The Early History of the Jews

Brainlet here, we know the biblical stories of the Jews and all that but do historical accounts back up events told in the Bible? That being said, looking outside of the Bible, where did the Jews/Hebrews/Israelis come from? Are the people I listed even the same people? Its quite surprising that you don't see many discussions about early Jewish history or their origins despite them being mentioned constantly on many boards on this site.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_siege_of_Jerusalem
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCUMX4vzkh7wthPH8-mjapUVmb0P1jVFP
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The Bible gives a symbolic take on a Semitic history of not only Jews but all semitic speaking peoples from the Levant, Egypt and Red Sea.

It's important to recognize Hebrews, Israelites and Jews are a composite of many people's and the ethnogenesis of the Torah in my own learning is meant to bind them all despite culture and phenotypical variations.

There's just something so arcane about the early history of the peoples in the Levant, it fascinates me to no end. Was there a precursor to the culture and people who would eventually become the Hebrews? Who inhabited the Levant before the Hebrews/Israelites took over?

They are the Sea Peoples. No longer they destroy nations by force. But by deception.

>They are the Sea Peoples.
I always thought the Sea Peoples were Cypriots or something. Where do you get this?

He's bullshitting,they're a conglomeration

>they're a conglomeration
Who, the Jews or Sea Peoples?

I've no doubt in my mind the ancient history of the jew is shrouded in lies and half truths.

The Phoenicians and all those other Canaanites and Northwest Semites. The earlier growth of the Akkadians was also impactive. I imagine the region as a proxy struggle between the Egyptians and the Sumerians and with the Akkadians being one of those that rose to greatest prominence.

The southern Levant was inhabited by Canaanite peoples at the start of the iron age. The Canaanites were polytheists that worshipped many gods including Moloch, Baal, El, Asherah, etc. The Canaanites split up into the Phoenicians in the north, and the Hebrews in the south.

The more successful of the Canaanites were the Phoenicians in the north because their proximity to Mount Lebanon gave them to access to its forests which were they were able to use to build their fleet. They were the first to transverse the Mediterranean to a great extent. Meanwhile, the Hebrews were split between several different petty kingdoms like the Kingdom of Judah centered in Judah and the Kingdom of Israel centered in Jerusalem further to the south.

Most Hebrews were polytheistic. The Jerusalemites in the south evolved from a polytheistic one into a monotheistic one by placing one god above all the others. They also invented the mythical "united kingdom of david and solomon" to increase the importance of their own kingdom amongst the others.

The importance of the Hebrew people came not from their ship building but rather from their expansionist religion. Lacking ships and being subjected to people that didn't have actually have any policy of displacing entire peoples, the Judaists expanded their religion through conversion. The most important people to be converted were the Khazars. Others include the Himyarites and the Adiabenes. The ancient people descended from the Hebrews converted to Islam and became Palestinians.

Who were the Khazars and why were they important?

They were originally canaanites who one day decided to worship a single god and create a bunch of customs to set themselves apart from other cultures.

You all know that joos are scrawny, brown turds with big noses, and nit blinde aryans , right?

>Are the people I listed even the same people?
No
Genetically
Hebrews = E-M78
Israelites = E-M78, J2, J1
Jews = J1. J2, R1b, R1a, Q, G, A, and B

Jews are Canaanites(Hurrians) laters raped by Romans then admixed with Germans, Blacks, and pretty much any people that they met.


>That being said, looking outside of the Bible, where did the Hebrews/Israelis come from?
Considering their names (Jacob, Abraham), they are probably of Amorite stock just like the Arameans, thus, they are from the Northwest Levant.

There's really nothing but speculation about the early history. Nobody even knows whether the slaves in Egypt thing actually happened, although it's such a huge, fundamental part of their folk history I find it hard not to think there's a grain of truth in it. Of course they sure as hell didn't escape with 600,000 men and wander in the wilderness for 40 years, there would definitely be more (and by more I mean some) archaeological evidence of that. The monarchy period is the first time Biblical "history" starts to resemble actual history rather than myth, at which point some basic information can be verified independently.

Here's something interesting though.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_siege_of_Jerusalem
>Bible says the siege was stopped by an angel of death rekting the Assyrians
>Assyrian history confirms the siege happened but presents no comment on why the city wasn't taken
Not exactly supporting the biblical account, but it is spooky.

Wait wait wait, I though the Philistines were the sea people?

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_siege_of_Jerusalem

This is the type of thing that fascinates me, who knows what really happened during the siege, maybe the Assyrians made an embarrassing mistake and just chose not to talk about it, maybe an Angel of Death really did BTFO the Assyrians or maybe the Hebrews just started saying they did and thousands of years later any adherent of Judaism and Christianity treats it like fact.

All it takes is a couple of people telling the same story enough times to "change" the course of history

It was almost certainly a disease in the siege camp.

They were Turkic steppe nomads and they weren't that important, some Christians and Muslims like to claim that modern Jews are descended from them rather than the ancient Hebrews to discredit modern Judaism.

The Hebrews seem to have emerged in the Iron Age, 10th cent BC about, from a group called the "Habiru".

"Habriu" roughly translates to "outlaw", "bandit", "outcast", they seem to have been quasi nomadic pastoralists, mercenaries, bandits, and craftsmen who operated in the lawless unsettled and highland areas of the southern levant. They were not a singular ethnic or cultural group, but rather a social class. If you got into debt, you may sell your house, go up into the hills, and become a habiru, for instance.

After the Bronze Age collapse these habiru seem to develope their own distinct culture and begin to settle in the land formerly occupied by the bronze age city states of the southern levant.

The Hebrew bible is probably most comparable to the illiad and Odyssey, elements are probably true, but they're the written accounts of one or more oral traditions that had existed for centuries before being recorded. Additionally the books of the bible have probably been far more heavily edited than Homer's epics have.

Exactly what jumped to my mind when I read Angel of Death.

>be King Hezekiah
>tell everyone in you city during the seige that God is on your side
>disease starts to kill the Assyrians thanks to shit sanitation or other reasons, spreads like wildfire in the camp
>siege breaks, Hebrews live to fight another day
>Must've been an Angel of Death that took them out guys! See God is on our side!

Makes sense when you think about it

I'd recommend this lecture series by yale

Yale Courses: Introduction to the Old Testament: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCUMX4vzkh7wthPH8-mjapUVmb0P1jVFP

The Jews were originally Ethiopians taken as slaves into Egypt.

I'm really interested in the origins of YHWH. Reading Exodus, it's easy to envision an earlier version where Yahweh is just a god who inhabits Sinai/Horeb and Moses happens to find him, with all the creator of the world and "god of your ancestors" stuff being attached later. There are many hints of polytheism.