This is a conjecture: the origins of the Jewish people are bound to be hazy. There is no doubt that Wikipedia has to be used with a lot of care. It is one source actually for disinformation. But not all by a long shot. I have much confidence in the steadfastness of humanity and I use Wikipedia a great deal, but with care of course.
(Begin Extract from Wikipedia Article Here)
The word “Israelite” derives from the name “Israel”, (Hebrew: ישראל – Standard: Yisraʾel; Tiberian: Yiśrāʾēl), a combination of the Hebrew yisra, to prevail over, and el, the divine.[2][3]
TITLE “Israelites”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israelites
Whether the above is true or not I really am no expert, but I include it at the beginning because of the reference to “El”.
That will become more meaningful as we go along.
I pick out the following as an extract from the same article in Wikipedia and again although there is much detail that I cannot stand over as an expert, in an overall sense it is very enlightening:
(Begin second extract from Wikipedia article here)
| The name which was translated into “Israel” in hieroglyphs |
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The Hebrew Bible contends that Israelites are descendants of Abraham, who migrated to Canaan from the Mesopotamian city of Ur.
The archaeological record indicates that the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged in the Early Iron Age from the Canaanite city-state culture of the Late Bronze Age, at the same time and in the same circumstances as the neighbouring states of Edom, Moab, Aram, and the Philistinian and Phoenician city-states.[8]
Throughout this formative period, (1200–1000 BCE), the highlands lack any sign of centralised authority; religiously, they lack any sign of temples, shrines, or centralised worship in general (although cult-objects associated with the Canaanite god El have been found); the pottery remains strongly in the local Late Bronze tradition; and the alphabet is early-Canaanite.
The most commonly appealed to ethnic marker distinguishing Israelite villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether this can be taken as an ethnic marker remains a matter of dispute.[9]
Nevertheless, it is widely recognized that identification of the Israelites as a distinctive group is possible by means of archaeological evidence such as foodways,[10][11][12][13] architecture,[14][15] cultic practices,[16][17][18][19][20][21] and material culture such as ceramics and large water pithoi.[22][23][24][25][26][27]
The population of the central highlands during this same period was extremely sparse at the beginning, with some 25 villages and a population of about 12,000; by 1000 BCE the number of villages had increased to 300 and the population to 55,000.[28]
By c.850 BCE inscriptions such as the Tel Dan stele and the Mesha stele indicate that a regionally important kingdom referred to by its neighbours as the House of Omri, after the ruling dynasty, and sometimes Samaria, after its capital, had emerged in the territory of the central highlands; there is no record of what this kingdom’s own name for itself might have been, although in one Assyrian record the king is called “Ahab the Israelite.”
Records relating to Israel, in the sense of this northern kingdom, continue down to its destruction by the Assyrians towards the end of the 8th century.
The earliest probable mention of the southern kingdom is on the Tel Dan stele (c.850 BCE), where, according to the scholarly consensus,[29][30][31][32][33][34] the House of David is mentioned alongside the House of Omri together with the mention of the death of a king whose reconstructed name can be equated with the name of a king mentioned in the bible.
There is no further archaeological evidence until Babylonian records refer to it (as Yehud, the Aramaic equivalent of Judah) at the very end of the 7th century. The archaeological record also indicates that Jerusalem, from being no more than a small village, underwent a period of sudden and substantial growth in the period immediately following the destruction of Israel, c.722 BCE.
The earliest mention of the name Israel comes at the very end of the Late Bronze Age, in an Egyptian inscription of about 1207 BCE.[35] This Israel is identified as a people, and it is highly probable that they were located in the northern part of the central highlands, geographically part of what would later be the biblical Israel.
(ibid)
All of this is very hazy and very incomplete, I have to acknowledge that. However there is one statement in the above that is very important. This emerging people and nation were coming out of the bronze age and entering the iron age.
On the television archaeology programme hosted by Tony Robinson in his very own style (Time Team, Channel 4) one of the contributors pointed out that there were no hard dates in the transition from bronze to iron. The transition was dialectical. As man struggled for a survival, both in a unity with nature, and in a conflict with nature also, he was learning and changing.
