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The term Israelite is the English name for the descendants of the biblical patriarch Jacob in ancient times, which is derived from the Greek Ἰσραηλῖται, which was used to translate the Biblical Hebrew term b'nei yisrael, יִשְׂרָאֵל as either "sons of Israel" or "children of Israel". The name Israel first appears in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 32:29. It refers to the renaming of Jacob, who, according to the Bible, wrestled with an angel, who gave him a blessing and ...

Judahite, Judaean, Jew

The Greek term Ioudaios was an exonym originally referring to members of the Tribe of Judah, and by extension the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah and the Judean region, and was later adopted as a self-designation by people in the Jewish diaspora who identified themselves as l

Samaritan

The Samaritans, who claim descent from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, are named after the Israelite Kingdom of Samaria, but many Jewish authorities contest their claimed lineage, deeming them to have been conquered foreigners who were settled in the Land of Israel by the Ass

The Israelite story begins with some of the culture heroes of the Jewish people, the patriarchs. The Torah traces the Israelites to the patriarch Jacob, grandson of Abraham, who was renamed Israel after a mysterious incident in which he wrestles all night with God or an angel. Jacob's twelve sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin, become the ancestors of twelve tribes, with the exception of Joseph, whose two sons Manasseh and Ephraim,

Origins

Several theories exist proposing the origins of the Israelites in raiding groups, infiltrating nomads or emerging from indigenous Canaanites driven from the wealthier urban areas by poverty to seek their fortunes in the highland. Various, ethnically distinct groups of itinerant n

Pre-state (Iron Age I) and monarchies (Iron Age II)

Over the next two hundred years the number of highland villages increased from 25 to over 300 and the settled population doubled to 40,000. By the 10th century BCE a rudimentary state had emerged in the north-central highlands, and in the 9th century this became a kingdom. Settle

From the downfall of the two kingdoms to Bar Kochba

In the pre-exilic First Temple Period the political power of Judea was concentrated within the tribe of Judah, Israel was dominated by the tribe of Ephraim and the House of Joseph, while the Galilee was associated with the tribe of Naphtali, the most eminent tribe of northern Isr

In 2000, M. Hammer, et al. conducted a study on 1371 men and definitively established that part of the paternal gene pool of Jewish communities in Europe, North Africa and Middle East came from a common Middle East ancestral population. Another study noted; "In comparison with data available from other relevant populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent than to their Arab neighbors. The authors found that "Palestinian Arab

In the Chris­t­ian New Tes­ta­ment, the twelve tribes of Is­rael are re­ferred to twice in the gospels and twice in the Book of Rev­e­la­tion. In Matthew, par­alled by Luke, Jesus an­tic­i­pates that in the King­dom of God, his fol­low­ers will "sit on [twelve] thrones, judg­ing the twelve tribes of Israel". In the vi­sion of the writer of the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, 144,000 of all the tribes of the chil­dren of Is­rael were "sealed", 12,000 from each tribe and in his vi­sion of the New or Heav­enly Jerusalem, the tribes' names were writ­ten on the city gates: