Historical Origin of the 12 Tribes of Israel

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SOURCES:

* Baden, Joel S. (2012). The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. Yale University Press

* Finkelstein, Israel & Neil A. Silberman (2002). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. Free Press.

* Fleming, Daniel E. (2020). Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name. Cambridge University Press.

* Friedman, Richard E. (2009). The Bible with Sources Revealed. HarperOne.

* Friedman, Richard E. (2017). The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters. HarperOne.

* Schmid, K. (2010). Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel's Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible. Eisenbrauns.

* Tobolowsky, Andrew (2017). The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Herakles. Mohr Siebeck.

* Tobolowsky, Andrew (2022). The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel: New Identities Across Time and Space. Cambridge University Press.

* Wright, Jacob L. (2023). Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins. Cambridge University Press.

CREDITS:

Narration by Matt Baker
Animation by Syawish Rehman
Audio editing by Ali Shahwaiz

[UsefulCharts]

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[johnkeefer]

The US-Canada comparison is fascinating to me. Especially as both countries have a shared language, overlapping culture, and similar histories/origins while also having political independence and key differences in their history/origins

[kingeternal_ap]

*casually drops Ea-nasir’s face in a timeline*

Refuses to elaborate

[michaelmoon]

Now I truly understand this quote "Myths are not stories that are untrue. Rather they are tales that don't fit neatly in the historical record which serve as a foundation of a culture."

[HenryThree]

I'm not religious, but for whatever reason, I just find biblical history so fascinating, both from a secular and a theological perspective. I've watched a fair amount of content on the subject on YouTube and other platforms, and your videos are always amongst my favorites. They are very well produced and have such clear and articulate narration. I also really like how you go into detail regarding each of the major academic theories and how they've evolved over time, instead of just presenting a snapshot of the current scholarly consensus on an ever-evolving subject.

[davepruitt]

Is it possible that the story of Joseph in Egypt (the famine, the other sons of Israel coming to Egypt to get food, etc) is a faint echo of the Bronze Age collapse?

[Carpediem]

That Canadian-American flag with the tag "Howdy, Hosers!"😂😂😂😂 as a fellow Canadian I approve the message

[theshenpartei]

Now we need a Iron Age city dweller meme

[Emymagdalena]

My heart absolutely breaking for what they did to my boy documentary hypothesis 😭

[Jay_Kryhom]

Israel means” Struggled/Wrestled with God” in Genesis Jacob fought against an Angel who was representing God and in the end God blessed Jacob by changing his name to Israel and saying that he shall make him a mighty nation

[prettybwillowbee]

Y'all people have really done it now!! " EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW AND EVERY TONGUE SHALL CONFESS"

[ruyfernandez]

Conclusion: Matt hopes Canada will conquer the US some day.

[xaayer]

The funny thing about them being Iron Age City Dwellers is that they hated the city lol. There is a definite dislike of city life when reading stories like Sodom and Gomorrah, the Garden of Eden, etc. that goes further than the loss of innocence we see in Enkidu. Honestly, it was written by Iron Age Hipsters and Hippies in Their "Zen" Phase.

[wailingalen]

As a Christian living in the modern era, that also subscribed to scholarly disciplines like astrophysics, history and evolution, I appreciate your ability to step back from the beautiful scriptures and analyze it from a scholarly and historical point of view.
People like me are torn between the teachings of the Bible, which we cherish and try to live by, and the historical and archeological things we learn in school or through independent research.
I consider myself a scholarly individual and at times get into casual debates with friends about history and stuff like that and when an atheist friend tries to expose the Bible as fictional lore, I find myself straddling the two positions you have described in this video and some of your other ones about the Bible, that it is neither completely factual nor completely fiction, but a bit of both.
I recently bought a few of your posters and the world history book. Beautiful literature for a history buff like me, and can't wait to enjoy it 😇

[someonesomeone]

Small addition on the tribe of Dan: Cline wrote that the Sea People included the Peleset, Tjekker, Shekelesh, Danuna, and Weshesh.
Peleset are often identified with the Philistines, but Danuna may also be identified with the tribe of Dan.
The Danuna are often identified with Homer's Danaans, from the Aegan

[guydreamr]

This is not only an examination of the story of the concept of the 12 tribes of Israel, but also a summary of the history of the Jewish people from ancient times as well as the Bronze Age (and its collapse), plus the Iron Age for good measure. All in around 32 minutes, well done.

[vercality]

Every time I take a new religion/archeology class you manage to upload a video discussing that weeks topic. Absolutely crazy. Today my biblical archeology class did an exercise where the Men of Gad had to negotiate with the conflicting Moab, Israel, and Assyria. Two days earlier we discussed the documentary hypothesis as well as the deuteronomistic books

[rhyanrose]

Truly one of my favorite channels. I've been binging your videos all week and I gotta say I feel like I am learning so much, and even more, learning how little I know. This channel is giving me a whole new appreciation for history, religion, storytelling, geneology, and so much more. I love how committed to truth you are. Some people feel threatened by the idea of saying "we realized we were wrong" but I love how eager you are to explore as much factual evidence as possible, even if it contradicts the popular narrative. But still, you don't disregard things that aren't scientific as unimportant. You have such a grounded understanding of humanity as you approach your videos, knowing that stories have been important to people for as long as we could tell them, and that the "accuracy" of a story doesn't define its significance. We tell stories we need to tell to protect ourselves and loved ones - stories where someone is forced to become resilient, or be patient, or be brave. It'd be facinating to approach stories as a sort of evolution and therefore have natural selection. Stories that have the most impact stick around the longest, but they evolve and mix in with other stories as history goes on. And in a world before science, these stories helped us integrate us into the world. They helped explain a desire to want to know who we are, and the bible got to be written by so many people which is cool in some ways because people have different histories. If it is true about the people of Midian being the first to worship the God named YWHW and the Levites being the people who remember the Egyptian exodus, and so on... like this book is a collective story where these memories got to come together and make a complete narrative and various cultures got to weave their life into it too.... Thank you Matt for making me appreciate the humanity that has existed in history <3

[concerninghobbits]

This channel is exactly the kind of biblical study I've been wanting for a while. I'm super agnostic but I find the history and mythologies of religions super interesting and it's so cool to see how it all ties together and I like how you also point out what the leading theories are, noting it's not all perfectly known.

[IbexWatcher]

I think of the Tanakh’s relationship to the Bronze Age very similarly to Greek stories like the Trojan War Cycle: a cultural memory of the pre-collapse world, blended with supernatural religious elements to create a universal story about the world