Historical Origin of the 12 Tribes of Israel

hi this is Matt Baker today I'm going to discuss the real origin of the 12 tribes of Israel and by real I mean the historical origin according to secular Academia as opposed to the origin that's described in the Bible because according to a literal reading of the Bible the origin is simple Abraham had Isaac Isaac had Jacob and then Jacob had 12 sons whose descendants went on to become the 12 tribes of Israel however if you're familiar with this channel you'll know that I like most historians view the characters described in Genesis and exodus as being more mythological or legendary than historical so the question comes up if the Jacob described in the Bible wasn't a real person and if you didn't really have 12 children then where did the 12 tribes come from well that's exactly what we'll be exploring today but first I want to tell you about today's sponsor speakly have you ever wanted to learn German or perhaps French Italian Spanish or Russian or maybe you want to improve your English well speakly can help speakly was created after its Founders spent six years studying thousands of language Learners the result was an app that lets you learn languages five times faster than usual with just 30 minutes of practice per day you'll be able to get along well in real life situations within just a few months and the great thing about speakly is that it lets you customize your learning you can choose what time of day you want to learn whether you want to focus more on speaking or writing and how exactly you want to study new vocabulary words it even recommends music for you to listen to in your target language so if you're interested in learning a new language you can try out speakly now use the link in the description or pinned comment to get a free 7-Day trial followed by 60% off if you choose to get the annual subscription all right back to the 12 tribes of Israel let me start by making two important points about the Bible that unfortunately a lot of people don't seem to know or understand the first is that the Bible began to be written in the Iron Age not the Bronze Age this is something that not only do biblical literalists get wrong but many non-religious people as well this is because a famous atheist once joked that the Bible was written by a bunch of Bronze Age goat herters unfortunately the phrase stuck and it ended up becoming a meme but here's the thing the Bible wasn't written by Bronze Age goat herters it was written by Iron Age City dwellers now you might be thinking Bronze Age Iron Age what's the difference they're both a really long time ago well if you want to understand anything at all about the history of the ancient near East and in particular how the Bible fits into it the difference between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age is actually quite important let me explain by briefly comparing the biblical account of things with what really happened the Bible Story begins approximately 4,000 BCE with Adam and Eve we then get Noah and the flood around 2500 the three Patriarchs around 2,000 and The Exodus around around 1450 although some date it later to around 1250 this is Then followed by King David around 1,000 and the divided monarchy starting around 900 okay let's now compare that to what really happened the secular account dates the Earth to around 4.5 billion years ago and the emergence of homo sapiens to around 200,000 years ago however when it comes to history we usually say that that began around the year 3300 BCE because that's when the very first written records were made 3300 also marks the beginning of the Bronze Age which is when we get the earliest civilizations in places like Egypt and Mesopotamia over the next 2,000 years these civilizations grew larger more advanced and increasingly interconnected so that by the year 1250 bcee the ancient near East looked something like this of major note is the fact that Canaan was actually controlled by Egypt at this point so why would the Israelites Escape Egypt only to run into Egyptians again in Canaan around 1200 bce. something very important happened something that is not mentioned in the bible it's called the Bronze Age collapse and it was probably far more Earth shattering than the fall of Rome most likely a series of large scale natural disasters led to drought and then migrations and War causing every major civilization in the near East including the Egyptians and the Meenan Greeks to suddenly decline in Canaan a group simply called the sea peoples started to attack the coast destroying most of the big cities for the people living at the time it would have felt like an apocalypse and from that point forward people would have thought about history in terms of the before times and the after times and this is why the Bronze Age collapse and the Iron Age that followed it are so important for understanding the Bible basically the Bronze Age collapse explains the origin of the Israelites I'll be talking about each individual tribe a bit later but for now we can say that the origin of the Israelites as a whole is directly connected to this ancient apocalyptic event historians and archaeologists are still working out the details but what happened is something like this the sea peoples wiped out the coastal Canaanites but the Inland Canaanites who lived in the Hill Country managed to survive there they were likely joined by other groups such as the Habu who were previously seen as being Rebels or Outlaws and maybe even by former slaves who either escaped from Egypt itself or from Egyptian controlled cities in Canaan another group who may have