History of ancient Israel and Judah

In compiling the history of ancient Israel and Judah, there are many available sources, including the Jewish Tanakh (the Old Testament) and other Jewish texts such as the Talmud, the Ethiopian book of history known as the Kebra Nagast, the writings of historians such as Nicolaus of Damascus, Artapanas, Philo of Alexandria and Josephus, other writings, and archaeological evidence including Egyptian, Moabite, Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions.

Related Topics:
History - Israel - Judah - Jewish - Tanakh - Old Testament - Talmud - Ethiopian - Kebra Nagast - Nicolaus of Damascus - Artapanas - Philo of Alexandria - Josephus - Archaeological - Egyptian - Moabite - Assyrian - Babylonian

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Depending on their interpretation, some writers see these sources as being in conflict. See The Bible and history for several views as to how the sources are best reconciled. This is a controversial subject, with important implications in the fields of religion, politics and diplomacy.

Related Topics:
The Bible and history - Religion - Politics - Diplomacy

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This article attempts to give a conservative scholarly view which would currently be supported by most historians. The precise dates and the precision by which they may be stated are subject to continuing discussion and challenge. There are no biblical events whose precise year can be validated by external sources before the early 9th century BCE (The rise of Omri, King of Israel). Therefore all earlier dates are extrapolations. Further, the Bible does not render itself very easily to these calculations: mostly it does not state any time period longer than a single life time and a historical line must be reconstructed by adding discrete quantities, a process that naturally introduces rounding errors. The accuracy in which dates are represented here reflects a maximalist view, namely one that takes the Bible as mostly literally true.

Related Topics:
Extrapolation - Rounding error - Maximalist

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Some dispute that many of the events happened at all, making the dating of them moot: if the very existence of the united kingdom is in doubt, it is pointless to claim that it disintegrated in 922 BCE. However, many of the events from the 9th century onward do have corroborations; see for example Mesha Stele.

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