, ensuring a united kingdom. It wasn't enough to have a neutral capital where the king lived; David had to have a city which mattered to the people. The unifying element had to be religion.
Until the 10th century BCE, the Hebrews had used numerous holy sites throughout the land for sacrificial worship. They had made offerings at Shechem, Bethel, Beersheva, and Hebron. The most important site, however, had been Shiloh, where the ark of the covenant had resided. The ark was the physical symbol and monument of the Hebrews' contract and relationship with their God. It might even have been the place for annual renewal rituals. The ark had ceased to be at Shiloh. Because of Philistine victories, the ark was housed in Kiryat Yearim, in the hills of Judea.
David brought the ark to Jerusalem, and people flocked from north and south to their new religious capital. For the first time, the Hebrews had a national shrine in the political center of the country. It galvanized them. Practically overnight, David became king of two kingdoms which recognized that they were united both religiously and politically.
He took full advantage of this sudden unity. His primary goal was simple: conquest. He succeeded admirably. First, he smashed the Philistines in the Valley of Rephaim, just south of Jerusalem. They saw as soon as he had united the people that David was going to make trouble, and they attacked, forgetting that David also had iron weapons. It was a rout, and the Philistines never became a real threat again.
Next, David concentrated on strengthening his boundaries and then conquering the peoples on the other side of his boundaries. He took territory to to the north-east almost to Hamat. Egytp, weak at that point, felt it wiser to make peace than war. Phoenicia, the merchant land just north of the Hebrews on the coast, also established treaties with David. He thus enlarged his land, enriched it through treaty monies, and founded a flourishing trade society with his neighboring countries. Though the Hebrews were at war during a long period of time, the fighting was always away from their own borders ensuring a high productive market without the danger of attack.
The third major act of David as king was organizing a national administration which could continue after his death and which reached its height of efficiency during the reign of his son, Solomon. David made it clear to everyone that one of his sons would be king. David and his house were the anointed, the chosen of God to serve the people. David and his family had divine right to rule. Thus the Davidic Dynasty was founded.
During David's reign, the Hebrews became a Major Power in the area. David re-established the Hebrew priesthood on a national scale in Jerusalem. It is probable that the first written Hebrew texts were compiled during his reign. His political successes were many and remarkable. His failings were all in his personal life.
David was a lousy father. One of his sons set up a (briefly) successful revolution against him. Another raped one of David's daughters. Another planned an unsuccessful revolution against him. It was a relatively dysfunctional family. David himself committed adultery and arranged for the death of his paramour's husband, Uriah the Hittite.
David also had personal disappointments outside of his family life. He wanted to build a Temple, a permanent house for the ark, in Jerusalem. God (through Nathan the prophet) forbade David from doing so because David was a man of war.
Tradition makes David into an ideal man: artist (tradition says he wrote the Psalms), warrior, scholar, anointed king of God, and ancestor of the future Messiah. It is relatively successful in doing so because of David's successes: He established a powerful, centrally-organized political and religious kingdom with safe borders which was strong enough to almost survive the reign of his son, Solomon.
King Solomon
When Solomon became king in about 960 BCE, he had a fully-developed empire
at his disposal, the result of his father's tremendous work. It is hard to
believe that one son could louse up an opportunity the way that Solomon did. In
external terms, Solomon's accomplishments were enormously successful.
He began correctly by slaughtering all of his political opponents including his
brother(s).
Second, he took advantage of his father's conquests to set up one of the finest commercial empires of his time. Solomon had within his control the two trade routes from Egypt to Mesopotamia, the trade route from Syria to Arabia, and the shipping route from the Fertile Crescent to Africa. He nationalized these trade routes, made a monopoly of them, and thus guaranteed for himself a fortune in trade. To ensure his monopoly, Solomon re-fortified the major fortresses along the trade routes to prevent other countries or independent traders from cutting into his business. Thus the main trade cities re-appeared, strengthened and more powerful than ever: Megiddo, Hatzor, Petra, Tadmor, and Gezer.
Solomon was the first Hebrew ruler to have an identifiable architectural style so that archaeologists can point to certain defenses as being "Solomonic," the first evidence from the Hebrews themselves that they existed. At Gezer, Meggido, and Hatzor, Solomon developed double-thick walls with a three-turn gateways and remarkable underground water tunnels to provide the cities with water whose source was outside the city walls.
