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113-658: The Kingdom of Israel ( Hebrew : מַמְלֶכֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל ‎ Mamleḵeṯ Yīśrāʾēl ), also called the Northern Kingdom or the Kingdom of Samaria , was an Israelite kingdom that existed in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age . Its beginnings date back to the first half of the 10th century BCE. It controlled the areas of Samaria , Galilee and parts of Transjordan ; the former two regions underwent

226-620: A Hebrew dialect, though it possessed distinctive Aramaic features. Although Ugaritic shows a large degree of affinity to Hebrew in poetic structure, vocabulary, and some grammar, it lacks some Canaanite features (like the Canaanite shift and the shift */ð/ > /z/ ), and its similarities are more likely a result of either contact or preserved archaism. Hebrew underwent the Canaanite shift, where Proto-Semitic /aː/ tended to shift to /oː/ , perhaps when stressed. Hebrew also shares with

339-482: A Northwest Semitic language, Hebrew shows the shift of initial */w/ to /j/ , a similar independent pronoun system to the other Northwest Semitic languages (with third person pronouns never containing /ʃ/ ), some archaic forms, such as /naħnu/ 'we', first person singular pronominal suffix -i or -ya, and /n/ commonly preceding pronominal suffixes. Case endings are found in Northwest Semitic languages in

452-988: A devotee to Baal worship ( 1 Kings 16:31 ). Canaan State of Israel (1948–present) According to the Bible, the Northern Kingdom had 19 kings across 9 different dynasties throughout its 208 years of existence. The table below lists all the historical references to the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in Assyrian records. King Omri 's name takes the Assyrian shape of "Humri", his kingdom or dynasty that of Bit Humri or alike—the "House of Humri/Omri". Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( Hebrew : עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית ‎ , romanized :  ʿiḇrîṯ miqrāʾîṯ ( Ivrit Miqra'it ) or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא ‎ , ləšôn ham-miqrāʾ ( Leshon ha-Miqra ) ), also called Classical Hebrew ,

565-561: A fifth (about 40,000) of the population of the Kingdom of Israel were actually resettled out of the area during the two deportation periods under Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II . Many members of these northern tribes also fled south to the Kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem seems to have expanded in size five-fold during this period, requiring a new wall to be built, and a new source of water Siloam to be provided by King Hezekiah . In their book The Bible Unearthed , Israeli authors Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman estimate that only

678-515: A fifth (about 40,000) of the population of the northern Kingdom of Israel were actually resettled out of the area during the two deportation periods under Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II . No known non-Biblical record exists of the Assyrians having exiled people from four of the tribes of Israel: Dan , Asher , Issachar , Zebulun . Descriptions of the deportation of people from Reuben , Gad , Manasseh , Ephraim and Naphtali indicate that only

791-417: A later stage of the language. These additions were added after 600 CE; Hebrew had already ceased being used as a spoken language around 200 CE. Biblical Hebrew as reflected in the consonantal text of the Bible and in extra-biblical inscriptions may be subdivided by era. The oldest form of Biblical Hebrew, Archaic Hebrew, is found in poetic sections of the Bible and inscriptions dating to around 1000 BCE,

904-581: A period in which a large number of new settlements were established shortly after the kingdom came into existence. It had four capital cities in succession: Shiloh , Shechem , Tirzah , and the city of Samaria . In the 9th century BCE, it was ruled by the Omride dynasty , whose political centre was the city of Samaria. According to the Hebrew Bible , the territory of the Twelve Tribes of Israel

1017-535: A portion of these tribes were deported, and the places to which they were deported are known locations given in the accounts. The deported communities are mentioned as still existing at the time of the composition of the Books of Kings and Chronicles and did not disappear by assimilation. 2 Chronicles 30:1–18 explicitly mentions northern Israelites who had been spared by the Assyrians, in particular people of Ephraim, Manasseh, Asher, Issachar and Zebulun, and how members of

1130-777: A superscript ס above the ש to indicate it took the value /s/ , while the Masoretes added the shin dot to distinguish between the two varieties of the letter. The original Hebrew alphabet consisted only of consonants , but the letters א , ה , ו , י , also were used to indicate vowels, known as matres lectionis when used in this function. It is thought that this was a product of phonetic development: for instance, *bayt ('house') shifted to בֵּית in construct state but retained its spelling. While no examples of early Hebrew orthography have been found, older Phoenician and Moabite texts show how First Temple period Hebrew would have been written. Phoenician inscriptions from

1243-484: A vowel in sandhi, as well as Rabbi Saadia Gaon 's attestation to the use of this alternation in Tiberian Aramaic at the beginning of the 10th century CE. The Dead Sea scrolls show evidence of confusion of the phonemes /ħ ʕ h ʔ/ , e.g. חמר ħmr for Masoretic אָמַר /ʔɔˈmar/ 'he said'. However the testimony of Jerome indicates that this was a regionalism and not universal. Confusion of gutturals

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1356-588: A word with less or more matres lectionis, respectively. The Hebrew Bible was presumably originally written in a more defective orthography than found in any of the texts known today. Of the extant textual witnesses of the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretic text is generally the most conservative in its use of matres lectionis, with the Samaritan Pentateuch and its forebearers being more full and

1469-537: Is also evident in the later-developed Tiberian vocalization system. Qumran Hebrew, attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls from ca. 200 BCE to 70 CE, is a continuation of Late Biblical Hebrew. Qumran Hebrew may be considered an intermediate stage between Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew, though Qumran Hebrew shows its own idiosyncratic dialectal features. Dialect variation in Biblical Hebrew

