Episode 323: Andrew Tobolowsky- The Myth of the Twelve Tribes
In this week’s episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with Andrew Tobolowsky about what scholars mean by “myth” and how that idea applies to the Bible. They explore the origins of the 12 tribes of Israel, examining the historical and textual evidence and why this tradition may be less straightforward than it seems. Together, they discuss how these stories developed over time and how they helped shape Israel’s identity, inviting listeners to think more critically about how the Bible tells its story of the past.
Mentioned in This Episode
Books: The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel by Andrew Tobolowsky
Join: The Society of Normal People community
-
Pete: You're listening to The Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I'm Jared Byas.
Pete: On today's episode, we're talking about the myth of the 12 Tribes of Israel with Andrew Tobolowsky.
Jared: Andrew is currently a professor at William and Mary with a focus on the Hebrew Bible, the history of Ancient Israel and comparisons with both the ancient Near East and classical Mediterranean.
Pete: Yeah, we had a great time.
So let's get into this and, uh, let's rock and roll.
Andrew: This quirk of this tradition that 12 things are Israel at once, that Israel is already divided. It explains how both Judah and Israel can beat Israel at once. It explains how Israel can be split between two kingdoms and still be Israel. The exact same mechanism is what explains how Israel can also be in America, in Asia and Africa, and Australia, New Zealand, all at the same time.
Jared: Well, welcome to the podcast, Andrew. It's great to have you.
Andrew: I'm really glad to be here. Thanks so much.
Jared: Well let, just to kind of set us up, we're gonna talk about myth, but scholars use that term a little differently than maybe the average person. So can you kind of get us set up with a definition of, of myth from a scholarly perspective?
Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that when most people hear myth, they think a story that isn't true. But scholars typically use it just to mean an important cultural story. You know, the um, use of the term and biblical scholarship especially comes out of the work of actually the Brothers Grimm, the famous folklore.
They divided the traditions that they found into the three categories, and for them, myth was just a name for stories that were about gods instead of heroes. And we tweak that. You know, there's all kinds of different definitions these days, but when I use it, I'm really just talking about a story that is culturally important.
Mostly their stories that were, you know, believed by the people who told them the same way that we believe our stories and they're, they just have a role to play in society that is a different role than pure historiography.
Jared: So how would in, in the ancient world, would they have thought of different categories or kinds of stories along the same lines like we do?
I'm trying to compare what a “myth” would be compared to other things that they may have had in their, in their culture?
Andrew: That's a great question. So, you know, there's, there obviously are different kinds of stories in things like the Hebrew Bible and it has been typical in biblical scholarship to regard the stories about creation, Noah, Adam, and Eve as one kind of story.
That's often what people, what scholars refer to as myth. And then the stories of people like Abraham and Jacob, uh, the Grimm Brothers, Hermann Gunkel, Frank Moore Cross, famous biblical scholars, thought of them as legend, which is something more like histories. That division between Genesis 1 through 11 and 12 through, you know, most of the rest of the Bible is pretty common.
Then you read the books of Kings and there're, they seem to be real chronicles that have been kind of shoved together. And kind of edited from a certain perspective, but I, I really don't know that the, um, that ancient people saw the distinctions that scholars have seen in them since.
I think they probably thought that Noah was a real person and Jacob was a real person and David was a real person.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: So I think we can really see this, when we think about the fact that you, you buy a book of Greek traditions from a bookstore, you're gonna get something called Greek myth.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: But we call 'em biblical traditions, and that is more a symbol of the way that our cultural milieu relates to biblical stories than it is, um about the stories themselves. We're saying we don't think Zeus is a real person. We think, you know, the God of the Bible is a real person, but they're the same kind of stories and really the discipline of, of Hebrew Bible comes out of people saying, hey, let's study these traditions the same way we study other traditions from other places.