The surrounding nations recognized Solomon's power practically from the day that he declared himself king and established peace treaties at once. The major binding action of the peace treaties at that time was for the weaker king in the treaty (not Solomon) to provide the stronger king with one of his daughters. This was supposed to guarantee good political relations for no son-in-law would attack his father-in-law.
Solomon, needless to say, had a lot of wives (but probably not the 700 he's credited with). He married Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonites, Hittites, and the daughter of the Pharaoh.
His trade included horses from Syria to Egypt and chariots from Egypt to Syria; spices from Arabia and Africa which were sent to Mesopotamia; and linen and silks from Mesopotamia sent to Arabia and Africa. Solomon also received for tribute such things as ivory, gold, jewels, spices, apes, and horses.
To maintain his trade with Africa, Solomon needed ships. The major ship-
building material was cedar wood, available in Phoenicia, just north of
Solomon's kingdom. Solomon established a treaty with Hiram, king of Phoenicia.
Hiram provided sailors and wood for Solomon's newly-planned shipping industry;
Solomon provided Hiram with wheat and oil.
Solomon had good ship-builders within his own kingdom: the
coastal tribe of Zebulun. To get the materials to Solomon, Hiram sent the wood
by boat down the coast to Jaffa. They were then carried (via Jerusalem) to the
Gulf of Aqaba. There, his men built the ships and set up the port city of
Etzion Gever.
Solomon had his own industry in the south: copper mining at
his famous mines at Timneh. There, the copper was mined, smelted, purified, and
sent up north for use and trade. Solomon did one other spectacular thing
during his reign: he built a tremendous Temple and palace in Jerusalem, and he
enlarged his capital guaranteeing that it would be considered a true national
shrine and pilgrimage spot.
The Temple was lined with cedar, pine, and cypress wood which Solomon
obtained through another treaty with Hiram, king of Phoenicia. Hiram also
provided architects and builders. It was a magnificent structure, taking 13
years to build. It was located on what is called today (cleverly) the Temple
Mount, facing East. The Mount, according to tradition, is the site where
Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac.
The Temple had three central rooms: an outer hall, an inner large room, and a
small Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The people never
entered the Temple at all; the sacrifices took place outside the Temple in a
large courtyard.
Jerusalem was fast becoming a rich, elegant city, and it should have guaranteed
unity of the Hebrews in the world-renowned central capital. It didn't work.
Why was it that Solomon, who succeeded in developing a rich trade
enterprise; peaceful relations with his neighbors; a luxurious Temple, palace
and capital; a rich copper industry; a shipping firm down south; and great
fortresses protecting his borders failed as a king?
Simple.
Who benefitted from all of Solomon's accomplishments? The people? Of course
not. Solomon and his noblemen reaped the harvest of his accomplishments. To
achieve his economic and political success, Solomon had to tax his people very
heavily. He also instituted forced labor.
What was the average Hebrew doing during Solomon's luxurious reign? Sweating
himself to death, trying to scratch out a living for himself and his family,
trying to avoid forced labor service, only to see most of his earnings taken
away to supply the king with his needed cash. I Samuel 8:10-18 describes the situation
as follows:
10. And Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who asked him
for a king.
11. And he said, This will be the customary practice of the king who shall
reign over you; He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his
chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
12. And he will appoint for himself captains over thousands, and captains over
fifties; and will set them to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to
make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
13. And he will take your daughters to be perfumers, and to be cooks, and to be
bakers.
14. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive trees, the
best of them, and give them to his servants.
15. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to
his officers, and to his servants.
16. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your best
young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
17. He will take the tenth of your sheep; and you shall be his servants.
18. And you shall cry out in that day because of your king which you shall have
chosen; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.
Solomon took advantage of his father's central administrative authority to set up tax districts for his people, thus establishing good records of who paid how much. He was able to keep watch over his people. There was, however, one tribe Solomon didn't tax at the same high rate: his own, the tribe of Judah in the south. The northern tribes, who paid most of the taxes and provided most of the forced labor (and were even loaned out at one point to Hiram to cut down the Phoenician cedar trees), took one look at Solomon's favoritism toward Judah, looked at their miserable position, and decided to revolt.