wound up in can at this point is the shasu who originally came from the area that the Bible calls Midian because of this inscription they are thought by some to have been the original worshippers of the god yhw anyhow once all these people ended up in the Hill Country what seems to have happened is that this rag tag group of tribes decided to join together and form A Confederacy called Israel the name Israel was likely used by at least one of the groups prior to the Bronze Age collapse as evidenced by the mpus stay but afterwards it referred to the entire Confederacy A Confederacy that eventually evolved into a kingdom probably around 900 BCE which is when the Bible and the archaeological record start to line up quite nicely which is why the biblical story cannot be simply accepted or rejected as a whole which is a mistake that both literalists as well as some atheists make on one hand the literalists assume that the entire Bible is real history and on the other hand some atheists assume that the entire Bible is fairy tales but the truth is that it's actually a bit of both which is why knowing the difference between the Bronze Age parts and the Iron Age Parts is so important to drive this point home let me show you something that I showed in a previous video here is my biblical family tree chart the one that we sell over at useful charts.com this part corresponds to the Bronze Age and this part to the Iron Age let me now put a check mark over every character from the Hebrew Bible for whom we have evidence for in the archaeological record what do you notice they're all from the Iron Age because that's when the earliest authors of the Bible were living obviously they were fairly well acquainted with their own time period but when it came to the before times meaning before the Bronze Age collapse they could only rely on myth and Legend now of course there are some traces of real history in those myths and legends such as a memory of some sort of flood a memory of life as nomadic Shepherds a memory of Egyptian oppression and a memory that their God was originally connected to the land of Midian but the bottom line is that these Distant Memories from earlier times were turned into literature meant to teach not a history book meant to record literal events okay it's now time for my second point and that is that the Bible was written by the Judah ites not by the Israelites to explain let's once again compare the biblical story with what actually happened according to the Bible kings David and Solomon both from the tribe of Judah reigned over a unified Israelite Kingdom consisting of 12 tribes then only after Solomon's death was the land split into two separate kingdoms Israel in the north consisting of 10 tribes and Judah in the South consisting of two tribes Israel lasted until 7:22 b.c. when it was destroyed by Assyria and Judah until 586 when it was destroyed by Babylon according to the biblical account most of the surviving Israelites were carried off never to be seen again whereas the surviving Judah ites who were also carried off were able to return this is where the idea of the lost 10 tribes comes from which I'll come back to later it's also the reason why from this point forward the people in the Bible are called Jews because they were mostly from the tribe of Judah okay let's now look at what really happened although there is still some debate about this many scholars now lean toward the position that a unified Israelite Kingdom Under David and Solomon never actually existed this is because the archaeological record indicates that prior to 900 bcee the population in the region was much too small and mostly rural however after 900 we get lots of evidence for a large wealthy Kingdom called Israel centered at Samaria and ruled by Kings such as omry Ahab and juu we also get evidence for a kingdom centered at Jerusalem associated with a person named David but it's relatively quite small known as the kingdom of Judah it doesn't really flourish until after the Kingdom of Israel is destroyed when that happens Jerusalem grows exponentially presumably because many of the Israelites from the north survived by moving south to join Judah now in a previous video I talked about the documentary hypothesis which posits that the first five books of the Bible were written not by Moses but by four distinct authors or groups of authors according to the original version of the hypothesis J and E were both written before 722 bcee and D and P were written after in fact e was assumed to have been written by someone living in the Northern Kingdom of Israel if this is true at least part of the Bible was written by the Israelites but this is no longer The View view found in the most recent scholarship the leading hypothesis nowadays is that everything was written or at least heavily edited after 722 BCE and therefore it was all done by scribes from the southern Kingdom of Judah in fact the idea of four distinct layers has pretty much been abandoned as well the D part still stands out we know that it was made by the same group of scribes that wrote Joshua through Kings although this is now thought to have occurred in several stages the first being completed before the Captivity and the rest being completed during or after the Captivity but when it comes to Genesis through numbers the only layer that really stands out as being unique is p which almost certainly was created after the Captivity by second temple priests which is why it's called P j& however have mostly been abandoned or at least combined as J but even even this is a bit misleading because it appears that the J Parts contain lots