1582-552: Is also not directly indicated by Hebrew orthography but is clearly attested by later developments: It is written with ⟨ ש ⟩ (also used for /ʃ/ ) but later merged with /s/ (normally indicated with ⟨ ס ⟩ ). As a result, three etymologically distinct phonemes can be distinguished through a combination of spelling and pronunciation: /s/ written ⟨ ס ⟩ , /ʃ/ written ⟨ ש ⟩ , and /ś/ (pronounced /ɬ/ but written ⟨ ש ⟩ ). The specific pronunciation of /ś/ as [ɬ]

1695-880: Is an archaic form of the Hebrew language , a language in the Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel , roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea . The term ʿiḇrîṯ "Hebrew" was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible , which was referred to as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַן ‎ śəp̄aṯ kənaʿan "language of Canaan" or יְהוּדִית ‎ Yəhûḏîṯ , " Judean ", but it

1808-530: Is attested to by the well-known shibboleth incident of Judges 12:6, where Jephthah 's forces from Gilead caught Ephraimites trying to cross the Jordan River by making them say שִׁבֹּ֤לֶת š ibboleṯ ('ear of corn') The Ephraimites' identity was given away by their pronunciation: סִבֹּ֤לֶת s ibboleṯ . The apparent conclusion is that the Ephraimite dialect had /s/ for standard /ʃ/ . As an alternative explanation, it has been suggested that

1921-578: Is based on comparative evidence ( /ɬ/ is the corresponding Proto-Semitic phoneme and still attested in Modern South Arabian languages as well as early borrowings (e.g. balsam < Greek balsamon < Hebrew baśam ). /ɬ/ began merging with /s/ in Late Biblical Hebrew, as indicated by interchange of orthographic ⟨ ש ⟩ and ⟨ ס ⟩ , possibly under the influence of Aramaic, and this became

2034-425: Is disputed, likely ejective or pharyngealized . Earlier Biblical Hebrew possessed three consonants not distinguished in writing and later merged with other consonants. The stop consonants developed fricative allophones under the influence of Aramaic , and these sounds eventually became marginally phonemic . The pharyngeal and glottal consonants underwent weakening in some regional dialects, as reflected in

2147-481: Is more consistent in using the definite article ה- , the accusative marker את , distinguishing between simple and waw-consecutive verb forms, and in using particles like אשר and כי rather than asyndeton . Biblical Hebrew from after the Babylonian exile in 587 BCE is known as 'Late Biblical Hebrew'. Late Biblical Hebrew shows Aramaic influence in phonology, morphology, and lexicon, and this trend

2260-550: Is not disputed, some historians and archaeologists reject the historicity of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah . Around 720 BCE, Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire . The records of Assyrian king Sargon II indicate that he deported 27,290 Israelites to Mesopotamia . This deportation resulted in the loss of one-fifth of the kingdom's population and is known as the Assyrian captivity , which gave rise to

2373-563: Is observed by noting the preservation of the double phonemes of each letter in one Sephardic reading tradition, and by noting that these phonemes are distinguished consistently in the Septuagint of the Pentateuch (e.g. Isaac יצחק Yīṣ ḥ āq = Ἰσαάκ versus Rachel רחל Rā ḫ ēl = Ῥαχήλ ), but this becomes more sporadic in later books and is generally absent in translations of Ezra and Nehemiah . The phoneme /ɬ/ ,

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2486-567: Is often written as ־יא in analogy to words like היא , הביא , e.g. כיא , sometimes מיא . ⟨ ה ⟩ is found finally in forms like חוטה (Tiberian חוטא ), קורה (Tiberian קורא ) while ⟨ א ⟩ may be used for an a-quality vowel in final position (e.g. עליהא ) and in medial position (e.g. יאתום ). Pre-Samaritan and Samaritan texts show full spellings in many categories (e.g. כוחי vs. Masoretic כחי in Genesis 49:3) but only rarely show full spelling of

2599-521: Is part of the wider south Judean anticlinorium -a regional formation characterised by upward folding. Typical to the Shfela are the Senonian - Eocene chalky formations. The soft Eocene chalk is known locally as kirton , which tends to build a harder upper calcrete crust ( nari ), so that in the past people quarried the kirton while leaving the nari layer in place as a ceiling. Apart from using

2712-424: Is significant that the Assyrians never mention the Kingdom of Judah until the end of the 8th century, when it was an Assyrian vassal state : possibly they never had contact with it, or possibly they regarded it as a vassal of Israel/Samaria or Aram, or possibly the southern kingdom did not exist during this period. One traditional source for the history of the Kingdom of Israel has been the Hebrew Bible, especially

2825-548: Is subdivided into two parts: the western "Low Shephelah", which starts at an altitude of ca. 150 metres above sea level and rises to no more than ca. 200 metres above the Coastal Plain, and the eastern "High Shephelah" rising to altitudes between 250 and 450 metres above sea level. In the upper part the valleys descending from the Judean Mountains are deeper, and they broaden once they reach the lower part where

2938-480: Is the Hebrew Bible. Epigraphic materials from the area of Israelite territory are written in a form of Hebrew called Inscriptional Hebrew, although this is meagerly attested. According to Waltke & O'Connor, Inscriptional Hebrew "is not strikingly different from the Hebrew preserved in the Masoretic text." The damp climate of Israel caused the rapid deterioration of papyrus and parchment documents, in contrast to

3051-507: Is viewed as a Central Semitic innovation. Some argue that /s, z, sˤ/ were affricated ( /ts, dz, tsˤ/ ), but Egyptian starts using s in place of earlier ṯ to represent Canaanite s around 1000 BC. It is likely that Canaanite was already dialectally split by that time, and the northern Early Phoenician dialect that the Greeks were in contact with could have preserved the affricate pronunciation until c.  800 BC at least, unlike

