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The authors of the biblical books of Genesis through Kings tended to define Israel as a community of 12 tribes. The tribal ancestors—the 12 sons of Jacob—are the protagonists of the second half of Genesis, and the tribes take center stage in most of the other books in this group. The conquest of Canaan (Joshua 13–19), the split of the United Monarchy into Israel and Judah (1 Kings 11–12), and even the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BCE (2 Kings 17) are all described in tribal terms. Judges 5, which may well be the oldest text in the Hebrew Bible, is a poem describing a conflict between a number of the tribes and an invading Canaanite army. Thus, some version of the tribal tradition existed very early.
But were there actually 12 tribes of Israel? That is a difficult question to answer.1
For one thing, although some biblical authors seem focused on details of tribal Israel, others hardly seem interested. There are at least 19 descriptions of the tribes between Genesis 29 and Judges 5, but in later biblical books, there isn’t even a complete account of which tribes lived in which of the two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. Outside of Ezekiel 48, most of the prophets never mention the tribes.
In the same vein, Judges 5, often called the Song of Deborah, may prove the early origins of the tribal tradition, but it does not mention all 12 of the familiar tribes. It is missing Judah, Simeon, Levi, and Gad. And it refers to certain groups that are elsewhere treated either like subtribes (Machir and Gilead) or not mentioned at all (Meroz), without distinguishing them from the tribes. There may be other early tribal lists (e.g., Genesis 49), but they were likely edited later on in various ways. It is very hard to know what they prove and don’t prove.
Meanwhile, outside the Bible, there is hardly any evidence at all. There may—or may not—be a reference to the tribe of Gad in the Mesha Stele, a ninth-century BCE Moabite inscription describing a conflict between King Mesha of Moab and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. But that would seem to be it. We have a large number of Israelite and Judahite personal names preserved in various inscriptions, but I am not aware of even one that describes an individual as a member of a tribe.
In short, we have a situation where the intense focus on the tribes throughout biblical history stands in some tension with both their absence from other biblical compositions and outside evidence. At the same time, there are a few things we can say with confidence. First, it seems clear that there were some tribes in early periods. Second, it is even more clear that a few tribes were still important in the region of Judah after the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BCE, namely the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi. Two of the latest books in the Hebrew Bible, Ezra and Nehemiah, describe these tribes as the first three to return from exile (Ezra 1) and, later, as Jerusalem’s residents (Nehemiah 11–12). Even in the New Testament, Paul, who lived in the first century CE, repeatedly describes himself as a member of the tribe of Benjamin (Acts 13:21; Romans 11:1; Philippians 3:5).
In addition, there may still have been tribes in the region of Israel—as opposed to Judah—even in later periods. Second Kings 17, the most detailed biblical account of the aforementioned Assyrian conquest, claims that all the tribes living in Israel were taken away to Assyria. Yet other biblical texts, such as 2 Chronicles 30, suggest the survival of Israelite tribes in the region, and the archaeological evidence is increasingly on that side. The people known to history as the Samaritans are likely the descendants of these Israelites who were not exiled, as they themselves have always claimed. They have a long history of identifying with the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Levi, which survives to this day.
So were there actually 12 tribes of Israel? Broadly, I think probably not. I would suggest that the tradition of the 12 tribes was invented in Judah, sometime after the Assyrian conquest of Israel, by expanding a more ancient Israelite tribal tradition, like Judges 5, into a form that included Judah itself. This might have happened for many reasons, including a desire to incorporate Israelite refugees into Judah, to claim greater prestige, or even to claim some former Israelite territory. It was likely also accompanied by the switch of the tribe of Benjamin from Israel to Judah, which would explain why 1 Kings 11–12 seems to go back and forth on the number of tribes—one or two—in the Kingdom of Judah.
Ultimately, then, we should probably think of the 12 tribes tradition as an idealized vision of Israelite identity that developed some time after the heyday of Israel’s—and not Judah’s—tribes. This idealized vision may well have been considerably more important to the biblical authors, writing in the sixth through fourth centuries BCE, than to any historic tribe, judging from the lack of epigraphic evidence. Then again, we must have some explanation for the survival of at least a handful of tribes into the late eras of biblical composition and even into the time of the New Testament.
Still, it is the role of the 12 tribes as the paradigmatic vision of a unified Israel, and not any historical importance they may have had, that best explains the ongoing fascination with the tribes and the search for those that are “lost.” Indeed, in the first century CE, the Jewish historian Josephus already understood the lost tribes of Israel as an immense multitude across the Euphrates (Antiquities 11.133). Second Esdras, a book of the Apocrypha from around the same time, features a vision of the tribes returning to Israel at the end of days. The Jerusalem Talmud and Genesis Rabbah, likely from the late fourth and fifth centuries, offer similar accounts of the lost tribes.
In the long run, then, actual tribal identifications faded in the Jewish diaspora. But the idea of the 12 tribes as the real Israel—and an Israel that would be restored—survived. There are even those groups, all around the world, who claim to be one or more of the tribes of Israel, and there have been for quite some time. Identifying with the tribes has long served as a way of claiming some part of ancient Israel’s legacy from somewhere else, a little later on. And the Judahites might have done it first.
The authors of the biblical books of Genesis through Kings tended to define Israel as a community of 12 tribes. The tribal ancestors—the 12 sons of Jacob—are the protagonists of the second half of Genesis, and the tribes take center stage in most of the other books in this group. The conquest of Canaan (Joshua 13–19), the split of the United Monarchy into Israel and Judah (1 Kings 11–12), and even the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BCE (2 Kings 17) are all described in tribal terms. Judges 5, which may well be the oldest text in the Hebrew […]