of different layers and edits something I'll come back to later what a lot of Scholars are now suggesting is that the Israelites and Juda ites originally had two or maybe even three or more different origin Stories the two main ones seem to be the one involving Abraham Isaac and Jacob in Genesis and the one involving Moses in Exodus in a previous video I suggest that the three Patriarchs story may have come from Judah and the Moses story from Israel but keep in mind that this is still highly speculative I've seen other Scholars suggest that both origin stories came from Israel and others who suggest that maybe the three patriarch story can be broken down further into independent traditions and that maybe only Abraham and Isaac were from Judah and Jacob was from Israel but regardless of how it all breaks down what a lot of Scholars are now concluding is that it was P who stitched everything together for the very first time and remember P was writing after the Captivity so the conclusion is that the entire Torah or pentat as well as judges through Kings was done by Southern Judah ites in fact these nine books 11 in the Old Testament were probably at some point considered to be a single work one that explained the entire history of the Jewish people all the way from ad and Eve to the Babylonian captivity now within this Grand narrative there might be a few fragments here and there that can be traced back to the northern Israelites but even in these cases they've been heavily edited and carefully placed alongside supplementary material in a way that clearly shows a judahite spin now at this point you might be thinking well what does it matter weren't the Judah ites just a subset of the Israelites well that used to be the thing thinking even in secular circles but nowadays a lot of Scholars are leaning toward a new idea but before I introduce it let me point out that I've put a big list of sources in the description so if you're wondering who I'm referring to whenever I say Scholars just take a look there one book in particular that I'd like to highlight is this recent one why the Bible began by Jacob L Wright it provides more detail on just about everything that I'm covering in this video so here's the idea Judah was most likely not a part of the original Israelite Confederacy in fact it likely had no association with Israel at all until after the fall of the northern kingdom to help you understand what this means let me give you an analogy I happen to live in Canada which is right next door to the United States of these two countries the US is by far the more dominant one with a much larger population and a much larger impact on global culture both countries are a part of North America but only people in the US call themselves Americans in Canada we would never call ourselves American we are Canadians okay but let's now imagine the following scenario there is some sort of global catastrophe or war that leaves America in Ruins but Canada intact at this point Canada is flooded with American refugees and after about years the words Canadian and American become synonymous in fact after another 100 years or so Canadian history books start saying that Canada had actually started out as one of the 51 states of America now of course the truth of the matter is that America has never had 51 states we all know that it currently has only 50 well what if there never actually were 12 tribes of Israel what if the the whole thing was made up later in order to insert Judah into Israel's history well that's the idea that I'm now going to explore and take note that for this part I'll be relying heavily on the work of Andrew talowsky again you can find the complete list of sources in the description let me start by going over the names and locations of the 12 tribes remember according to the Bible the 12 tribes descended from the 12 sons of Jacob Jacob's first four Sons were Ruben Simeon Levi and Judah all born to Jacob's first wife Leia in terms of geography all four of these tribes ended up living in the South although take note that the tribe of Levi was not actually allotted any land because they were instead tasked with religious duties although they were originally spread out throughout the land eventually most ended up in Jerusalem where the temple was located the next four children were Dan naftali Gad and Asher these children were not born to either one of Jacob's wives but rather to his wives servants bilha and zilpa note that these four tribes all inherited land on the periphery next came isachar and zebulun again from Leia they were given land here finally we get Joseph and Benjamin the two children of Rachel Jacob's favorite wife their land corresponds to the core regions of Israel although take note that the descendants of Joseph eventually get split into two tribes Ephraim and manasse this means that there were actually 13 tribes not 12 this is usually resolved by leaving out Levi or by combining Ephraim and Manasseh into Joseph okay now that you're familiar with who's who let me show you why some Scholars think that the whole 12 tribe concept was a late judahite invention as I mentioned mentioned earlier the first nine books in the Hebrew Bible or 11 in the Old Testament if you remove Ruth were likely originally meant to be a single work it was created sometime during the second temple period by stitching together a bunch of older texts and inserting new material in between and here's what's interesting in this entire Grand narrative the 12 tribes are listed by name only 18 times 10 of these are in sections that are pretty much universally attributed to P meaning that they were