3164-666: The Aramaic script , a separate descendant of the Phoenician script, became widespread throughout the region, gradually displacing Paleo-Hebrew. The oldest documents that have been found in the Aramaic Script are fragments of the scrolls of Exodus, Samuel, and Jeremiah found among the Dead Sea scrolls, dating from the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BCE. It seems that the earlier biblical books were originally written in

3277-589: The Baal cycle discovered at Ugarit ). The reference in Hosea 10 to Israel's "divided heart" may refer to these two cultic observances, although alternatively it may refer to hesitation between looking to Assyria and Egypt for support. The Jewish Bible also states that Ahab allowed the cult worship of Baal to become acceptable of the kingdom. His wife Jezebel was the daughter of the Phoenician king of Tyre and

3390-681: The Hasmonean dynasty . Later, the Romans ended their independence, making Herod the Great their governor. A revolt against the Romans led to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the second Bar Kokhba revolt in 132–135 led to a purge and expulsion of the Jewish population of Judea, the establishment of a new province of Syria Palaestina , and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as

3503-465: The Israelites , who sought Jeroboam as their monarch, resulted in Jeroboam's Revolt , which led to the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel in the north (Samaria), whereas the loyalists of Judah and Benjamin kept Rehoboam as their monarch and established the Kingdom of Judah in the south ( Judea ), ending Israelite political unity. While the existence of Israel and Judah as two independent kingdoms

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3616-540: The Masoretic Text (𝕸) was transmitted in manuscript form and underwent redaction in the Second Temple period, but its earliest portions (parts of Amos , Isaiah , Hosea and Micah ) can be dated to the late 8th to early 7th centuries BCE. Biblical Hebrew has several different writing systems . From around the 12th century BCE until the 6th century BCE, writers employed the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . This

3729-554: The Merneptah Stele , dating from the Late Bronze Age (c. 1208 BCE); this gives little solid information, but indicates that the name of the later kingdom was borrowed rather than originating with the kingdom itself. According to the Hebrew Bible, for the first sixty years after the split, the kings of Judah tried to re-establish their authority over the northern kingdom, and there was perpetual war between them. For

3842-457: The Siloam inscription ), and generally also includes later vocalization traditions for the Hebrew Bible's consonantal text, most commonly the early medieval Tiberian vocalization. The archeological record for the prehistory of Biblical Hebrew is far more complete than the record of Biblical Hebrew itself. Early Northwest Semitic (ENWS) materials are attested from 2350 BCE to 1200 BCE,

3955-691: The Wadi Mujib and the Yarmuk , and in the coastal Sharon plain . In Assyrian inscriptions, the Kingdom of Israel is referred to as the "House of ʻOmri ". The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III mentions Jehu , son of ʻOmri. The Neo-Assyrian emperor Adad-nirari III did an expedition into the Levant around 803 BCE mentioned in the Nimrud slab, which comments he went to "the Hatti and Amurru lands, Tyre, Sidon,

4068-563: The fifth century . The language of the Hebrew Bible reflects various stages of the Hebrew language in its consonantal skeleton , as well as a vocalization system which was added in the Middle Ages by the Masoretes . There is also some evidence of regional dialectal variation, including differences between Biblical Hebrew as spoken in the northern Kingdom of Israel and in the southern Kingdom of Judah . The consonantal text called

4181-424: The mat of Hu-um-ri "land of ʻOmri", Edom , Philistia , and Aram (not Judah)." The Tell al-Rimah stela of the same king introduces a third way of talking about the kingdom, as Samaria, in the phrase " Joash of Samaria ". The use of Omri's name to refer to the kingdom still survived, and was used by Sargon II in the phrase "the whole house of Omri" in describing his conquest of the city of Samaria in 722 BCE. It

4294-611: The rainy season . The southern part is made up of loess , while north of Ashkelon consists of clay . The Shfela has a temperate Mediterranean to semi-arid climate . A series of east–west valleys cuts the Shfelah into districts. From north to south, they are: the Valley of Ayalon , Sorek Valley , Valley of Elah , Guvrin Valley, Valley of Lachish , and Valley of Adorayim . The biblical towns established there guarded settlements of

4407-752: The 10th century BCE do not indicate matres lectiones in the middle or the end of a word, for example לפנ and ז for later לפני and זה , similarly to the Hebrew Gezer Calendar , which has for instance שערמ for שעורים and possibly ירח for ירחו . Matres lectionis were later added word-finally, for instance the Mesha inscription has בללה, בנתי for later בלילה, בניתי ; however at this stage they were not yet used word-medially, compare Siloam inscription זדה versus אש (for later איש ). The relative terms defective and full / plene are used to refer to alternative spellings of

4520-547: The 10th century BCE. The 15 cm x 16.5 cm (5.9 in x 6.5 in) trapezoid pottery sherd ( ostracon ) has five lines of text written in ink in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (the old form which predates both the Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets). The tablet is written from left to right, suggesting that Hebrew writing was still in the formative stage. The Israelite tribes who settled in

4633-537: The 12th century BCE, reflecting the language's twenty-two consonantal phonemes. The 22 letters of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet numbered less than the consonant phonemes of ancient Biblical Hebrew; in particular, the letters ⟨ ח, ע, ש ⟩ could each mark two different phonemes. After a sound shift the letters ח , ע could only mark one phoneme, but (except in Samaritan Hebrew) ש still marked two. The old Babylonian vocalization system wrote

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4746-515: The 7th century BCE, and most likely occurred after the loss of Hebrew /χ, ʁ/ c. 200 BCE. It is known to have occurred in Hebrew by the 2nd century CE. After a certain point this alternation became contrastive in word-medial and final position (though bearing low functional load ), but in word-initial position they remained allophonic. This is evidenced both by the Tiberian vocalization's consistent use of word-initial spirants after

