The richest agricultural areas are along the Mediterranean coast, but this area was dominated fist by Canaanites and then Philistines for a large part of Hebrew history.
The Hebrews controlled this area for only a very brief time during the monarchy. Because they could not dislodge these people, the Hebrews settled in the second area, the central hill country, a backbone of mountains running from north to south between the coastal areas and the Jordan River valley.
Dry and rocky, the central hills are a very difficult place to live, but the spectacle of Hebrew history mainly takes place in this hill country: Galilee, Samaria , Megiddo , Shechem , Judah, Jerusalem , Hebron , Beersheba. To the west of the hills is the Jordan River valley. In Hebrew, the word Jordan means the descender, for it begins at Mount Hermon in the north at about feet above sea level, and literally plummets to the Sea actually a lake of Galilee ten miles south at feet below sea level, and from there another two hundred miles to the Dead or Salt Sea at feet below sea level the lowest piece of land on earth and a mightily inhospitable place to live.
Along this valley and around the Sea of Galilee are rich farmlands yielding grains and fruit as well as wealthy fishing in the river and the Sea of Galilee. To the west of the Jordan River valley are the Transjordan Highlands about feet above sea level. The climate can be harsh, but several rivers allow for rich agriculture. This area was largely occupied by non-Hebrews; in the Transjordan Highlands were the kingdoms of Edom south , Moab center , and Ammon center.
For most of its history, these lands were out of Hebrew control. Download our mobile app for on-the-go access to the Jewish Virtual Library. Category » Ancient Jewish History. Academies in Babylonia and Erez Israel. Administration of Judaea.
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Episcopus Judaeorum. Great Assembly. Great Revolt. Farms, a school, and an orphanage cropped up. Today, the property spans about acres and includes a hospital, a hotel, and neat rows of housing developments, complete with manicured lawns and cul-de-sacs. The branch headquartered here, the largest, is much more Judaic than others.
For example, they incorporate prayer shawls and head coverings into services. And, importantly, they call Jesus a prophet, but not the Messiah. The organization has carved out their Judaism, clearly apart from major American Jewish denominations, and distinctly their own.
They feel that God will never remove that canopy of safety. After an evening ceremony, the saints sat at foldout tables in small groups, eating. Someone played Caribbean music on a stereo. The younger saints stood in a small circle, trying out dance moves, mimicking each other and breaking down in laughter. Dennis Dawson, a year-old Lyft driver from Cleveland, Ohio, was finishing his meal.
What makes it sacred? Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. Can 3. Yasmeen Serhan.
Congregants gather for Sabbath service in Belleville during Passover. Courtesy of Church of God and Saints of Christ. Read Gen. The summons to leave his ancestral home and journey to Canaan is accompanied by a promise Gen. The promise has two parts: nationhood and divine blessing or protection. The precise location of the nation-to-be is not specified but was, of course, known to those hearing or reading the account.
The descriptions of Abraham are not uniform: at times he appears as a lonely migrant, at others as a chieftain, head of a large family, or as a warrior. Factual details about the patriarch are difficult to establish, for his real significance lies in what is often called "inner history," through which those who looked to Abraham as a forefather gained understanding of themselves as "people of the promise" and attained, a sense of destiny and an appreciation of their particular relationship to their deity.
We have noted earlier that some Abrahamic traditions coincide with information coming from Nuzi, which would place Abraham in the Middle Bronze era. We read that Abraham, in response to a divine summons, left Mesopotamia and journeyed to Canaan with his wife, Sarah, and nephew, Lot. It is clear that the people were meant to recognize themselves as a community originating in a commission from God and in the unwavering, unquestioning obedience of Abraham.
The journey itself was more than a pilgrimage, for it constituted the starting point of a continuing adventure in nationhood. Nor are the travelers without vicissitudes, but throughout famine, earthquake, fire and war, they are protected by Yahweh. It is possible that reliable historical data are preserved here. Tradition associates Abraham with Hebron, and if Jebel er-Rumeide is the site of this ancient city, it is evident that a powerful city was located here in the Middle Bronze period.
Abraham's adventures in the Negeb, the problems of grazing and watering rights, and the digging of a well at Beer-sheba 4 echo genuine problems of the shepherd. The episode involving Sarah and King Abimelech a doublet of Gen.
It may also be interpreted as an historic link with the cultures of the upper Euphrates. The close relationship between the Hebrews and the people of the desert and steppes is recognized in the story of Ishmael, the nomadic first son of Abraham; but it is through Isaac, the second son about whom so very little is recorded, that the Hebrews trace their own family line.
Both Isaac and his son Jacob maintain a separateness from the people among whom they dwell, taking wives from among their own kin in Haran Gen. The story of Jacob, who becomes Israel, and his twin brother Esau, who becomes Edom, is colored with rivalry, trickery and bitter misundertanding but also contains echoes of Hurrian custom.
In Hurrian law, birthright could be purchased, and some of the terminology associated with Isaac's blessing of his sons reflects Hurrian patterns. The stories about Jacob also accord with Nuzi Hurrian law for it is recorded that a man may labor for his wife.
There is no condemnation of chicanery but, rather, the attitude that to best a man in a business contract revealed cleverness. When Jacob's hopes to inherit his uncle's estate were dashed by the birth of male heirs, he broke contract and fled, and it was only when a new contract was made that relationships were healed.
The account of Jacob's night wrestling with an angelic visitor has probably come down to us through various recensions, for it now contains two aetiological explanations: one concerning the name "Jacob-Israel" and the other giving the reason why the ischiatic sinew is not eaten by Hebrews. Other traditions associate Jacob with Bethel and Shechem. Joseph, the son of Jacob, was sold into slavery by jealous brothers and rose to high office in Egypt.