They weren't strong enough, and the south put down the revolution, but the bitterness and anger remained. Solomon could sit in his palace eating delicacies, but the "united monarchy" which his father had worked so hard to establish, was a gilded myth. The north, too weak militarily to physically split from the union, smoldered and simmered, just waiting for the time when they could revolt. Even the presence of the national shrine, the Temple, in Jerusalem, wasn't enough of a unifying force to keep the north content.
Solomon thus guaranteed the collapse of his empire, the split of the kingdoms, and the eventual destruction of both Israel and Judah. The "United Monarchy" lasted two generations. David built it. Solomon kept it together by force while, at the same time, destroying its foundation. When he died, the split the north had been waiting for took place.
The Divided Kingdom
920BCE-586 BCE
With Solomon's death, the enforced unity of the tribes weakened dramatically. The northern tribes under the leadership of Jereboam demanded that Solomon's son Reheboam lower the taxes and stop giving preferential treatment to the south. In response, Reheboam raised the taxes (about as undiplomatic as a king could be). In anger and disgust, the north announced their official split from Judah and established their own kingdom, Israel, with Jereboam as king. They were able to hold off the south's attempt to keep them united. Judah and Israel never did get back together again, thus beginning the historic period called the Divided Monarchy (from about 920-722 BCE)
The two kingdoms were tremendously different in structure. Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, the holy city with the Temple and the ark, the site of the organized priesthood, enjoyed a political stability which the north lacked. Judah continued to be ruled by kings from the hereditary line of King David, which they viewed as being a dynasty chosen by God. This dynastic structure led to further stability.
Israel never did succeed, except for one brief period, in establishing any stable dynastic line. They resorted to charismatic generals to be their kings, thus guaranteeing revolutions, political intrigues, and strife.
The two kingdoms were similar in one respect, however: both were threatened by Egypt. The pharaoh Shishak, just waiting for signs of weakness, attacked and conquered both Judah and Israel and received tribute from them. Being a wise pharaoh, he allowed both to continue their separate lives, thus permitting the fascinating series of kings which ruled Israel and Judah.
As a result of these radical political changes, Judah lost most of the territory it had held during the reign of Solomon. It lost its trade monopoly and even lost its fleet of ships in Etzion Gever, thus ending trade between Judah and Africa. Yet the kingdom continued, poorer than before. There is no indication that the Hebrew farmers paid very much attention to the priestly cultic practices in Jerusalem. In all likelihood, most farmers were involved in the Canaanite cults. Occasionally, according to the Bible (a suspect source for history), a king of Judah would enforce worship of the Hebrew cult, but there's no indication that farmers obeyed for very long.
In both the north and south there was a revolutionary upsurge in social consciousness during this period, ethical awareness. This was the era of the prophets, men who, speaking in God's name, rebuked the people and kings for oppressing the poor and commiting social (and political) injustice. They bawled the people out for idolatrous practices and for turning away from God.
Being a prophet was a miserable job. The Hebrews never appreciated being told that they were doing wrong. There is no indication that they even listened to these "mouth-pieces of God." However, later generations of Jews (and, much later, Christians) found the words of these prophets inspiring. The prophets Amos, Micah, and Hosea, despite their lack of popularity, spoke with moral force about the real core of the Hebrew covenant: not sacrifice, but ethical behavior.
Israel, the northern kingdom, was lucky. The first king they picked, Jereboam, was a good organizer. He realized that the first thing he had to do was establish a kingdom which separated the people from all important links which they had held previously with Judah. The most important of these was obviously Jerusalem. Jereboam set up two holy sites in the north: one at Dan, where the more northerly tribes of Israel could worship, and one at Beit-el (Bethel), where the more southerly tribes of Israel could worship.
The worship itself, resembling the actions of their Canaanite neighbors, made the Baal-conscious farmers comfortable. The major symbols at these cultic sites were gold bulls (the re-presentation of Baal). Some scholars believe that the southern religious leadership responded negatively to these images by creating the story of the Golden Calf, the major sin of the Hebrews in the Wilderness.
Jereboam also organized some social welfare institutions, including public grain silos within the major cities in case of famine. One of the b est examples of such storage places is at Megiddo.
