The ancient Hebrew civilization settled in what region?

Answer 1

A:Recent archaeological evidence shows that the Hebrews began building small village settlements in the Canaanite hinterland from a little before 1200 BCE. The settlements began in the northern part of the future kingdom of Israel and gradually spread southward, with the future kingdom of Judah rather late to be settled, during the period The Bible describes as the period of the Judges. The late settlement of Judah can be inferred from the stories of the early judges because Judah and its subgroup Simeon are largely missing from these stories, but Judah is prominent in the stories set at the end of the period.

This does somewhat contradict the Book of Joshua, which describes an army of 600,000 fighting men and their families sweeping into the land of the Canaanites and destroying all before them. However, archaeologists say there is no evidence of a military conquest. The land into which the Hebrews settled was sparsely populated before their arrival, and the Hebrews themselves have been identified as Canaanite farmers from the region of the coastal cities.

Answer 2

Scholars say that the Hebrews were dissident Canaanites who left the coastal cities and settled in the mountainous hinterland around 1250 BCE. They were first mentioned by the Egyptians in 1205 BCE, in a stele that talks of the military defeat of various important Canaanite cites, and also says that the seed of Israel no longer exists. This obscure reference tells us that the Israelites, or Hebrews, appear to have had no cities at that stage and were probably a nomadic people. The sequence of the stele says that the Hebrews were probably located in the more remote eastern highlands or even east of the Jordan River.

By the tenth century, the Hebrews were well established in a region roughly equivalent to today's West Bank. The Bible tells of a great empire stretching from Egypt to Mesopotamia, but archaeologists now believe that this was not the case. They say that the archaeological finds that indicated an expansionary kingdom, formerly attributed to time of David and Solomon, actually belong to the time of the Omrite kings of Israel.

In the middle ninth century BCE, under Kings Omri and Ahab, the northern Hebrew Kingdom of Israel is believed to have expanded to the coast and north into modern Syria. However, within a century the nation had been reduced by the fortunes of war to the region surrounding its capital, Samaria. Judah was a separate political entity, an inland enclave surrounding its capital, Jerusalem.

In 722 BCE, Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians and the people were removed to other parts of the empire, where they assimilated the local cultures and religion, and lost their separate identity. Assyria repopulated Israel, now called the province of Samaria, with people from other parts of the empire.

For centuries to come, the tiny nation of Judah was to be the home of the true Hebrew people, apart from the period spent in Exile in Babylon. In the second century BCE, Judah became expansionist under the Maccabees and conquered Idumea to the south and all the way north to Galilee. The Idumeans and Galileans were forcibly converted to Judaism, but strictly speaking were not Hebrew people.

Answer 3

The first ever mention outside the Bible of the Hebrews. or Israelites, is in 1205 BCE, when Egyptian forces ranging throughout the Levant, attacked them in the hinterland, or possibly to the east of the River Jordan. The Hebrews survived that attack and within two hundred years can be found in settlements and a few small cities throughout the Canaanite hinterland.

Answer 4

The Israelites, who were one branch of the Hebrew descendants of Eber, came from Iraq (Abraham) and settled in what became known as Israel. See:

Israelite history in Israel

Answer 5

The earliest evidence of Hebrew settlements is in the Canaanite hinterland - in approximately what is now known as the West Bank.