added very late and additional two are usually attributed to an even later redactor sometimes called R now the original documentary hypothesis only applied to the pentat and thus Joshua through Kings is usually just labeled as D due to their association with Deuteronomy but nowadays it's thought that there might be some P sections in these books as well these two are strong candidates for that which leaves us with just just four references to the 12 tribes that might predate the second temple period let's now look at them one by one starting with a list found in judges 5 this chapter is known as the song of Deborah and it stands out from the material before and after it both in terms of style and language it appears to be a very old hymn that the deuteronomists inserted into the narrative in fact some scholars believe that this chapter might be the oldest bit of text in the entire Bible and one of the very few that was written in the north before 722 BCE which means that this is quite likely the oldest list we have of the Israelite tribes so let's take a look first off you need to know that this hymn is about a famous battle and it talks about the tribes who participated and the tribes who did not so the participating tribes are listed as Ephraim Benjamin makir zebulun isachar and naftali whereas the non-participating tribes are listed as Reuben Gilead Dan and Asher so first of all that's only 10 tribes not 12 second there are two unfamiliar names mck and Gilead elsewhere in the Bible mck is said to have been the son of Manasseh so the assumption is that the tribe of makir is probably manasse likewise Gile ad is where the tribe of GAD was located so again the assumption is that Gilead is probably Gad so who's missing then interestingly it's Judah Simeon and Levi the three tribes who made up the southern Kingdom of Judah however in the flow of the narrative the North and the South had not yet been divided so why were these three tribes not mentioned it can't simply be because they didn't participate in the battle because the hymn specifically goes out of its way to reprimand those who didn't so the conclusion is that maybe in the original Confederacy there were only ever 10 tribes of Israel not 12 the next oldest tribal list is found in Deuteronomy 33 it's known as the blessing of Moses because it contains separate blessings given by Moses for each tribe this time Judah and Levi are mentioned but again not Simeon however when you look at the original Hebrew the first two blessings for Reuben and Judah stand out as being quite different which indicates that this part may have been inserted at a later date in addition to this Ephraim and Manasseh are combined into a single blessing Asar zebulun and isachar and therefore the conclusion is that the original poem likely had only eight blessings when you put this next to the list in judges 5 what it shows is that even in the North the total number of tribes as well as their names likely changed over time for example it appears that Reuben may have dwindled and eventually disappeared the blessing for Reuben given in verse 5 seems to hint at this because it says let Reuben Live and Not Die nor his people Be Few also it appears that Levi may have been added later interestingly the name Levi actually means joined and according to Richard freedman's book The Exodus the tribe of Levi may have been the only tribe to have experienced some sort of literal Exodus from Egypt one of his main arguments is the fact that all of the personal names for individual Levites found in the Bible are names that have Egyptian Origins whereas most of the other names have Canaanite Origins others have suggested that maybe the Levites had been priests in Egypt perhaps even the leading priests under aatan so maybe it was this new tribe that introduced the idea of monotheism to the Israelites let's now look at Genesis 49 which also contains a blessing for each tribe this time given by Jacob but once again the text appears to have an original core That Was Then added to at a later date all 12 tribes are mentioned but the first four blessings stand out because they're written in the first person whereas the other eight are written in the third person so yet again it looks like the judahite have inserted themselves into a much older text making it look like they were there all along which is why there ends up being some confusion over which son of Jacob was his Heir on one hand it would appear that Joseph was his Heir because he was Jacob's favorite son and was given a double inheritance however on the other hand it also appears that Judah was his Heir because in verse 10 it says the scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler staff from between his his feet which is a foreshadowing of the ruling House of David the argument is that Reuben the firstborn was disqualified because he slept with his father's concubine bilha and that the next two sons Simeon and Levi were also disqualified because they were too violent meaning that Judah the fourth-born son is the heir let's now jump to Genesis 29-35 which is where the birth order is explained like I said earlier Reuben Simeon Levi and Judah were all born to Leia Jacob's first but not his favorite wife now if as I've been suggesting Judah was not an original member of the Israelite Confederacy but was rather inserted into the story later why then would they decide to place their tribe fourth in the birth order and not first especially if they wanted to promote the idea that their tribe was the most important this is in fact what they did elsewhere in both numbers and Joshua well as we've already