Many of the old bronze tools were held on to, it is just that the discovery of how to make iron gave a definite edge to these societies. I see the Jewish people as emerging out of that type of situation in that part of the world. I would imagine that the Celtic and Roman Empires need to be understood in the same way.
I will leave aside Paul Johnson “History of the Jews” aside. When I read it i did not get much out of it. Perhaps this is unjust but I never discovered really the why it happened. Also, to be really honest, i am a bit biased against Johnson because I know he tells lies later in the book, from his ideological prejudice.
But I did get a great deal out of the chapter which HG Wells wrote on the Jews in his ”A Short History of the World” published 1922
The importance of this is that Wells placed the Jews in the context of emerging and changing world society. It can also be read with the background of bronxze into iron making its mark and making itself felt.
His Chapter 21 is worth more than all of Johnson (in my opinion)
What comes out of this chapter is his very revealing emphasis on the captivity in Babylon and that the Jews returned from Babylon as a very much more mature people than when they went into captivity.
| …They say that it was added to and exaggerated by the patriotic pride of later writers. But the Bible account read carefully is not so overwhelming as it appears at the first reading. Solomon’s temple, if one works out the measurements, would go inside a small suburban church, and his fourteen hundred chariots cease to impress us when we learn from an Assyrian monument that his successor Ahab sent a contingent of two thousand to the Assyrian army. It is also plainly manifest from the Bible narrative that Solomon spent himself in display and overtaxed and overworked his people. At his death the northern part of his kingdom broke off from Jerusalem and became the independent kingdom of Israel. Jerusalem remained the capital city of Judah. | 12 |
| The prosperity of the Hebrew people was short-lived. Hiram died, and the help of Tyre ceased to strengthen Jerusalem. Egypt grew strong again. The history of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah becomes a history of two little states ground between, first, Syria, then Assyria and then Babylon to the north and Egypt to the south. It is a tale of disasters and of deliverances that only delayed disaster. It is a tale of barbaric kings ruling a barbaric people. In 721 B.C. the kingdom of Israel was swept away into captivity by the Assyrians and its people utterly lost to history. Judah struggled on until in 604 B.C., as we have told, it shared the fate of Israel. There may be details open to criticism in the Bible story of Hebrew history from the days of the Judges onward, but on the whole it is evidently a true story which squares with all that has been learnt in the excavation of Egypt and Assyria and Babylon during the past century. | 13 |
| It was in Babylon that the Hebrew people got their history together and evolved their tradition. The people who came back to Jerusalem at the command of Cyrus were a very different people in spirit and knowledge from those who had gone into captivity. They had learnt civilization. In the development of their peculiar character a very great part was played by certain men, a new sort of men, the Prophets, to whom we must now direct our attention. These Prophets mark the appearance of new and remarkable forces in the steady development of human society.HG Wells A Short History of the World 1922http://www.bartleby.com/86/21.html
I suppose it is fair to say that the Jews developed a story, a narrative, to explain themselves to themselves! And this story had the thing or being known as God as central. This brings forward the nature of the Jewish God of which i am no expert. But it seems to me that it was real, and was a real material force in the creation of these people. Their narrative was real; how they saw themselves was real; their hopes and fears based upon that were real. But the main point I will end on is this: If HG Wells is correct then this formation, or self formation, of this people means that the Jews as a Nation happened very early. This is a nation which has its roots very deep inside history. People were also living in Ireland as hunter gatherers, from I believe 8000 years CE But the greatness of this short chapter by HG Wells is that through a combination of factors, the Jews were conscious of themselves as a Nation from that return from Babylon, I mean conscious in an intense way, and this was centred on their narrative, which was of course their written canon…The Bible! Final note More will be added to this article as we go along. I think it is wise to end this page at the point of Return from Babylon. I think that HG Wells is spot on. That a significant change happened in captivity. That central in this change is a transition to a self conscious national feeling. That this nationalism was reinforced by their self narrative, which was of a very powerful nature, and was located in a written document. This union of struggle to find the means for existence allied to their God may give us an inkling as to the persistent longevity of this people, through the worst situations that have ever been thrown at any people. Thesis 3 on Karl Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach does have relevance here. The jews on return from Babylon did have their narrative, did have their God. But they were not at all mere reactors to the world, or to nature. They were active participants. Through their practice as real human beings they changed the world, and in the process they changed themselves: “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.” |
It is difficult, but not impossible, to get a good working understanding of the subject of the history of the Jewish people.