With Jereboam's death, the northern kingdom suffered civil war and corruption. Different generals fought, bribed, and intrigued to become king. It took almost 100 years for a king to appear who could establish a stable government in Israel. This was Omri.
Omri got bad press coverage from the Bible, primarily because the Bible represented the southern kingdom's view. In objective terms, it must be noted that he established a kingdom similar in structure, if not in size, to the kingdom of David. Omri was threatened by Assyria. He needed a capital to unite the northern tribes and chose the high hill of Samaria as his site. Before this, the capital had been Shechem.
There, he built a powerful fortress, using a building technique still used today. He alternated parallel and perpendicular stone blocks, thus strengthening the walls.
Through his peace treaties, Omri was able to re-establish control of the important Via Maris trade route, thus establishing good trade relations with both Egypt and Mesopotamia. He conquered Moab, one of Israel's neighbors. He established a peace treaty with Phoenecia, arranging for his son Ahab to marry the daughter of the high priest of the kingdom. Omri died leaving a powerful, centrally-organized kingdom which looked as though it was on its way to becoming a Big Power. Unfortunately, it didn't happen.
Omri's on, Ahab, weakened the kingdom tremendously by concentrating on himself rather than on the people. His palace and its furnishings were lavish beyond anything seen in Israel before (including furniture with beautifully carved facings of ivory).
His most serious problem, however, was his wife, Jezebeel, who had married Ahab as part of the peace treaty between her father and his father. Jezebeel was not a pleasant woman. As daughter of the high priest of Phoenicia, she expected a certain level of honor and respect. She came from a culture where kings transcended the law.
One of the unhappy examples of her relations with the Hebrews is described
in I Kings 21. A farmer named Nabot owned a vineyard in the Yizrael Valley.
Jezebeel wanted that vineyard and told Ahab to get it for her. He, being a good
husband, tried buying the vineyard. Nabot wasn't selling. Jezebeel, enraged,
ordered Ahad to execute Nabot. She then confiscated the vineyard. This did not
help king-farmer relations, and it infuriated Elijah, God's prophet, who came
and rebuked Ahab to his face.
Jezebeel heard that Elijah had been bothering her husband and ordered her men
to kill him. Elijah fled to the desert.
Ahab had built a large Baal worship center on Mount Carmel complete with imported Baal priests from Jezebeel's home town. Elijah went there and challenged the priests to a contest. They would set up sacrifices, and whichever god brought the rains would be recognized as the most powerful. Baal was the Canaanite god of fertility (and rain). The Hebrew religionists had been trying to counter this Canaanite belief by maintaining that the Hebrew God was even better at bringing the rains.
After the priests of Baal performed their rituals (and failed), Elijah performed his ritual. Ahab got drenched with rain, and the priests of Baal were killed. Ahab was killed while defending himself from a military coup; Jezebeel was thrown from her room into the courtyard below where she was eaten by wild dogs (who later got indigestion; Jezebeel was a hard woman to swallow).
The next king of Israel, Yehu, may have tried to establish Hebrew cult worship in the north. It's hard to know since all of our texts come from Hebrew religionists in the south. In all likelihood, Israel farmers continued to do a mixture of Hebrew and Canaanite practices.
At any rate, after Ahab, the north suffered from ongoing military coups and revolts. Moab succeeded in freeing itself from Israel's domination (and celebrated the event by carving the details on a stele, one of the few corroborating pieces of evidence archaeologists have about the Hebrews during this period). Israel, like Judah, became a small, weakened state, just ripe for conquest.
Assyria, a large civilization to the north and east of Israel, erupted into a great power. In the 850's BCE Assyria conquered Babylonia and then turned its attention toward Canaan.
Israel did the wisest thing possible. She made a peace treaty, complete with tribute, taxes, and daughters of the king. Assyria, content to receive this free income, allowed Israel to maintain her government. Israel returned to her internal political strife while Assyria, under the rule of Ashurnapal II, watched indulgently.
