Where Did the Jews Come From?

Where Did the Jews Come From?

When we hear about the "Jewish people," it is common to imagine a population that has always existed with that exact same identity since the opening chapters of the Bible.

However, history is a bit more complex.

The Bible presents Israel as descendants of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob is given the name Israel, and his sons give rise to the twelve tribes of Israel. This is the origin narrative preserved in Scripture.

Historically, though, we lack the archaeological evidence required to reconstruct Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as individual historical figures with the same degree of certainty that we have for later periods. For this reason, it is important to distinguish the biblical tradition regarding Israel's origins from what can be reconstructed directly from historical evidence.

And it is precisely in this distinction that one of the most fascinating stories of the ancient world begins.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: The Origin According to the Bible

In the narrative of Genesis, history begins with Abraham.

God calls Abraham to leave his land and promises to make him a great nation. The promise passes to his son Isaac and then to Jacob.

Jacob, also called Israel, has twelve sons. These sons are presented as the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The narrative continues with Jacob's family going down to Egypt, the enslavement of the Israelites, the Exodus under Moses' leadership, and, subsequently, the entry into Canaan.

Within the Bible itself, therefore, Israel's identity is presented as the result of a history of family, covenant, liberation, and the formation of a people.

This point is fundamental to understanding the rest of the Old Testament.

Israel does not appear in the Bible simply as a population that received a territory. Its identity is tied to a relationship established between God and a people.

But what can we observe when we step away from the biblical text and look at other evidence?

Canaan Before Israel

Long before there was a kingdom called Israel, the region that would later be associated with the Israelites was already inhabited by different peoples.

The land of Canaan was part of the ancient Levant, an area situated between major centers of power such as Egypt and Mesopotamia.

During the Bronze Age, city-states, rural communities, and various population groups occupied the region. Therefore, the Israelites did not emerge in an empty land.

This is important because for a long time, the history of Israel was presented simply as a sequence in which a foreign people arrives in Canaan, conquers the region, and replaces its inhabitants.

Archaeology has made this picture much more complex.

The remains found in the hill country of Canaan indicate significant transformations between the late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age. Numerous small rural communities emerged, and many researchers link this process to the formation of Israeli society.

This does not mean there is a single explanation accepted by all historians.

Different models exist to explain Israel's formation: military conquest, immigration, internal transformation of Canaanite society, and combinations of these possibilities. Archaeological evidence does not simply allow us to place the entire biblical narrative of Joshua side by side with the archaeological record and claim that every event happened in that exact way.

The formation of Israel appears to have been a much more gradual and complex historical process.

The First Time Israel Appears Outside the Bible

Here we find an especially important piece of evidence.

Around the late 13th century BCE, during the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah, an inscription known as the Merneptah Stele was produced.

It contains one of the oldest known references to the name "Israel" outside of the Bible.

The significance of this inscription also lies in how it appears to classify Israel. Unlike names associated with cities or political territories, Israel is presented as a people or population group.

This means that by approximately 1200 BCE, a population known to the Egyptians as Israel already existed in the southern Levant.

The stele does not explain where this people came from.

Nor does it directly confirm the account of the Exodus or the conquest of Canaan.

Instead, it gives us something extremely valuable: external evidence that Israel was already recognized as a distinct population group at that time.

It is one of the earliest pieces of Israel's historical puzzle.

So Were the Israelites Canaanites?

This question does not have as simple an answer as it might seem.

Archaeological evidence points to a strong cultural continuity between the populations living in Canaan and the communities later identified as Israelites.

This does not necessarily mean that "Israel was simply Canaan by another name."

It means that Israel's formation took place within a pre-existing cultural environment.

The early Israelites shared elements of material culture, agriculture, architecture, and language with other populations in the region.

At the same time, they developed distinct characteristics that helped shape a separate identity.

This is why many researchers understand Israel's formation as a process of ethnogenesis, meaning the gradual formation of a collective identity.

Rather than imagining a people springing fully formed at a specific moment, we can think of various communities that, over time, came to share an increasingly defined identity.

And Where Do the Twelve Sons of Jacob Fit In?

Here we must return to the Bible.

The biblical tradition organizes Israel around the twelve tribes descended from the sons of Jacob.

Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin appear in this genealogical framework, though the tribe lists show some differences depending on the biblical text and the purpose of each passage.

This tribal organization is one of the primary ways the Old Testament explains Israel's identity.

