) . (
Jan Luyken, 1673) (
Charles François Delamarche, 1797)
Scholarly examination For thousands of years, Christians and Jews have accepted the history of the twelve tribes as fact. Since the 19th century,
historical criticism has examined the veracity of the historical account; whether the twelve tribes ever existed as they are described, the historicity of the eponymous ancestors, and even whether the earliest version of this tradition assumes the existence of twelve tribes. Biblical lists of tribes, not all of which number 12, include the following: • The
Blessing of Jacob () mentions Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph, and Benjamin and especially extolls Joseph over his brothers. •
Blessing of Moses () mentions Benjamin, Joseph, Zebulun, Issachar, Gad, Dan, Naphtali, Asher, Reuben, Levi, and Judah, omitting Simeon. •
Judges 1 describes the conquest of Canaan; Benjamin and Simeon are mentioned in the section about Judah's exploits, and are listed alongside the Calebites and the
Kenites, Joseph, Ephraim, Manasseh, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and Dan are mentioned, but Issachar, Reuben, Levi and Gad are not. • the
Song of Deborah (), widely considered one of the oldest passages in the Bible, mentions eight of the tribes: Ephraim, Benjamin, Zebulun, Issachar, Reuben, Dan, Asher, and Naphtali. The people of the Gilead region, and
Machir, a subsection of Manasseh, are also mentioned. The other five tribes (Simeon, Levi, Judah, Gad, and Joseph) are not mentioned. • The
Rechabites and the
Jerahmeelites also appear as Israelite clans elsewhere in the Bible. Translator Paul Davidson argued: "The stories of Jacob and his children, then, are not accounts of historical
Bronze Age people. Rather, they tell us how much later Jews and
Israelites understood themselves, their origins, and their relationship to the land, within the context of folktales that had evolved over time." He goes on to argue that most of the tribal names are "not personal names, but the names of ethnic groups, geographical regions, and local deities. E.g.
Benjamin, meaning "son of the south" (the location of its territory relative to
Samaria), or
Asher, a
Phoenician territory whose name may be an allusion to the goddess
Asherah." in
Commentary mentions "the Biblical habit of representing clans as persons. In the Bible, the twelve tribes of Israel are sons of a man called
Jacob or Israel, as
Edom or Esau is the brother of Jacob, and
Ishmael and
Isaac are the sons of
Abraham.
Elam and
Ashur, names of two ancient nations, are sons of a man called
Shem.
Sidon, a Phoenician town, is the first-born of
Canaan; the lands of Egypt and Abyssinia are the sons of
Ham. This kind of mythological geography is widely known among all ancient peoples. Archaeology has found that many of these personal names of ancestors originally were the names of clans, tribes, localities, or nations. [...] if the names of the twelve tribes of Israel are those of mythological ancestors and not of historical persons, then many stories of the
patriarchal and
Mosaic age lose their historic validity. They may indeed partly reflect dim reminiscences of the Hebrews' tribal past, but in their specific detail they are fiction." Norman Gottwald argued that the division into twelve tribes originated as an administrative scheme under King David. Additionally, the
Mesha Stele (carved c. 840 BCE) mentions
Omri as
King of Israel and also mentions "the men of
Gad".
Levite Y-chromosome studies Recent studies of genetic markers within Jewish populations strongly suggest that modern
Ashkenazi Levites (
Jewish males who claim
patrilineal descent from the
Tribe of Levi) are descendants of a single Levite ancestor who came to Europe from the Middle East roughly 1,750 years ago. The growth of this specific lineage aligns with the expansion patterns seen in other founding groups of Ashkenazi Jews. This means that a relatively small number of original ancestors have had a large impact on the genetic makeup of today's Ashkenazi population. ==Attributed coats of arms==