What stands out for me is that this real people, seeking the means for survival, enlist God onto their side, and this becomes a definite and important factor in their survival as a nation, through very many years, and in very many of those years they faced intense psychological and physical cruelty.
There is the fact that they were and are a nation and that their religion was the main factor which saw them through.
I would seek to keep those two things firmly in mind as we move along and increase our working knowledge of the subject.
The following will conclude this article.
It is an outline of the whole subject. It is not over-burdened with detail. It can be a great help because on the basis of these true facts we can hang further items of knowledge:
Source: The Highlights of Israeli History from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
This is an abbreviated version of the source, since most events from the modern history are not relevant to the current site. Links to other detailed MFA History pages are given in the table, marked “More at MFA …”
| 17th-6th C. BCE BIBLICAL TIMES | |
| c. 17th century BCE | The Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – patriarchs of the Jewish people and bearers of a belief in one God – settle in the Land of Israel. Famine forces Israelites to migrate to Egypt. More at MFA… |
| c. 13th century BCE | Exodus from Egypt: Moses leads Israelites from Egypt, followed by 40 years of wandering in the desert. Torah, including the Ten Commandments, received at Mount Sinai. More at MFA… |
| 13th-12th centuries BCE | Israelites settle the Land of Israel |
| c. 1020 BCE | Jewish Monarchy established; Saul, first king. More at MFA… |
| c. 1000 BCE | Jerusalem made capital of David’s kingdom. |
| c. 960 BCE | First Temple, the national and spiritual center of the Jewish people, built in Jerusalem by King Solomon. |
| c. 930 BCE | Divided kingdom: Judah and Israel More at MFA … |
| 722-720 BCE | Israel crushed by Assyrians; 10 tribes exiled (Ten Lost Tribes). |
| 586 BCE | Judah conquered by Babylonia; Jerusalem and First Temple destroyed; most Jews exiled to Babylonia. More at MFA … |
| 536-142 BCE PERSIAN AND HELLENISTIC PERIODS | |
| 538-515 BCE | Many Jews return from Babylonia; Temple rebuilt. More at MFA … |
| 332 BCE | Land conquered by Alexander the Great; Hellenistic rule. |
| 166-160 BCE | Maccabean (Hasmonean) revolt against restrictions on practice of Judaism and desecration of the Temple |
| 142-129 BCE | Jewish autonomy under Hasmoneans. More at MFA … |
| 129-63 BCE | Jewish independence under Hasmonean monarchy. |
| 63 BCE | Jerusalem captured by Roman general, Pompey. |
| 63 BCE-313 CE ROMAN RULE More at MFA … | |
| 37 BCE – 4 CE | Herod, Roman vassal king, rules the Land of Israel; Temple in Jerusalem refurbished |
| c 20-33 | Ministry of Jesus of Nazareth |
| 66 | Jewish revolt against the Romans |
| 70 | Destruction of Jerusalem and Second Temple. |
| 73 | Last stand of Jews at Masada. |
| 132-135 | Bar Kokhba uprising against Rome. |
| c. 210 | Codification of Jewish oral law (Mishnah) completed. |
| 313-636 BYZANTINE RULE More at MFA … | |
| 313 | The Roman emperor Constantin adopts Christianity and founds the Bysantine Empire; by the end of the century the Land of Israel becomes a predominantly Christian country. |
| c. 390 | Commentary on the Mishnah (Jerusalem Talmud) completed. |
| 614 | Persian invasion |
| 636-1099 ARAB RULE More at MFA … | |
| 636 | The Land of Israel conquered by Arabs |
| 691 | On site of First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, Dome of the Rock built by Caliph Abd el-Malik |
| 1099-1291 CRUSADER DOMINATION More at MFA … | |
| 1099 | The army of the First Crusade capture Jerusalem, non-Christian population massacred; the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem established |
| 1291-1516 MAMLUK RULE More at MFA … | |
