Culture

Israelites

Peoples

The Israelites were the people of the central highlands of Canaan who appear in the record late in the second millennium BCE and whose story the Hebrew Bible tells. Their religion moved from a setting of local shrines and a wider Levantine pantheon toward the exclusive worship of Yahweh, a shift the prophetic books argue for rather than assume. From them descend the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the temple in Jerusalem, and the Jewish people.

Facts

Traditions

Principal Religious Traditions

A religion that moved from local shrines and a wider Levantine pantheon toward the exclusive worship of Yahweh, a shift the biblical writers present as a return rather than an innovation; the temple cult at Jerusalem; and, after its destruction, the rabbinic Judaism that put study and prayer in the place of sacrifice. 3

Origins

Origin Region

The central highlands of Canaan, between the coastal plain and the Jordan, where the people appear in the record late in the second millennium BCE. 1

Language Family

Biblical Hebrew, a Canaanite language within Northwest Semitic and so within Afro-Asiatic. 2

Practice

Practice Status

Discontinued as a state religion 3

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Yahweh Among the Gods of the Levant

The Israelites appear in the archaeological record as highland villagers in Canaan late in the second millennium BCE, and the earliest external mention of the name is on the Egyptian stele of Merneptah, around 1208 BCE. Lester Grabbe's survey of what can and cannot be known about them is deliberately austere about the distance between that record and the biblical narrative.

Mark Smith's work sets out the religious position. Israelite religion began inside the West Semitic world rather than outside it. The name of El is embedded in the name Israel itself, the divine assembly, the storm imagery and the divine titles all belong to the Levantine repertoire, and inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom appear to pair Yahweh with an asherah. The movement from that starting point to the insistence that Yahweh alone may be worshipped, and then to the claim that no other god exists at all, was gradual, was contested within Israel, and is recorded in the Hebrew Bible largely by the party that prevailed.

Practice before the exile included local high places, household figurines and a temple in Jerusalem serving a royal cult. Cornelius Van Dam's study of the Urim and Thummim examines one of the sanctioned techniques for putting a question to God, and its disappearance from later practice is itself part of the change.

Exile, Scripture and a People of the Book

Two destructions made the tradition what it became. The Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom in 722 BCE removed Israel proper and left Judah, and the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 587 BCE removed sanctuary, monarchy and land at once.

Exile forced a religion built on a place to work without one, and what emerged was a religion built on a text. The Torah was compiled and edited into something close to its received shape across the period spanning the exile and the return; the sabbath and circumcision took on a weight they had not previously carried, as marks of identity in a foreign setting; and assembly for reading rather than for sacrifice began the line that leads to the synagogue.

Grabbe's account is careful about how much of the return under Persian authority can actually be reconstructed, and about the fact that the biblical books describing it are themselves the principal evidence for it. What is clear is the result. A second temple stood until the year 70 of the common era, and by the time it fell the community had already learned how to continue without one. The Israelites are therefore not simply the ancestors of Jews, but the subject of a story that Jews, Samaritans and Christians all inherited and then read differently.

Connections

Associated With

Household and Family Religion in Antiquity

This source names Israelites directly: "Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, edited by John Bodel and Saul Olyan, is a scholarly comparative volume examining domestic religious practice, ancestor veneration, household gods and..."

Source Household and Family Religion in AntiquityJohn Bodel and Saul M. Olyan (eds.)

Israelite Samaritan population survey

This source names Israelites directly: "This is the Samaritan community's own annual census, maintained by the Israelite Samaritan Information Institute, and this record holds it as a custodian source for exactly that reason: for a..."

Source Israelite Samaritan population surveyIsraelite Samaritan Information Institutethe holders' own account

Jericho

This source names Israelites directly: "Jericho, one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, holds its central place in this atlas's religious register through the Book of Joshua's account of the Israelite conquest..."

Source The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)Anonymous (multiple authors)

Judaism

Judea

The Israelites of the southern kingdom.

Ketoret

This source names Israelites directly: "Ketoret is the compound incense prescribed in Exodus 30 for the Israelite Tabernacle and later the Jerusalem Temple, traditionally reckoned as a blend of eleven spices, among them frankincense..."

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Kingdom of Judah

The Israelites of the southern kingdom.

Kuntillet Ajrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border

This source names Israelites directly: "Ze'ev Meshel's Kuntillet Ajrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border, published by the Israel Exploration Society in 2012, is the final peer reviewed excavation..."

Source Kuntillet Ajrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai BorderZe'ev Meshel

Leviticus 19:18

This source names Israelites directly: "From the Holiness Code."

Source The Holy Bible, American Standard Version (1901), verse-per-line textAmerican Revision Committee

Population Survey

This source names Israelites directly: "The Israelite Samaritan Information Institute's own population survey, tracking the community's size at dated points across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: 140 individuals on 1 March 1919..."

Source Population Survey

Samaritans

This source names Israelites directly: "The Wikipedia article on the Samaritans, giving a total population of approximately 900 as of 2024, continued growth beyond the Israelite Samaritan Information Institute's own most recently..."

Source Samaritans

Sukkot, 15 Tishrei

This source names Israelites directly: "booth, as a reminder that the Israelites dwelt in shelters during the wilderness years, though the festival's timing at the close of the agricultural year and its Four Species ritual also fit an..."

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel

This source names Israelites directly: "Mark S. Smith is a scholar of ancient Near Eastern and biblical religion, and this Eerdmans book, revised into a second edition from its 1990 original, is the standard scholarly treatment of how the..."

Source The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient IsraelMark S. Smith

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

This source names Israelites directly: "him, over the freedom of the enslaved Israelites."

Source The Prince of Egypt (1998 film) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel

This source names Israelites directly: "Cornelius Van Dam's The Urim and Thummim, A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel, published by Eisenbrauns in 1997, is the standard monograph devoted specifically to the Urim and Thummim, the..."

Source The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient IsraelCornelius Van Dam

Tu B'Av, 15 Av

This source names Israelites directly: "This rule fixes Tu B'Av on the fifteenth of Av, described in the Mishnah, alongside Yom Kippur, as one of the two happiest days of the ancient Israelite year."

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

In the Other Atlases