4859-512: The Books of Kings and Chronicles . These books were written by authors in Jerusalem , the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. Being written in a rival kingdom, they were inspired by ideological and theological viewpoints that influence the narrative. Anachronisms, legends and literary forms also affect the story. Some of the recorded events are believed to have occurred long after the destruction of

4972-602: The Canaanite languages the shifts */ð/ > /z/ , */θʼ/ and */ɬʼ/ > /sʼ/ , widespread reduction of diphthongs, and full assimilation of non-final /n/ to the following consonant if word final, i.e. בת /bat/ from *bant. There is also evidence of a rule of assimilation of /j/ to the following coronal consonant in pre-tonic position, shared by Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic. Typical Canaanite words in Hebrew include: גג "roof" שלחן "table" חלון "window" ישן "old (thing)" זקן "old (person)" and גרש "expel". Morphological Canaanite features in Hebrew include

5085-841: The Greek alphabet transcription of the Hebrew biblical text contained in the Secunda (3rd century CE, likely a copy of a preexisting text from before 100 BCE ). In the 7th and 8th centuries CE various systems of vocalic notation were developed to indicate vowels in the biblical text. The most prominent, best preserved, and the only system still in use, is the Tiberian vocalization system, created by scholars known as Masoretes around 850 CE. There are also various extant manuscripts making use of less common vocalization systems ( Babylonian and Palestinian ), known as superlinear vocalizations because their vocalization marks are placed above

5198-685: The Israelite captives were resettled in the Khabur region, and the rest in the land of the Medes , thus establishing Hebrew communities in Ecbatana and Rages . The Book of Tobit additionally records that Sargon had taken other captives from the northern kingdom to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh , in particular Tobit from the town of Thisbe in Naphtali. The Hebrew Bible relates that the population of

5311-663: The Israelites established a unified kingdom in Canaan at the beginning of the first millennium BCE, which later split into the kingdom of Israel in the north and the kingdom of Judah in the south after a disputed succession. In 722 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel and some members of the upper class escaped to Judah. In 586 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire destroyed Judah . The Judahite upper classes were exiled and Solomon's Temple

5424-415: The Kingdom experienced a period of decline as a result of sectional rivalries and struggles for the throne. In c. 732 BCE, king Pekah of Israel, while allied with Rezin , king of Aram , threatened Jerusalem . Ahaz , king of Judah , appealed to Tiglath-Pileser III , the king of Assyria , for help. After Ahaz paid tribute to Tiglath-Pileser, Tiglath-Pileser sacked Damascus and Israel, annexing Aram and

5537-531: The Kingdom of Israel was exiled, becoming known as the Ten Lost Tribes . To the south, the Tribe of Judah , the Tribe of Simeon (that was "absorbed" into Judah), the Tribe of Benjamin and the people of the Tribe of Levi , who lived among them of the original Israelite nation, remained in the southern Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah continued to exist as an independent state until 586 BCE, when it

5650-843: The Near East, and a derivation from the root עבר ‎ "to pass", alluding to crossing over the Jordan River. Jews also began referring to Hebrew as לשון הקדש ‎ "the Holy Tongue" in Mishnaic Hebrew. The term Classical Hebrew may include all pre-medieval dialects of Hebrew, including Mishnaic Hebrew, or it may be limited to Hebrew contemporaneous with the Hebrew Bible. The term Biblical Hebrew refers to pre-Mishnaic dialects (sometimes excluding Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew). The term Biblical Hebrew may or may not include extra-biblical texts, such as inscriptions (e.g.

5763-427: The Paleo-Hebrew script, while the later books were written directly in the later Assyrian script. Some Qumran texts written in the Assyrian script write the tetragrammaton and some other divine names in Paleo-Hebrew, and this practice is also found in several Jewish-Greek biblical translations. While spoken Hebrew continued to evolve into Mishnaic Hebrew , A number of regional "book-hand" styles were put into use for

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5876-542: The Phoenician script were "a curving to the left of the downstrokes in the "long-legged" letter-signs... the consistent use of a Waw with a concave top, [and an] x-shaped Taw." The oldest inscriptions in Paleo-Hebrew script are dated to around the middle of the 9th century BCE, the most famous being the Mesha Stele in the Moabite language (which might be considered a dialect of Hebrew). The ancient Hebrew script

5989-494: The Proto-Semitic sibilant *s 1 , transcribed with šin and traditionally reconstructed as * /ʃ/ , had been originally * /s/ while another sibilant *s 3 , transcribed with sameḵ and traditionally reconstructed as /s/ , had been initially /ts/ ; later on, a push-type chain shift changed *s 3 /ts/ to /s/ and pushed s 1 /s/ to /ʃ/ in many dialects (e.g. Gileadite ) but not others (e.g. Ephraimite), where *s 1 and *s 3 merged into /s/ . Hebrew, as spoken in

6102-434: The Qumran tradition showing the most liberal use of vowel letters. The Masoretic text mostly uses vowel letters for long vowels, showing the tendency to mark all long vowels except for word-internal /aː/ . In the Qumran tradition, back vowels are usually represented by ⟨ ו ⟩ whether short or long. ⟨ י ⟩ is generally used for both long [iː] and [eː] ( אבילים , מית ), and final [iː]

6215-434: The Qumran type. Presumably, the vowels of Biblical Hebrew were not indicated in the original text, but various sources attest to them at various stages of development. Greek and Latin transcriptions of words from the biblical text provide early evidence of the nature of Biblical Hebrew vowels. In particular, there is evidence from the rendering of proper nouns in the Koine Greek Septuagint (3rd–2nd centuries BCE ) and

6328-429: The Samaritan tradition, with vowels absent in some traditions color-coded. The following sections present the vowel changes that Biblical Hebrew underwent, in approximate chronological order. Proto-Semitic is the ancestral language of all the Semitic languages , and in traditional reconstructions possessed 29 consonants; 6 monophthong vowels, consisting of three qualities and two lengths, */a aː i iː u uː/ , in which

