Ancient Palestine : Introduction To The Region

The Bible begins the recorded history of the area with the story of Abraham, the first of the Patriarchs. The semi-nomadic Aramaean tribes’ migration to Palestine almost four thousand years ago has been linked by archeologists with the biblical tradition of Abraham’s (Avraham in Hebrew, Ibrahim in Arabic) journey from Chaldea. In the 13th or 14th century BC, however, famine forced some of the Semitic groups in Palestine to flee to Egypt where, according to the Bible, the Pharaoh bound them into servitude. Meticulous Egyptian records (a rarity today) attest to the existence of a foreign group called the Habiri (or Khapiru), a name thought possibly to be the ancestor of the word “Hebrew.” But, as told by the Torah, the combination of Moses’ (Moshe in Hebrew, Musa in Arabic) initiative and several plagues ultimately convinced an Egyptian pharaoh (quite possibly Ramses II) to allow the Hebrews to leave Egypt.

The Bible relates how, after an arduous journey across the Sinai Peninsula, the Hebrews returned to Canaan, much of which was controlled by a group called the Philistines. Following Moses’ death, Joshua led the newly constituted twelve tribes of Israel across the Jordan River and conquered Jericho. The battle against the Philistines continued after Joshua’s death. At the end of the 1 lth century BC, the Israelite tribes united tinder King Saul. The kingdom reached its peak of power during the reign of Saul’s successor, David, and that of his son, Solomon. The construction of the Temple of Jerusalem is considered perhaps Solomon’s most formidable feat, yet the cost of the Temple and other civil projects proved a heavy burden for his subjects. After Solomon’s death in 922, unrest spread and the empire split into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the smaller Kingdom of Judah (Judea) in the south.