Pete: Right. Let's compare them and contrast 'em or whatever. But yeah, they're, they're all part of the same context, so, yeah. You, you mentioned like the creation stories and the flood story, and I think that's. Where people typically go to when they think about myth. But you extend this in, I think what might be surprising for people to hear, and that is the origins of the Israelites as 12, coming from 12 tribes.
So can you, can you talk about, um, what is mythic about that?
Andrew: Yeah, I think there's two parts of this. And number one, I think that there, especially early on, were not 12 tribes of Israel. So in that sense, conventionally, I think that it is what most people think of when they hear as a myth.
And then actually, you know, biblical scholars, when they date texts, the oldest text that has to do with the tribes, most people agree, is a text called, uh, Judges 5, or the Song of Deborah. And it's a story about an ancient war between the tribes and, uh, Canaanites. It actually doesn't have 12 tribes.
It doesn't have the tribes of Judas, Simeon, and Levi, which are the tribes that are eventually the most commonly associated with the Kingdom of Judah as opposed to Israel. So it is not, also what I call pan-Israelite. It also doesn't include the peoples of both of these historical kingdoms that the Bible regards as Israel.
Um, it doesn't mention Jacob. It doesn't have all these kinds of things. So I think, and I'm not the only person who thinks this, that the story, the 12 Tribes of Israel evolved from a real tribal organization, but a smaller one, maybe one that was just located in Israel and not Israel and Judah.
For people who don't know, um, even in the Bible, David and Solomon's Kingdom of Israel split into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as soon as Solomon died, which would be fairly early in the history of Ancient Israel and Judah as scholars understand it these days because scholars don't really think in terms of, you know, Abraham, Jacob, and going back as far as the Bible does.
Um, but I also think the main thing to understand about this tradition is that it is far too prominent a place in biblical visions of the past, um, to regard simply as history. You know, there we, it is really, really central to a lot of the traditions in the Torah, and there's a million tribalists, I think 16 or 17, just lists of the tribes between Genesis and Deuteronomy, and what you see is how important these tribes were as an idea to much later authors than they would've existed.
So even if they did exist, what we see is them functioning as a story that matters to people. Uh, and that's usually what I think of when I think of myth. It's a story that matters to people.
Pete: So the, the history, maybe one way of putting it is you mentioned like historical echoes or something, like, it's going back to some sort of an understanding of some sort of a tribal relationship, but the history of that is largely lost to us. And what we have instead is, I, I'm, I wanna use the right word, appropriations of that tradition, that function mythically, right? Is that, is that a way of putting it?
Andrew: Yeah, I think that, yeah. So, uh, one of the things that I think people most often don't know about this stuff, only one tribe of Israel is ever mentioned in this period, outside of the Bible.
There's a text called the Mesha Inscription. It's a stone stele that celebrates the victories of King Mesha in the ninth century, BCE.
It says Mesha, you know, conquered among other peoples, the men of Gab. That's the only evidence we have outside of the Hebrew Bible. We don't have, you know, the Assyrians, Babylonians, the Egyptians coming in and talking about the Tribes of Israel.
Nobody ever seems to sign their name. Uh, so and so of the tribe of Judah, or Simeon.
I still do think that there was a historical institution. I think Judges 5 is early enough. I think that enough texts mention the tribes that appear to be early texts, but it could have been quite a bit different from the, the full 12 tribes, you know, descended-from-Jacob story that everybody knows about.
So, uh, and I wanna be clear that no historical event has an inherent meeting. We are always taking the past and telling new stories through it. And that's really all I'm talking about, right? You know, George Washington doesn't mean the same thing today that he meant, you know, 150 years ago. Um, that doesn't mean that we're, you know, they were saying things that are not facts.
We're saying things that are not facts. What it means is that the role of the past changes throughout, uh, the present. And, uh, you know, we're talking about, we're talking about the Pentateuch, Genesis or Deuteronomy. We're talking about texts that everyone agrees were written, you know, 400 years after King David is supposed to have lived, something like that, which is also supposed to be after the main tribal period.