6441-481: The Tiberian system; for instance, the Sephardic tradition's distinction between qamatz gadol and qatan is likely pre-Tiberian. However, the only orthographic system used to mark vowels is the Tiberian vocalization. The phonology as reconstructed for Biblical Hebrew is as follows: The phonetic nature of some Biblical Hebrew consonants is disputed. The so-called "emphatics" were likely pharyngealized , but possibly velarized. The pharyngealization of emphatic consonants

6554-501: The Tiberian tradition /ħ ʕ h ʔ r/ cannot be geminate; historically first /r ʔ/ degeminated, followed by /ʕ/ , /h/ , and finally /ħ/ , as evidenced by changes in the quality of the preceding vowel. The vowel system of Hebrew has changed considerably over time. The following vowels are those reconstructed for the earliest stage of Hebrew, those attested by the Secunda, those of the various vocalization traditions ( Tiberian and varieties of Babylonian and Palestinian ), and those of

6667-421: The Transjordan. Ahab's forces were part of an anti-Assyrian coalition, implying that an urban elite ruled the kingdom, possessed a royal and state cult with large urban temples, and had scribes, mercenaries, and an administrative apparatus. In all this, it was similar to other recently-founded kingdoms of the time, such as Ammon and Moab . Samaria is one of the most universally accepted archaeological sites from

6780-451: The alliance. However, the sons of Ahab were slaughtered by Jehu following his coup d'état around 840 BCE. After being defeated by Hazael , Israel began a period of progressive recovery following the campaigns against Aram-Damascus of Adad-nirari III . This ultimately led to a period of major territorial expansion under Jeroboam II , who extended the kingdom's possessions throughout the Northern Transjordan. Following Jeroboam II's death,

6893-418: The biblical period. In around 840 BCE, the Mesha Stele records the victory of Moab (in today's Jordan ), under King Mesha , over Israel, King Omri and his son Ahab . Archaeological finds, ancient Near Eastern texts, and the biblical record testify that in the time of the Omrides , Israel ruled in the mountainous Galilee , at Hazor in the upper Jordan Valley , in large parts of Transjordan between

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7006-437: The city of Samaria since 880 BCE. The existence of this Israelite state in the north is documented in 9th century BCE inscriptions. The earliest mention is from the Kurkh stela of c. 853 BCE, when Shalmaneser III mentions "Ahab the Israelite", plus the denominative for "land", and his ten thousand troops. This kingdom would have included parts of the lowlands (the Shephelah ), the Jezreel plain, lower Galilee and parts of

7119-427: The common language in the north, in Galilee and Samaria . Hebrew remained in use in Judah, but the returning exiles brought back Aramaic influence, and Aramaic was used for communicating with other ethnic groups during the Persian period. Alexander the Great conquered the province in 332 BCE, beginning the period of Hellenistic (Greek) domination. During the Hellenistic period , Judea became independent under

7232-412: The decline of Philistia. During the decline and ultimate destruction of Judah by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire , the region was taken over gradually by the Edomites and it became the core of what was known in Greek as Idumea. The Shephela flourished during the Hellenistic period, was strongly affected by the First Jewish–Roman War (66–70) and was largely depopulated of Jews as

7345-403: The dry environment of Egypt, and the survival of the Hebrew Bible may be attributed to scribal determination in preserving the text through copying. No manuscript of the Hebrew Bible dates to before 400 BCE, although two silver rolls (the Ketef Hinnom scrolls ) from the seventh or sixth century BCE show a version of the Priestly Blessing . Vowel and cantillation marks were added to

7458-619: The early Monarchic Period . This stage is also known as Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew, and is the oldest stratum of Biblical Hebrew. The oldest known artifacts of Archaic Biblical Hebrew are various sections of the Tanakh , including the Song of Moses ( Exodus 15) and the Song of Deborah ( Judges 5). Biblical poetry uses a number of distinct lexical items, for example חזה for prose ראה 'see', כביר for גדול 'great'. Some have cognates in other Northwest Semitic languages, for example פעל 'do' and חָרוּץ 'gold' which are common in Canaanite and Ugaritic. Grammatical differences include

7571-472: The effect of the law of attenuation whereby /a/ in closed unstressed syllables became /i/ . All of these systems together are used to reconstruct the original vocalization of Biblical Hebrew. At an early stage, in documents written in the paleo-Hebrew script, words were divided by short vertical lines and later by dots, as reflected by the Mesha Stone, the Siloam inscription, the Ophel inscription, and paleo-Hebrew script documents from Qumran. Word division

7684-473: The end of the Bronze Age . The Northwest Semitic languages, including Hebrew, differentiated noticeably during the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), although in its earliest stages Biblical Hebrew was not highly differentiated from Ugaritic and the Canaanite of the Amarna letters . Hebrew developed during the latter half of the second millennium BCE between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea , an area known as Canaan . The Deuteronomic history says

7797-438: The extracted rock, they also utilised the generated underground hollows for different purposes (refuge, burial, storage etc.). One of the major characteristics is hills formed of marl -covered soft chalk , as opposed to the Judean Hills which are made of hard chalk and dolomite . The valleys and lower areas contain soil with a high sand content, as well as large tracts of fertile areas. Seasonal swamps can develop during

7910-412: The first millennium BCE ( יין = /ˈjajin/ ). The word play in Amos 8 :1–2 כְּלוּב קַ֫יִץ... בָּא הַקֵּץ may reflect this: given that Amos was addressing the population of the Northern Kingdom, the vocalization *קֵיץ would be more forceful. Other possible Northern features include use of שֶ- 'who, that', forms like דֵעָה 'to know' rather than דַעַת and infinitives of certain verbs of