In the 730's BCE a new Assyrian king, Tiglath Pileser III, decided he wanted more than tribute. He wanted parts of the land of Canaan for himself. He also decided to abolish the Israel government, so he attacked Canaan. The tribes put up a fight, but, of course, lost. In 732 BCE Tiglath Pileser III took several thousand Hebrews into slavery and confiscated all of the eastern land of Israel, leaving only the capital and the south-western tribes. He now had, of course, complete trade access to Egypt. In the end, Tiglath Pileser III decided it was in his best interest to allow the tribes to govern themselves, and the remainder of Israel (poorer and shaken up) returned to normal.
In 725 BCE, the king of Israel, Hosea (not to be confused with the prophet), did a stupid thing. He refused to pay the tribute, and he joined Egypt and Babylonia in a revolt against Assyria. The Assyrians refused to put up with this nonsense and marched down to smash the puny Israel- Egypt revolt (They'd already taken care of Babylonia). In 722 BCE, Sargon II, king of Assyria, destroyed Samaria, the capital of Israel. He took 27,290 Hebrews into exile. (Naturally, there is an article which states that, instead of 27,290 people, it was 27,280 people. For this dissertations are written.)
These exiles became our famous "Lost Ten Tribes of Israel" because they eventually disappeared. There's a whole mythology about them and much speculation about what happened to them. It was once thought, for example, that Native Americans were part of the Lost Ten Tribes. Many Iraqi Jewish families today maintain that they came from the Lost Ten. Most scholars agree that they simply assimilated into the Assyrian culture.
Many of the remaining population of Israel fled to Judah, where they joined
their fellow Hebrews.
The Assyrian conquest and subsequent Israel exile marked the end of the Kingdom of Israel. The north, full of intrigue, strife, coups, revolutions, and regicides, started in the 920's BCE and ended in 722 BCE, never to rise again.
During the Israel-Assyrian encounters, Judah had the good sense to support Assyria. The king of Judah during Israel's destruction was Hezekiah. As soon as the Assyrians had returned to Assyria with the captives from Israel, Hezekiah invited the remnant to join Judah in what appears to jhave been a new festival, a Passover feast.
On the sly, he was also preparing to revolt against Assyria. He strengthened relations with Babylonia and Egypt. He fortified his cities of Lachish, Benei Barak, and Jaffa. Most important, he re-fortified the walls of his capital Jerusalem and placed large stores of food within the city in preparation for a siege. Hezekiah was also responsible for one of the wildest engineering accomplishments of that period.
Jerusalem's water supply was outside the city's walls. Jerusalem lay on a plateau, and the Spring of Gihon lay in the valley below. The Jebusites had built a water channel down to the spring. King David had conquered Jerusalem by climbing through that water channel to surprise the Jebusites. Hezekiah wanted to make sure that this would not happen to him, so he had a tunnel dug which led from the spring outside the city walls through the rock of the Ophel, down under his city to the pool of Shiloach (Siloam). By necessity, this was a rush job, so he had his workers start from both sides of the project. The tunnel, following cracks in the rock, curved and twisted for almost half a mile. The miracle of the (8th) century was that the two separate digging parties, starting from opposite ends of the tunnel, met under the mountain.
They were so shocked and pleased with themselves that they carved the whole story on the side of the tunnel for future archaeologists to read. An interesting note: police during the rule of the Ottoman Turks caught an artifacts dealer trying to cut the section which held the inscription off the wall. They arrested him, then did the same thing themselves. The inscription was sold to the Museum of Istanbul , where you can see it the next time you're in Turkey.
With the completion of the tunnel, Hezekiah had a full water supply inside Jerusalem's walls. He need it in 702 BCE when Babylonia, Egypt, and Judah revolted against Assyria. Sennecherib, king of Assyria, met the threat and soundly defeated Babylonia's army. He then turned toward Canaan. Egypt's army met the Assyrians north of Judah, and Sennecherib clobbered Egypt. Sennecherib continued his march toward Judah.
He destroyed Lachish; a three-piece stele of the attack was found in the Assyrian capital. It shows the Assyrians storming the city with ladders, and war machines. He destroyed Benei Barak. He smashed Jaffa. Sennecherib then headed toward Jerusalem.
The Judeans trembled inside their fortified capital. Sennecherib surrounded the city and sat back to wait for the city to surrender. The prophet Isaiah ordered Hezekiah not to give up, and for once a king listened to a prophet. The people ate the stored food, drank the fresh water running through the newly-dug tunnel, and waited (anxiously) for something to happen. After a year of siege, a plague struck Sennecherib's camp, and the Assyrians were forced to go home. Hezekiah sent a large tribute after them, thankful that he still had a kingdom.