| 1291 | Mamluks – Muslem warriors from Egypt – drive Crusaders out of the Land of Israel. |
| 1517-1917 OTTOMAN RULE More at MFA … | |
| 1517 | The Turkish Ottoman Empire conquests the Land of Israel |
| 1564 | Code of Jewish law (Shulhan Arukh) published. |
| 1860 | First neighborhood, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, built outside Jerusalem’s walls. |
| 1882-1903 | First Aliya (large-scale immigration), mainly from Russia; four more waves of immigration will follow till 1948 |
| 1897 | First Zionist Congress convened by Theodor Herzl in Basel, Switzerland; Zionist Organization founded. More at MFA … |
| 1909 | First kibbutz, Degania, and first modern all-Jewish city, Tel Aviv, founded. |
| 1917 | 400 years of Ottoman rule ended by British conquest; British Foreign Minister Balfour pledges support for establishment of a “Jewish national home in Palestine”. More at MFA … |
| 1918-48 BRITISH RULE More at MFA … | |
| 1920 | Histadrut (Jewish labor federation) and Haganah (Jewish defense organization) founded. Vaad Leumi (National Council) set up by Jewish community (yishuv)to conduct its affairs. |
| 1921 | First moshav, Nahalal, founded. |
| 1922 | Britain granted Mandate for Palestine (Land of Israel) by League of Nations; More at MFA … Transjordan set up on three-fourths of the area, leaving one-fourth for the Jewish national home Jewish Agency representing Jewish community vis-a-vis Mandate authorities set up. |
| 1924 | Technion, first institute of technology, founded in Haifa. |
| 1925 | Hebrew University of Jerusalem opened on Mt. Scopus. |
| 1929 | Hebron Jews massacred by Arab militants. |
| 1936-39 | Anti-Jewish riots instigated by Arab militants. |
| 1939 | Jewish immigration severely limited by British White Paper. |
| 1939-45 | World War II; Holocaust in Europe. |
| 1947 | UN proposes the establishment of Arab and Jewish states in the Land. |
| 1948 – STATE OF ISRAEL | |
| 1948 | End of British Mandate (May 14) State of Israel proclaimed (May 14). More at MFA … Israel invaded by five Arab states (May 15) War of Independence (May 1948-July 1949) Israel Defense Forces (IDF) established |
| 1949 | Armistice agreements signed with Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. Jerusalem divided under Israeli and Jordanian rule. First Knesset (parliament) elected. |
| 1948-52 | Mass immigration from Europe and Arab countries. |
| 1956 | Sinai Campaign More at MFA … |
| 1962 | Adolf Eichmann tried and executed in Israel for his part in the Holocaust. More at MFA … |
| 1967 | Six-Day War, Jerusalem reunited. More at MFA … |
| 1968-70 | Egypt’s War of Attrition against Israel |
| 1973 | Yom Kippur War More at MFA … |
| 1979 | Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty signed. More at MFA … |
| 1981 | Israel Air Force destroys Iraqi nuclear reactor just before it is to become operative. |
| 1982 | Israel’s three-stage withdrawal from Sinai completed. Operation Peace for Galilee removes PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) terrorists from Lebanon. |
| 1987 | Widespread violence (intifada) starts in Israeli-administered areas. |
| 1991 | Israel attacked by Iraqi Scud missiles during Gulf war. Middle East peace conference convened in Madrid |
| 1993 | Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements for the Palestinians signed by Israel and PLO, as representative of the Palestinian people. |
| 1994 | Implementation of Palestinian self-government in Gaza Strip and Jericho area. |
| 1995 | Broadened Palestinian self-government implemented in West Bank and Gaza Strip; Palestinian Council elected. Prime Minister Rabin assassinated at peace rally. |
| 1996 | Fundamentalist Arab terrorism against Israel escalates. Operation Grapes of Wrath, retaliation for Hizbullah terrorists’ attacks on northern Israel. |
| 1998 | Israel celebrates its 50th anniversary. Wye Agreement with PLO |