8023-468: The following eighty years, there was no open war between them, as, for the most part, Judah had engaged in a military alliance with Aram-Damascus , opening a northern front against Israel. The conflict between Israel and Judah was temporarily settled when Jehoshaphat , King of Judah, allied himself with the reigning house of Israel, Ahab , through marriage. Later, Jehosophat's son and successor, Jehoram of Judah , married Ahab's daughter Athaliah , cementing

8136-697: The form עֲשוֹ 'to do' rather than עֲשוֹת . The Samaria ostraca also show שת for standard שנה 'year', as in Aramaic. The guttural phonemes /ħ ʕ h ʔ/ merged over time in some dialects. This was found in Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew, but Jerome (d. 420) attested to the existence of contemporaneous Hebrew speakers who still distinguished pharyngeals. Samaritan Hebrew also shows a general attrition of these phonemes, though /ʕ ħ/ are occasionally preserved as [ʕ] . The earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, found at Khirbet Qeiyafa , dates to

8249-582: The interior and took advantage of trade passing along this route. Ayalon was the primary access corridor to Jerusalem along the ascent of Horon . Caves are a major feature of the southern part of the Shfela, many of them bell-shaped such as those in Beit Guvrin . Archaeological surveys in the Shephelah have found evidence of habitation during the Late Bronze period. During the early Iron Age,

8362-469: The kingdom of Israel. Biblical archaeology has both confirmed and challenged parts of the biblical account. According to the Hebrew Bible, there existed a United Kingdom of Israel (the United Monarchy ), ruled from Jerusalem by David and his son Solomon , after whose death Israel and Judah separated into two kingdoms. The first mention of the name Israel is from an Egyptian inscription,

8475-612: The land of Israel used a late form of the Proto-Sinaitic Alphabet (known as Proto-Canaanite when found in Israel) around the 12th century BCE, which developed into Early Phoenician and Early Paleo-Hebrew as found in the Gezer calendar ( c.  10th century BCE ). This script developed into the Paleo-Hebrew script in the 10th or 9th centuries BCE. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet's main differences from

8588-464: The language יהודית ‎ "Judaean, Judahite" In the Hellenistic period , Greek writings use the names Hebraios , Hebraïsti and in Mishnaic Hebrew we find עברית ‎ 'Hebrew' and לשון עברית ‎ "Hebrew language". The origin of this term is obscure; suggested origins include the biblical Eber , the ethnonyms ʿApiru , Ḫabiru, and Ḫapiru found in sources from Egypt and

8701-545: The latter three returned to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah . The religious climate of the Kingdom of Israel appears to have followed two major trends. The first was the worship of Yahweh ; the religion of ancient Israel is sometimes referred to by modern scholars as Yahwism . The Hebrew Bible , however, states that some of the northern Israelites also adored Baal (see 1 Kings 16:31 and

8814-533: The letters. In addition, the Samaritan reading tradition is independent of these systems and was occasionally notated with a separate vocalization system. These systems often record vowels at different stages of historical development; for example, the name of the Judge Samson is recorded in Greek as Σαμψών Sampsōn with the first vowel as /a/ , while Tiberian שִמְשוֹן /ʃimʃon/ with /i/ shows

8927-430: The long vowels occurred only in open syllables; and two diphthongs */aj aw/ . The stress system of Proto-Semitic is unknown but it is commonly described as being much like the system of Classical Latin or the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic : If the penultimate (second last) syllable is light (has a short vowel followed by a single consonant), stress goes on the antepenult (third to last); otherwise, it goes on

9040-460: The masculine plural marker -ם , first person singular pronoun אנכי , interrogative pronoun מי , definite article ה- (appearing in the first millennium BCE), and third person plural feminine verbal marker -ת . Biblical Hebrew as preserved in the Hebrew Bible is composed of multiple linguistic layers. The consonantal skeleton of the text is the most ancient, while the cantillation and modern vocalization are later additions reflecting

9153-676: The modern Samaritan Hebrew reading tradition. The vowel system of Biblical Hebrew changed over time and is reflected differently in the ancient Greek and Latin transcriptions, medieval vocalization systems, and modern reading traditions. Biblical Hebrew had a typical Semitic morphology with nonconcatenative morphology , arranging Semitic roots into patterns to form words. Biblical Hebrew distinguished two genders (masculine, feminine), three numbers (singular, plural, and uncommonly, dual). Verbs were marked for voice and mood , and had two conjugations which may have indicated aspect and/or tense (a matter of debate). The tense or aspect of verbs

9266-566: The more southern Canaanite dialects (like Hebrew) that the Egyptians were in contact with, so that there is no contradiction within this argument. Originally, the Hebrew letters ⟨ ח ⟩ and ⟨ ע ⟩ each represented two possible phonemes, uvular and pharyngeal, with the distinction unmarked in Hebrew orthography. However the uvular phonemes /χ/ ח and /ʁ/ ע merged with their pharyngeal counterparts /ħ/ ח and /ʕ/ ע respectively c. 200 BCE. This

9379-454: The musical motifs used in formal recitation of the text. While the Babylonian and Palestinian reading traditions are extinct, various other systems of pronunciation have evolved over time, notably the Yemenite , Sephardi , Ashkenazi , and Samaritan traditions. Modern Hebrew pronunciation is also used by some to read biblical texts. The modern reading traditions do not stem solely from

9492-509: The northern Kingdom of Israel, known as Israelian Hebrew , shows phonological, lexical, and grammatical differences from southern dialects. The northern dialect spoken around Samaria shows a more frequent simplification of /aj/ into /eː/ as attested by the Samaria ostraca (8th century BCE), e.g. ין (= /jeːn/ < */jajn/ 'wine'), while the southern or Judean dialect instead adds in an epenthetic vowel /i/ , added halfway through