From about 700-630 BCE, things were stable in Judah. There were kings who worshiped Canaanite gods; there were kings who promoted the Hebrew cult. It can be assumed that the Hebrew farmers did as they pleased. Despite exhortations from the Hebrew religionists, there were apparently cultic sites all over the country. The Hebrew God was called by a variety of names and worshiped in a variety of ways. Jerusalem retained a centralized cult, but it's not clear who participated. It was certainly not all-inclusive.
In about 630 BCE, the Assyrians were threatened on their eastern border by Babylonia. King Josiah, who had been king of Judah for ten years, took advantage of the situation and revolted against the Assyrians. He succeeded in taking some of the Samarian territory, and he re-fortified his cities.
According to tradition, Josiah established a sweeping religious reform, tearing down all of the Hebrew farmers' worship centers. He destroyed the worship centers at Beit-El, Shechem, and Samaria. His most famous reform started in 622-621 BCE.
Josiah had ordered the re-decoration and repairing of the outer Temple walls. During this process, the workers found a scroll hidden in the walls. (Was the scroll planted there by Josiah's men or by the high priest? Who knows?) They brought the scroll to Josiah, who made a big to-do about it. (For the description of this in II Kings, click here.)
The scroll was supposedly written by Moses. Besides providing a brief history of the Hebrews' experiences in the Wilderness, it focused on anti-idolatrous practices. The text ordered the Hebrews to worship only at "the place which Adonai your God has chosen," ie, Jerusalem. The scroll also provided a radical new theology: God rewarded the community which followed the commandments with rain, prosperity and peace. God punished the community which disobeyed the commandments with famine, war, and suffering.
Many scholars believe that this scroll was Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Torah. It may have influenced the Hebrews in Judah to actually follow the Hebrew cult for almost a generation, a huge length of time for a religious reform. Ironically, it was during this same time period that a group of Jews created an entire new worship site. A bunch of papyri were found telling about a Hebrew community in Elephantine, an island near Aswan. This community, founded in the 7th century BCE continued until the beginning of the 4th century BCE. The Jews of Elephantine built their own temple, staffed by priests and assistants. They offered meat sacrifices, incense, meal offerings, and libations. The Hebrew name for God, YHVH, was frequently evoked. The Elephantine Jews freely married with their Egyptian neighbors; the offspring were accepted as members of the community. They kept Shabbat (although no details are provided in the texts). The continuation for centuries of a separate Israelite sanctuary, not only outside Jerusalem but outside Judah entirely has indicated to scholars that the Deuteronomic Reform was local and not far-reaching in its theology before the time of the Second Temple.
Meanwhile, Babylonia defeated Assyria. Egypt decided to take advantage of the situation and headed toward Mesopotamia to join in the conflict. King Josiah tried to stop the Egyptian forces from passing through his territory. His army was defeated, and he was killed.
In 599 BCE Babylonia attacked Egypt. The Judea king Jehoiakim attacked Babylonia's army and was, of course, badly defeated. In 597 BCE Nebuchadnezzer, king of Babylonia, took Jerusalem for the first time. He didn't destroy anything. He removed the Judean king, Jehoiachin (son of Jehoiakim), and replaced him with his own Judean king lackey. Nebuchadnezzer was very careful to pick someone who would be acceptable to the people. He selected Zedekiah, who was of the lineage of King David, to be his puppet king. Nebuchadnezzer returned to Babylonia expecting yearly tribute from Judah and no trouble.
Zedekiah rebelled against Babylonia. His counselors begged him not to do it. The prophet Jeremiah ordered him not to do it. Little Judah revolted against Babylonia. Nebuchadnezzer responded at once. He besieged Jerusalem in 589 BCE. Egypt (being almost as stupid as Zedekiah) attacked the Babylonian forces. The Egyptian army was mauled. Jerusalem fell in 587 BCE.
The Babylonians blinded Zedekiah. They took him, the Judean nobility, craftsmen, and merchants into captivity. They left the peasants on the land. The city of Jerusalem and the Temple originally built by King Solomon were destroyed in 586 BCE (Jewish tradition says on the ninth of Av).