No matter what. No matter what it's based on, what we're seeing is a late reflection of an early reality that is told in a certain way, for certain reasons.
Pete: Could, could you, um, before we go further. Could you give us an anchor or two in the Hebrew Bible itself that might get people thinking? Along the, I mean, you mentioned one, I guess the different tribal lists, right?
That, that, that's something we're thinking about. Judges 5 is something worth thinking about. Like we're, I, I think Manasseh might not be mentioned either, right?
Andrew: Manasseh is not mentioned. Gad’s not mentioned.
Pete: Yeah.
Andrew: Um, Machir, Gildea are mentioned. Machir and Gildead show up in other places, right?
Pete: What the heck?
So, I mean, that is an interesting factoid I think that yeah, you, you can't really ignore and you read study Bibles and they have easy explanations for why this is not a problem. But, um, can you, is there anything else you can point to textually that people can look up for themselves?
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, I think that there probably were not tribes in the conventional sense in the Kingdom of Judah for quite a long period of time. Um, I think this was an Israelite. Institution that was not extended to Judah later on. So Judah, Simeon, and Levi are the tribe most often associated with Judah. They are missing from Judges 5, but if you read the stories of David in Samuel, he is never described as a member of the tribe of Judah.
That never happens. The one time he's identified, he's identified as an Ephrathite. Which, you know, sometimes is an Ephraimite, which would be really strange. But it could just be its own kind of thing. There's lots of different groups in the stories of David, the Kenizzites, Jerahmeelites, and Calebites . There may have been just an indigenous kind of tribal system in Judah.
When you read the book of Judges, there are a couple judges that might be from Judah. They're among the only judges that are not identified as members of tribes. So, you know, you talk about Gilead, he is from Gideon, he is from Manas. You talk about various Zebulunites, you know Jepthah, he's a Gileadite. Um, Ibzan of Bethlehem is a name we get.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Uh, Othniel, son of Kenaz. We know as a Judahite, he is the brother of Caleb. He's, you know, in the, the David stories in other ways. So when they mention Israelite judges, they tend to say a travel name. When they mention Judah in Judges, they don't. Um, Deuteronomy 33, the blessing of Moses is missing Simeon.
A lot of people think, uh, Judah and Levi were added to it as well. Genesis 49, the Blessing of Jacob. I think there's a pretty profound divide.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Between the first four blessings and the rest that you can see on a textual level. So yeah, it really looks constructed over time. Right.
Pete: I, and just a, I mean, just a, I wanna make sure people heard this.
David is not associated with the tribe of Judah in the story of David.
Andrew: That's right. In the books of Samuel. Yeah, exactly. I think, you know, in the book of Ruth, he is. But a lot of people think that the core of the book of Samuel's early never says he is a member of the tribe of Judah.
Pete: And do you have a sense of when that association with Judah might have begun to develop?
That's, that might be an, almost an unfair question to answer unless you have a sense.
Andrew: You know, I'm working on-
Pete: I’m working on it. Okay.
Andrew: Yeah, I'm working on a book, uh, tracing the history of the 12 tribe tradition. You know, I've done a lot of work in that area already, so I have some theories. Uh, but the main thing that I can tell you is that, so I've used this word panis Israelite. And what I mean is there are traditions that describe Judah and Israel as essentially the same place.
Both Israelite and their traditions, where that, that's not quite clear. When does the pan-Israelite tribal vision emerge? It's hard to say, but it is clearly most important to the authors that we see putting together the Pentateuch, called the priestly authors.
There may be a sense of it in Deuteronomy, which could be the seventh century, BCE Um, but it's very important to these priestly authors who are working during what we call the Babylonian exile and after.
Um, very important to the authors of Chronicles, or Persian create authors. So quite late. Um, I don't know where the idea came from, but I know that it got its central role in the biblical vision of history starting in the Babylonian exile and after.
Jared: Well, maybe let's, let's jump off of that and talk a little more. 'Cause early on you said the myth takes these, uh, these memories or echoes of something and it seems like they're useful.