9605-638: The notion of the Ten Lost Tribes . Some of these Israelites, however, managed to migrate to safety in neighbouring Judah, though the Judahites themselves would be conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire nearly two centuries later. Those who stayed behind in Samaria following the Assyrian conquest mainly concentrated themselves around Mount Gerizim and eventually came to be known as the Samaritans . The Assyrians, as part of their historic deportation policy , also settled other conquered foreign populations in

9718-616: The official language of Israel . Currently, Classical Hebrew is generally taught in public schools in Israel and Biblical Hebrew forms are sometimes used in Modern Hebrew literature, much as archaic and biblical constructions are used in Modern English literature. Since Modern Hebrew contains many biblical elements, Biblical Hebrew is fairly intelligible to Modern Hebrew speakers. The primary source of Biblical Hebrew material

9831-459: The older consonantal layer of the Bible between 600 CE and the beginning of the 10th century. The scholars who preserved the pronunciation of the Bibles were known as the Masoretes . The most well-preserved system that was developed, and the only one still in religious use, is the Tiberian vocalization, but both Babylonian and Palestinian vocalizations are also attested. The Palestinian system

9944-491: The penult. Shephelah Today the Shfela is largely rural with many farms, but the cities of Ashdod , Ashkelon , Rehovot , Beit Shemesh , and Kiryat Gat roughly surround it. The Bible assigned land in the Shfela to the tribes of Judah and Dan . The Shfela is mentioned many times in the Hebrew Bible . In the King James Version , its name tends to be translated as 'vale' or 'valley'. The Shfela

10057-556: The population of what has been widely believed to be a Canaanite enclave between the rising centres of both coastal Philistia and the Israelite/Judahite highlands, went into decline, though a string of settlements survived on the eastern edge. In the Iron Age IIA–B, population growth resumed and by the 8th century BCE it was densely populated, not so much by natural growth but as a result of incoming settlers, beginning with

10170-460: The proto-Semitic phoneme */θ/ , which shifted to /ʃ/ in most dialects of Hebrew, may have been retained in the Hebrew of the Transjordan (however, there is evidence that שִׁבֹּ֤לֶת 's Proto-Semitic ancestor had initial consonant š (whence Hebrew /ʃ/ ), contradicting this theory; for example, שִׁבֹּ֤לֶת 's proto-Semitic ancestor has been reconstructed as * š u(n)bul-at- . ); or that

10283-448: The purpose of Torah manuscripts and occasionally other literary works, distinct from the calligraphic styles used mainly for private purposes. The Mizrahi and Ashkenazi book-hand styles were later adapted to printed fonts after the invention of the printing press. The modern Hebrew alphabet , also known as the Assyrian or Square script, appears a descendant of the Aramaic alphabet. The Phoenician script had dropped five characters by

10396-450: The riverbeds create larger spaces between the hills. Where they reach the Shfela, the rivers can flow over substantial distances along the border between the mountains and the hills, forming longitudinal valleys. Passage between the east–west and north–south valleys has dictated the communication routes throughout history. In geological terms, the Shfela is a syncline , i.e. it formed as a basin whose rock layers were folded downwards, but

10509-541: The roman colonia of Aelia Capitolina . Hebrew after the Second Temple period evolved into Mishnaic Hebrew, which ceased being spoken and developed into a literary language around 200 CE. Hebrew continued to be used as a literary and liturgical language in the form of Medieval Hebrew . The revival of the Hebrew language as a vernacular began in the 19th century, culminating in Modern Hebrew becoming

10622-521: The rule in Mishnaic Hebrew. In all Jewish reading traditions /ɬ/ and /s/ have merged completely; however in Samaritan Hebrew /ɬ/ has instead merged with /ʃ/ . Allophonic spirantization of /b ɡ d k p t/ to [v ɣ ð x f θ] (known as begadkefat spirantization) developed sometime during the lifetime of Biblical Hebrew under the influence of Aramaic. This probably happened after the original Old Aramaic phonemes /θ, ð/ disappeared in

10735-462: The second millennium BCE, but disappear almost totally afterwards. Mimation is absent in singular nouns, but is often retained in the plural, as in Hebrew. The Northwest Semitic languages formed a dialect continuum in the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), with Phoenician and Aramaic on each extreme. Hebrew is classed with Phoenician in the Canaanite subgroup, which also includes Ammonite , Edomite , and Moabite . Moabite might be considered

10848-432: The short-lived settlement at Khirbet Qeiyafa . The overall estimated numbers for inhabitants range from 50,000 to 100,000, over numerous sites such as Tel Lachish , Azekah , Tel Burna , Tel Zayit , Khirbet el-Qom , Tel Erani , Tel Harasim and Tel Nagila. This colonization, together with the inhabitants of the Canaanite enclave, identified with the highland Israelite/Judahite culture, and its expansion coincides with

10961-729: The territories of the tribes of Reuben , Gad and Manasseh in Gilead including the desert outposts of Jetur , Naphish and Nodab . People from these tribes, including the Reubenite leader, were taken captive and resettled in the region of the Khabur River system, in Halah , Habor, Hara and Gozan ( 1 Chronicles 5:26 ). Tiglath-Pilesar also captured the territory of Naphtali and the city of Janoah in Ephraim , and an Assyrian governor

11074-412: The territory of Israel. According to Israel Finkelstein , Shoshenq I 's campaign in the second half of the 10th century BCE collapsed the early polity of Gibeon in central highlands, and made possible the beginning of the Northern Kingdom, with its capital at Shechem , around 931 BCE. Israel consolidated as a kingdom in the first half of 9th century BCE, with its capital at Tirzah first, and next at