When the 4,600 (give or take a few thousand) cream-of-the-crop Judeans were taken into Babylonia, the Hebrew peasants were furious about this complete dissolution of country, capital, government, and economy. Nebuchandezzzer tried to establish a provincial government to rule the peasants, but the Hebrews resisted. Babylonia appointed Gedalliah to be the temporary governor of the province. The Hebrew rebels murdered him and thirty of his men.
Fearing, justifiably, Babylonian retribution, the instigators fled to Egypt. They took with them Jeremiah the prophet.
With its leaders in Babylonia, its angry young men in Egypt, and its farmers quickly assimilated into the Canaanite cult again, Judah lost all national identity. The Period of the Divided Kingdom was over.
The Samaritans
There's very little historically accurate material about the Samaritans. The Jews clearly didn't like them, and their texts about them are, therefore, suspect.
The Talmud refers to them as Cutheans, and, except for acknowledging that the Samaritans were rigidly careful about tithing their foods, the descriptions and stories were not positive. There were ongoing arguments as to whether the Samaritans were Jews.
The Samaritans live today in Shechem, their sacred city. They continue to follow Torah law. They believe that Mount Gerizim is the sacred Jewish mountain, not Jerusalem. The events which Jews ascribe to Jerusalem (the Binding of Isaac, the site of the Temple) the Samaritans ascribe to Mount Gerizim.
They circumcise their boys on the eighth day.
They carefully follow the laws of ritual purity.
They celebrate Shabbat (following the prohibition against lighting fires in
their dwellings, although they do kindle lights before the festival).
Their most sacred days are Passover, when the priests offer the Passover
sacrifice on Mount Gerizim,
Rosh HaShana, which they celebrate for one day, Yom Kippur, and Shemini
Atzeret, the eighth day of Sukkot.
They have three pilgrimage festivals, when the community all climb Mount
Gerizim:
the Feast of Matzah (which takes place a week after the Passover sacrifice),
Shavuot (which takes place seven weeks following the first Shabbat after the
beginning of Passover),
and Sukkot. On Sukkot, the four varieties mentioned in the Torah are used to
make the
sukkah. The Samaritans do not have any kind of lulav.
The mezuzot in Samaritan homes are actually carved into the doorway, rather
than being written on parchments.
They have a three-part marriage ritual: Proposal, Betrothal, and Marriage.
They use Torah texts (especially the narrative of Isaac's Proposal, Bethrothal,
and Marriage to Rebecca) as major parts of their marriage rituals.
The Samaritans do not follow rabbinic law. They do not have either a Mishnah or
a Talmud. They do not consider either the Bible books of the Prophets or the
Writings to be sacred texts. They consider Moses to be the only prophet, and
their texts almost sacralize him.
They continue to have a priesthood responsible for the Passover sacrifices. During the week, the priests wear red turbans. On Shabbat, they wear white turbans. The priests are responsible for teaching Torah to the community and keeping track of the Samaritan calendar.
Like the Jewish calendar, the Samaritan calendar is a combination of lunar months adjusting to a solar year.
Scholars are not in agreement about their origin or history. We do know that in 722 BCE Assyria conquered the northern kingdom called Israel, deported a large part of the population, and brought in other peoples. Until the middle of the 20th century, most historians believed that these peoples were the originators of the group we call the Samaritans. Recent research, however, has led to the belief that the Samaritans were probably an indigenous Hebrew group which separated from the tribes when Eli the High Priest changed the site of worship from Shechem to Shiloh. They retained their worship at Shechem and became independent. References in the Bible to "Shomronim" did not refer to SamariTans; they referred to those who lived in Samaria, called now SamarIans.
Upon the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylonia in 528 BCE, they had problems with the indigenous population. The book of Nehemiah blames the Samaritans for many of these conflicts. The Samaritan Chronicles blames the Jews for these conflicts. Each text claims complete victory for its side. Historians aren't even sure that the groups being talked about were actually Samaritans
The Samaritan Chronicles parallel many of the stories found in Josephus' Antiquities, but in each case the Samaritans are in the right and are victorious.
Like the Jews, the Samaritans suffered under Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, and Turkish rule.
There are still more than 500 Samaritans in Shechem.