Were There 12 Tribes of Israel?

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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 […]

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Footnotes

1. Lawrence E. Stager, “The Song of Deborah—Why Some Tribes Answered the Call and Others Did Not,” BAR, January/February 1989.

2. See Mitka R. Golub, “What’s in a Name? Personal Names in Ancient Israel and Judah,” BAR, Summer 2020. Golub analyzes about 950 names preserved in inscriptions from the Iron Age.

Endnotes

1. See Andrew Tobolowsky, The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022).