11187-536: The time. They initially indicated only consonants, but certain letters, known by the Latin term matres lectionis , became increasingly used to mark vowels . In the Middle Ages, various systems of diacritics were developed to mark the vowels in Hebrew manuscripts; of these, only the Tiberian vocalization is still widely used. Biblical Hebrew possessed a series of emphatic consonants whose precise articulation

11300-465: The use of זה , זוֹ , and זוּ as relative particles, negative בל , and various differences in verbal and pronominal morphology and syntax. Later pre-exilic Biblical Hebrew (such as is found in prose sections of the Pentateuch, Nevi'im , and some Ketuvim ) is known as 'Biblical Hebrew proper' or 'Standard Biblical Hebrew'. This is dated to the period from the 8th to the 6th century BCE. In contrast to Archaic Hebrew, Standard Biblical Hebrew

11413-484: Was also attested in later Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic (see Eruvin 53b). In Samaritan Hebrew, /ʔ ħ h ʕ/ have generally all merged, either into /ʔ/ , a glide /w/ or /j/ , or by vanishing completely (often creating a long vowel), except that original /ʕ ħ/ sometimes have reflex /ʕ/ before /a ɒ/ . Geminate consonants are phonemically contrastive in Biblical Hebrew. In the Secunda /w j z/ are never geminate. In

11526-587: Was also influenced by the conjunction ו , in the so-called waw-consecutive construction. Unlike modern Hebrew, the default word order for biblical Hebrew was verb–subject–object , and verbs were inflected for the number, gender, and person of their subject. Pronominal suffixes could be appended to verbs (to indicate object ) or nouns (to indicate possession ), and nouns had special construct states for use in possessive constructions. The earliest written sources refer to Biblical Hebrew as שפת כנען ‎ "the language of Canaan". The Hebrew Bible also calls

11639-484: Was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire . The tradition of the Samaritan people states that much of the population of the Kingdom of Israel remained in place after the Assyrian captivity , including the Tribes of Naphtali, Manasseh, Benjamin and Levi – being the progenitors of the modern Samaritans. In their book The Bible Unearthed , Israeli authors Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman estimate that only

11752-402: Was deported by the Assyrians. During the three-year siege of Samaria in the territory of Ephraim by the Assyrians, Shalmaneser V died and was succeeded by Sargon II , who himself records the capture of that city thus: "Samaria I looked at, I captured; 27,280 men who dwelt in it I carried away" into Assyria. Thus, around 720 BCE, after two centuries, the northern kingdom came to an end. Some of

11865-792: Was destroyed. Later, the Achaemenid Empire made Judah a province, Yehud Medinata , and permitted the Judahite exiles to return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem . According to the Gemara , Hebrew of this period was similar to Imperial Aramaic ; Hanina bar Hama said that God sent the exiled Jews to Babylon because "[the Babylonian] language is akin to the Leshon Hakodesh " in the Talmud ( Pesahim 87b ). Aramaic became

11978-591: Was in continuous use until the early 6th century BCE, the end of the First Temple period. In the Second Temple Period the Paleo-Hebrew script gradually fell into disuse, and was completely abandoned among the Jews after the failed Bar Kochba revolt . The Samaritans retained the ancient Hebrew alphabet, which evolved into the modern Samaritan alphabet . By the end of the First Temple period

12091-519: Was not used in Phoenician inscriptions; however, there is no direct evidence for biblical texts being written without word division, as suggested by Nahmanides in his introduction to the Torah. Word division using spaces was commonly used from the beginning of the 7th century BCE for documents in the Aramaic script. In addition to marking vowels, the Tiberian system also uses cantillation marks, which serve to mark word stress, semantic structure, and

12204-461: Was once amalgamated under a Kingdom of Israel and Judah , which was ruled by the House of Saul and then by the House of David . However, upon the death of Solomon , who was the son and successor of David , there was discontent over his son and successor Rehoboam , whose reign was only accepted by the Tribe of Judah and the Tribe of Benjamin . The unpopularity of Rehoboam's reign among the rest of

12317-420: Was placed over the region of Naphtali. According to 2 Kings 16:9 and 2 Kings 15:29 , the population of Aram and the annexed part of Israel was deported to Assyria. The remainder of the northern kingdom of Israel continued to exist within the reduced territory as an independent kingdom until around 720 BCE, when it was again invaded by Assyria and more of the population was deported. Not all of Israel's populace

12430-481: Was preserved mainly in piyyutim , which contain biblical quotations. Biblical Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language from the Canaanite subgroup . As Biblical Hebrew evolved from the Proto-Semitic language it underwent a number of consonantal mergers parallel with those in other Canaanite languages. There is no evidence that these mergers occurred after the adaptation of the Hebrew alphabet. As

12543-557: Was retained by the Samaritans , who use the descendent Samaritan script to this day. However, the Imperial Aramaic alphabet gradually displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet after the Babylonian captivity , and it became the source for the current Hebrew alphabet . These scripts lack letters to represent all of the sounds of Biblical Hebrew, although these sounds are reflected in Greek and Latin transcriptions/translations of

12656-538: Was the site of many biblical battles. During the Bar Kokhba revolt , hollowed out hills were connected to form elaborate bunker systems for the combat with the Romans. The Shfela consists of fertile rolling hills . Topographically, it represents the transition from the higher and more rugged Jerusalem and Hebron Mountains , whose foothills it forms, and the Coastal Plain. About 60 km (35 miles) long in north–south direction and only 13 km (8 miles) wide, it

12769-473: Was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts. The Hebrew language is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE, when it was almost identical to Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, and spoken Hebrew persisted through and beyond the Second Temple period , which ended in the siege of Jerusalem (70 CE) . It eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was spoken until

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