Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations | From Hebrews to Jews (Lecture 10)

The Hebrews are first documented in contemporary sources of the Near East in the 9th century B.C., when cuneiform and Aramaic texts report the kings of Israel and Judah, who claimed descent from King David. The two Hebrew kingdoms were united in their common worship of Yahweh, although each had its own sanctuary, and many Hebrews worshiped the Canaanite gods on the “high places.” The dynasty of King Omri (884–873 B.C.) and Ahab (873–852 B.C.) forged a state with institutions comparable to the Neo-Hittite and Aramaic kingdoms, but their heirs ran afoul of the Assyrian kings, resulting in the sack of Dan by Sennacherib and the breaking of Israelite power. Population and prosperity shifted to the southern kingdom, Judah, where the kings Hezekiah (727–698 B.C.) and Josiah (640–609 B.C.) conducted a reform of the worship of Yahweh. In 586 B.C., King Nebuchadrezzar II (605–556 B.C.) sacked Jerusalem and deported the city’s ruling classes to Babylonia. During the Babylonian Captivity (c. 586–539 B.C.), Hebrew priests and psalmists defined the transcendence of Yahweh and initiated the editing of the Torah. In so doing, they also defined Judaism as a faith detached from place and, thus, altered forever the conception of religion in the Western tradition.

Further Reading:
I. Finkelstein and N. A. Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.
A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 B C.E.

Lecture 11: https://www.bitchute.com/video/0hxvsLcYeUDU/