All These Are the Twelve Tribes of Israel

The Hebrew Bible presents Israel as a community of twelve tribes descending from one common ancestor. As an elementary social construction, this notion functions as the basic code for Israel’s collective identity. In this article, the author investigates the nature and the origins of the Israelite tribal system. It is readily apparent that the construct of the twelve tribes does not match the social reality or the shape of any given political entity in any period within the history of Israel. This holds true for the postexilic as well as the preexilic monarchic periods. Sources for earlier periods, however, allow for some cautious conclusions on the existence and shape of northern Israelite and Judahite kinship structures, which in time developed into the system of the twelve tribes of Israel

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