seen the tribe of reuin was most likely extinct by the time that Judah Rose to prominence so they weren't any sort of threat some have even suggested that Reuben might have been the shasu so maybe they were given the ceremonial top spot because they were the first to worship yhwh when it comes to Simeon although they were once seen as being a separate Southern tribe by the time this was written Simeon had been fully integrated into Judah so they too were not a threat the Levites of course were religious leaders not political leaders so they weren't a threat either therefore Judah was able to place themselves fourth making the insertion look less obvious note however that they very diplomatically made Joseph and Benjamin the sons of Jacob's favorite wife Rachel but placed them at the bottom of the birth order this is because these tribes were still a threat in the present the two Joseph tribes Ephraim and Manasseh had been the core part of the Kingdom of Israel and some of them had likely fled South where they maintained their tribal identity long into the second temple period likewise the kingdom of Judah eventually stretched to contain the former territory of Benjamin so there were a lot of benjamites still around too note that the name Benjamin literally means son of the South indicating that in the original Confederacy Benjamin was the southern most tribe not Judah this leaves us with six more tribes the four born to bilha and zilpa and the two later children of Leia as I mentioned earlier the four born to bilha and zilpa all received land on the periphery of the Kingdom of Israel note that Dan was located just north of the Philistines it has long been suggested that the Philistines might have been one of the sea peoples who destroyed and then settled some of the coastal Canaanite cities well it has also been suggested that Dan might have originated as one of the sea peoples too however unlike the Philistines they opted to join the new Israelite Confederacy one of the main arguments for this hypothesis is the fact that Dan is often associated with boats there's also the fact that the main hero from the tribe of Dan Samson is a lot like the Greek hero Hercules so maybe this Legend came with the sea peoples and got passed on to Israel via Dan I'd also like to point out that both Asher and Gad are named after Canaanite Gods which is further evidence that at least some of the Israelite tribes had been Canaanites all along so I think we're ready to make some conclusions when it comes to the origin of the 12 tribes of Israel the first thing that we can say is that the idea of 12 tribes specifically as opposed to 10 or eight or some other number originated with Judah long after Israel even even existed they probably chose 12 simply because it's a nice round number and therefore symbolic in reality there very likely never were exactly 12 tribes of Israel however the second thing we can say is that at some point before Judah inserted themselves into the story there was indeed a group of Israelite tribes although the exact number probably fluctuated when it comes to these tribes there was not a single origin Reuben might have come from from the shasu Levi might have come from Egypt Dan might have come from the sea peoples Asher Neftali and Gad might have been former Canaanites as for the rest zebulun isachar Ephraim Manasseh and Benjamin they might have been Canaanites as well in particular Hill Country Canaanites or maybe they were the Habu which might explain where the name Hebrew comes from now before I go I have to address the question where are the Israel isite tribes located today because even if there were never exactly 12 of them there were in fact Israelite tribes at some point well like I said earlier a lot of them ended up moving south where they integrated into the kingdom of Judah meaning that they eventually became Jews and those who were carried off well most of them likely integrated into other Middle Eastern societies but what about all those various groups around the world who claim to be members of the so called lost 10 tribes well I might do a future video on that topic but for now I'll just say that if there are any legitimate Israel groups out there they almost certainly Trace their lineage from second temple Judaism not directly from the Northern Kingdom of Israel this includes both the Samaritans as well as beta Israel from Ethiopia so to some up even though Judah was not one of the original Israelite tribes it is only through Judah that any notion of Israel has survived you see by creating a story about 12 tribes who dedicated themselves to one God they gave themselves something they could cling to so instead of needing to be citizens of a specific State they were able to become a people called Jews who could survive anywhere and survive they did and not only did they survive their story went on to inspire others and various different understandings of it led to the creation of the world's two largest religions Christianity and Islam okay so that was a look at the origin of the 12 tribes of Israel as a reminder there is now a join button on this channel this allows you to become a channel member which is slightly different from being just a subscriber subscribing to the channel is free and will always be free however becoming a channel member gives you a few extra perks so if that's something you're interested in check it out thanks for [Music] [Music] watching

Channel: UsefulCharts

Views: 277,126

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Id: 7wtBBVnyX3A

Length: 32min 27sec (1947 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2024