The myths are useful for these purposes. That's why they, they get legs and they move and they, they gain some traction and they start to take hold in the popular imagination. That's what's kinda mythic about them is they’re meaning-making. So what. What's the function of within, when we look at the 12 Tribes of Israel, why would that have gained traction?
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question and there, there are a lot of possible answers, but, but one thing that I'll tell you is if you pay attention to what the biblical vision of history is doing, um, one of the most famous chapters that has to do with the tribes is 2 Kings 17. It's the account of the Assyrian Conquest of Israel and not Judah.
Which essentially describes the tribes of Israel all being taken away into a Syrian exile. So this is the start of the tradition called the Lost Tribes of Israel, the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel. Uh, that probably didn't happen, uh, the way nearly to the extent that the Bible claims. Uh, there Assyrian records.
They say we took around 20,000 people away. 27,000 people away. I think it is, you know, I live in Williamsburg, Virginia. It's a lot like the population of Williamsburg, Virginia. It's not the population of a mighty kingdom. So what you see is this double move where Judahite authors are first claiming that all of the Israelites are taken away when they're not.
And around the same time that they are really inscribing themselves in this pan-Israelite vision of history. And they do the same to their own Judahite companions. They then, when the Babylonians conquered Judah, you get the strong sense from the Bible that everybody went away in the Babylonian exile, which also isn't quite true.
There were still some people at least left behind. You get the sense that everybody came back from Babylonian exile, which is definitely not true. That was the beginning of the first diaspora. There's Judahites all over. They're in Egypt, they're in all kinds of other places.
Pete: They're happy in Babylon too.
Andrew: They're happy in Babylon. You know, we're there for when they get to the rabbinic period, it's the, the center of learning much more so than in Israel. So. It's these double and triple moves where biblical authors are claiming they're, they're saying we're part of all Israel because we are among the tribes of Israel.
And they're saying all the rest of Israel is gone. Not only the Israelites of Israel, but also the Judahites who are never exiled, Judahites, who never came back. Uh, it's just the who came back and started rebuilding who were part of Israel by the end of the biblical story. So I think that's part of it. You know, they're just creating a vision of all Israel which includes them to which they are presenting themselves as the only legitimate heirs.
And, uh, even in, in this period there, you know, you know about the, the Samaritan Israelites who, uh, we can talk about more, but essentially they are probably the descendants of Israelites who were never in exile.
So even in this time period, they have their own different stories about who Israel is.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Um, but the Judahites are telling a version of the story that, that purposefully excludes them.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: So there's like a, a, maybe not to oversimplify, but kind of a one true Israel narrative that needs to get propagated and this is a way to do that.
Pete: Yeah.
Andrew: That's right. Yeah. And they're, you know, they're coming back from exile. They're definitely competing for supremacy. And Judah with Judahites who were never exiled. They're definitely competing with other factions in exile who are in Egypt, who are in Babylon or in other places, so that's part of it. But they also do it in Israel too.
Jared: Is there then like a, uh, I'm trying to think of the, putting 'em in in certain buckets. So there's a group of people who never left, they weren't exiled.
There's a group that were, that left and never came back. And then there's a group that left and came back. And that group is sort of saying-
Pete: Telling the story.
Jared: Yeah, they're telling the story. And they're creating a story of Israel where they're, they're centered and that's kind of, we are the, we're the one true Israel ultimately.
Andrew: That's right. And when you see Israel, when you read the Book of Ezra, which is about the Persian period return, you know, they show up and they start rebuilding the temple and these people show up and talk to them, and they say like, we are, we've were brought on by the Assyrians and we've been worshiping Yahweh for, you know, hundreds of years. Can we help you rebuild the temple and Zerubbabel and Joshua who were leading this return, say, no, you can't. And then those people start opposing them.