Historically, however, we cannot simply assume that these twelve tribes functioned from the very beginning as a perfectly organized confederation.

The biblical history itself shows that the tribes had distinct regional identities and interests.

The idea of a unified "Israel" developed gradually over time.

Israel Becomes a Kingdom

At some point in the early Iron Age, Israeli communities began to develop more centralized political structures.

The Bible presents Saul, David, and Solomon as the first great kings of a united monarchy.

David occupies an especially important place in this tradition.

Jerusalem, which would later become the political and religious center of the kingdom, is presented as the city conquered by David and established as his capital.

Solomon, his successor, is traditionally associated with building the first Temple in Jerusalem.

The extent and power of this so-called "united monarchy" remain subjects of discussion among historians and archaeologists. While there is important evidence for the existence of an Israelite monarchy and, later, separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the exact scale of the realm attributed to David and Solomon is debated.

The safest conclusion is that, during the first half of the first millennium BCE, clearly established Israelite and Judahite political entities already existed.

And then a decisive split occurred.

Israel and Judah

Following the period associated with the united monarchy, the biblical tradition recounts that the kingdom divided.

To the north was the Kingdom of Israel, whose capital would later become Samaria.

To the south was the Kingdom of Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital.

This division would completely change the people's history.

The name "Israel" remained associated with the northern kingdom, while "Judah" came to identify the southern kingdom.

And it is here that we encounter the word of direct interest to us: Jew.

From "Judah" to "Jew"

The word "Jew" is derived from Judah.

In Hebrew, Yehudi generally means "Judahite" or "from Judah."

Originally, therefore, the word was tied to a geographic and political identity: someone associated with the kingdom of Judah.

But this situation would change radically following the major imperial conquests that swept the region.

The northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE.

Judah continued to exist longer, until it was conquered by the Babylonian Empire in the 6th century BCE.

Jerusalem was destroyed, the Temple was destroyed, and a significant portion of Judah's population was deported to Babylon.

It was during this crisis that Judahite identity began to take on a dimension that transcended the physical territory of Judah itself.

The Exile Transformed Israel's Identity

The Babylonian exile was one of the major turning points in biblical history.

A people whose identity was deeply bound to their land, the city of Jerusalem, and the Temple had to learn how to preserve their identity far from home.

Traditions, genealogies, laws, memories, histories, and religious practices took on even greater importance.

When the Persian Empire conquered Babylon, the exiles were permitted to return to the region of Judah.

Jerusalem was rebuilt, and the Temple resumed its operations.

However, the world had changed.

The people's identity no longer depended solely on the existence of an independent kingdom.

The word "Jew" gradually came to designate a broader religious, cultural, and communal identity.

It is through this long process that we find the historical roots of the Jewish people as we know them in subsequent periods.

So What Is the Answer?

If we ask "Where did the Jewish people come from?", we can answer in two complementary ways.

According to Biblical Tradition

The Jews are descendants of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob is named Israel, and his descendants form the tribes of Israel. The history continues with the Exodus, the entry into Canaan, and the periods of the judges and kings.

According to Historical Reconstruction

Israelite identity appears to have formed gradually within the context of the populations of ancient Canaan, particularly in the hill country of the Levant during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

The earliest known external reference to Israel appears on the Merneptah Stele around 1200 BCE, indicating that a population identified by that name already existed.

Next came the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, the exile, Persian rule, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

Throughout this process, Israelite and Judahite identity underwent profound transformations.

Consequently, the Jewish people did not emerge from a single, isolated historical event.

Their formation was a long process in which tradition, kinship, territory, religion, politics, memory, and historical experiences combined.

Why Does This Matter for Understanding the Bible?

Because almost everything that happens afterward depends on this history.

When we read the prophets, we need to know what Israel and Judah were.

When we read about the exile, we need to understand why Jerusalem and the Temple mattered so much.

When we reach the books of the Persian period, we need to comprehend how a Judahite community managed to live within a vast empire.

And when we finally arrive at the 1st century, we encounter a people whose history already carried centuries of experience: kings, wars, exile, return, foreign empires, the reconstruction of the Temple, and various expectations about the future.

It is into this world that Jesus will be born.

But before we reach Jesus, we need to understand what happened to Israel after the division of the kingdom.

In the next article: "The Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah" — how one people became two kingdoms and why this division was so crucial to biblical history.