The framework of this history of the Kingdom of Israel is based on
information provided by epigraphic sources. They show that the religion
and the ethnic identity of Israel connect traditions of semi-nomadic
tribes of the Cisjordanian highland with conceptions and practices of
pastoralists living in Transjordan, Midian, Negeb, and Sinai. They are
known as Shasu in Egyptian texts, which provide the earliest written
sources. The book is divided in six chapters. The first one deals with
the proto-history of Israel in the second millennium B.C., starting with
the mention of the Joseph-El and Simeon tribes in the Egyptian
Execration texts of the 19th-18th centuries B.C. Jacob-El, Reuben, and
Israel appear somewhat later, as well as the Shasu of the Yahwe-El area
in Northern Sinai. The figure of Moses is related to this region and
dates presumably from the second half of the 12th century B.C., when
starts the period of the Judges. Graeco-Aegean Philistines settled in
Canaan in the late 12th century were a serious menace to the
confederation of Israelite tribes whose elders decided ca. 980
B.C. to adopt a royal government system. The first king was Saul,
followed by his son Ishbaal. The unsettled period of David’s and
Solomon’s reigns (ca. 960-927 B.C.) still belongs to the
transition period from tribal confederacy to monarchy, continued by wars
between Israel and Judah and by internal troubles. This is examined in
chapter II. Chapter III deals with the dynasty of Omri, which ruled from
ca. 882 to 749 B.C., a period documented also by Moabite,
Neo-Assyrian, and Aramaic inscriptions which show that Jehu belonged to
an Omride side-branch and that Jehoram and Ahaziah were killed by
Aramaeans at the battle of Ramoth Gilead (841 B.C.), not by Jehu or his
men. The rule of the Omrides was followed by a restless period and by
Assyrian invasions ending with the annexation of the country to the
Assyrian Empire and deportations of some of its elite, as presented in
chapter IV. Since monotheism goes to the hearth of Israelite
self-understanding, chapter V examines the religion of Israel,
characterized by the cult of El, whose identity was specified by the
full name Yahwe-El. A certain continuity of the Israelite political
entity appears in the Persian period with Samarian governors, often
members of the Sanballat lineage, as proposed in chapter VI.