When his father and brothers migrated to Egypt to escape famine, they were regally received and encouraged to settle. Documents attesting to the custom of admitting nomadic groups into the country in time of famine are known from Egypt, and the Joseph stories reflect many accurate details about Egyptian life and may be derived in part from Egyptian tales, as we shall see. The pharaoh under whom Joseph rose to power is not identified.
It is quite possible, as A. Alt has argued, that the patriarchs were founders of separate cults or clans in which distinctive names for the deity were compounded with patriarchal names. Individual representations were later fused and equated with Yahweh, and individual clan heroes were placed in an historical sequence and made part of a single family line from Abraham to Jacob Israel.
Read Exod. Moses, a desert refugee from Egyptian justice, became associated with the Kenite people. On the slopes of Mount Sinai in a dramatic encounter with Yahweh, he was commissioned to act as deliverer of the Hebrews.
In the clash with Pharaoh, the god-king's power was overshadowed by Yahweh through a series of horrendous events in which the Nile was turned to blood and plagues involving frogs, gnats, flies, cattle, boils, hail, locusts and darkness are ultimately climaxed by the death of all the first-born children of Egypt Read Exod. This final act, associated in tradition with the Passover festival, persuaded Pharaoh to release the Hebrews.
Shortly after the Hebrews departed, Pharaoh changed his mind and pursued them. At the Sea of Reeds, Yahweh permitted the Hebrews to pass through the waters unscathed but overwhelmed the Egyptians. The Hebrews pressed into the wilderness to Mount Sinai where the law was given and there they entered a covenant with Yahweh Read Num.
After an abortive attempt to seize Canaan by penetrating from the south, they moved eastward and, after many setbacks, took up a position on the eastern side of the Jordan, just north of the Salt Sea. Here Moses died, and under his successor, Joshua, the attacks on Canaan were launched. Efforts to date the patriarchal period have not been particularly rewarding, for biblical chronology is complex. In the P source, years pass between the time of Abraham's journey to Canaan and Jacob's migration to Egypt see Gen.
As we shall see, most scholars date the Exodus near the middle of the thirteenth century, so that Abraham would leave Mesopotamia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and Jacob's journey to Egypt would occur about B.
Unfortunately, date variations occur in some manuscripts. In the LXX, Exod. According to this reckoning, Abraham's journey would fall in the seventeenth century and Jacob's in the fifteenth century. The early nineteenth century date for Abraham places his departure from Mesopotamia at the time of the Elamite and Amorite invasion. It harmonizes with the conclusions of Nelson Glueck, who found that between the twenty-first and nineteenth centuries B.
Such settlements would provide stopping places for Abraham and his retinue. The second pattern of dating would place Abraham in the time of Hammurabi of Babylon and would give strength to the argument that the mention of King Amraphel of Shinar in Gen.
Abraham would, therefore, be in Canaan during the Hyksos period, and Joseph would have risen to power in the Amarna age. The close of the Amarna period brought to power leaders hostile to Akhenaton and possibly also to those he had favored. Whatever the correct date for Abraham may be, he represents the beginning of the nation to the Hebrews. Yahweh's promise to the patriarch and his successors is considered to be the guarantee of national existence Num.
There are no references to Abraham in the writings of the eighth century prophets, for then stress was laid on the Exodus as the starting point of the nation.
In the seventh and sixth centuries, and in the post-Exilic period, the Abrahamic tradition came to the fore once again. Efforts to determine the date and route of the Exodus have been disappointing. Josephus placed the Exodus at the time of the overthrow of the Hyksos by Ahmose in the sixteenth century, a date that is far too early. Biblical evidence is limited. I Kings reports that Solomon began building the temple in the fourth year of his reign, years after the Exodus.
Solomon's rule is believed to have begun near the middle of the tenth century, possibly about B. Thus, the date of the Exodus would be: minus 4 4th year of reign plus , or In that case, Thutmose III would be the pharaoh of the oppression, and his mother, Hatshepsut, might be identified as the rescuer of the infant Moses. The Hebrew invasion of Canaan, taking place forty years later or about B.
Another theory is based on the reference to the building of Pithom and Raamses in Exod. It was noted earlier that both Seti I and Rameses II worked at the rebuilding of these cities, and that Rameses is the best candidate for the Pharaoh of the Exodus B. If the Exodus took place between and , the invasion of Canaan would occur in Mernephtah's reign, and some encounter between Egyptians and Hebrews would be the basis for his boast of annihilating Israel.
Attempts to chart the course followed by the fleeing Hebrews is equally frustrating. No one knows for sure the location of Mount Sinai, and the site chosen for the holy mountain determines, in part, the route suggested. Attempts have been made to identify stopping places mentioned in Num. The traditional site of Sinai, Jebel Musa, near the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula, has been widely accepted since the fourth and fifth centuries A.
The traditional route to Jebel Musa begins in Egypt, crosses the Sea of Reeds identified either at the tip of the Red Sea in the Gulf of Heroonpolis [Gulf of Suez] or as one of the papyrus swamps above the gulf , and goes southward along the western edge of the Sinai peninsula before turning inland to Jebel Musa.
Sinai has also been identified as Jebel Helal, located in the northern part of the peninsula. The route to this mountain goes from Egypt across the marshy swamp area and follows the Way of Shur, one of the major trade routes of the ancient world, to Jebel Helal and Kadesh Barnea.
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