But it never really says who those people are. You know, it says the enemies of Israel and Judah. Probably they're just Judahites who were never exiled. You know, it's the same move as 2 King 17, where they start pretending that all the Israelites are really brought in by the Assyrians. Um, they're presenting, these guys were brought in by the Assyrians at the same time.
For some reason, the Assyrians weren't even in charge of Judah at that, at that time, but they're supposed to have been brought in by Ezra. Um, you can see these conflicts, uh, in the Bible if you know where to look.
And I think that the part of what's happening is, yeah, they're, they're describing what all Israel is in the version of this 12 tribe tradition, and they are positioning themselves in it.
Pete: Well, I mean, just, just one, uh, comment, which I think reiterates what, what you've been saying, um, Andrew, is that, you know, again, back to Genesis, we think of, like, the mythic stuff is early on, right?
But the 12 tribe, let's call it myth, is part of the genesis narrative. That's, its, its beginnings, right? At least in terms of the canonical order. And if we take a step back from that and, and try to understand how Genesis is written from a much later perspective, and that's, that's not a controversial statement.
It is, it is maybe for some people who aren't used to hearing it, but this is, they're constantly looking back to, to these stories to define their present moment in, during the monarchic period perhaps. And I just find that fascinating and a very grounding thing to, to think about. I think we're touching on something that's very much related to this.
Um, the idea that there was never really a united monarchy that split into two. Okay. Can you weave that a little bit into what we're talking about?
Andrew: Yeah. So, the point that you just raised is really important, which is that biblical authors regard the eras of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as earlier than the era of David. Mm-hmm. But it's very likely the case that the stories about David are actually earlier, and scholars already think that the traditions were composed earlier.
It's just a question of how much memory is encoded into those traditions. When you’re talking about David, yeah it's a question of where this pan-Israelite idea first comes from.
So with David, there's still a lot of controversy. Most people think that he was a real person. Um, we don't have contemporaneous evidence that clearly states David was King of Israel or King of Israel and Judah. We do have a couple of ninth century BC inscriptions from about a hundred, 150 years after he is supposed to reign, which described Judah and not Israel as the House of David.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: This is the Mesha inscription and the Tel Dan Stele. And, you know, there, there is some signs that in the 10th century BC in the 11th century BC when David is supposed to have been active, that really is when the monarchical history of Israel is sort of starting, but sort of is really important.
Pete:Right. Sort of, yeah.
Andrew: You know? It doesn't seem like there's evidence of a powerful united monarchy. It doesn't seem evidence of a great conqueror. There does seem evidence of something starting. Really from the archeological evidence of this period, there also seems to be a pretty sharp divide as I understand the archeological evidence between the region that will later be associated with Kingdom of Judah and the region of Israel.
There's kind of a gap in settlement between the two.
So, you know, I can't say, I know for sure what's going on, but most people agree that the united monarchy is far less visible in the archeological evidence than the early kingdoms of Israel and Judah that start in the, let's say 950’s, 940’s, 920’s BCE.
We don't really know.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Um, so yeah, I mean, it, it, at the very least, it doesn't seem to have been particularly powerful. Um, but, you know, there are, people certainly make the argument that there never was such a thing.
Pete: Well, and, and, um, you know, in the Mesha inscription, Omri, the House of Omri is mentioned, right.
Which is one of the dynasties of the Northern Kingdom. You know, uh, uh, my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that it's the north was a pretty, could be a big deal in terms of that, that kingdom. But Judah is just sort of hanging around someplace, you know? And it, it's just not that you don't have the prominence, but yet Judah is woven prominently into the biblical story.
Beginning in Genesis already. Which, which I think gets to your point that you said before that this is, these are later reflections, and they're the ones who came back from exile. Right? So the survivors wrote the story and. Judah is woven prominently.
Can you give maybe an example, in Genesis of where Judah is, is very prominent and maybe it's even surprisingly so, and, and hopefully people will hear this as, do you see what the writer is doing here? He's making Judah very prominent, right?
Andrew: Yeah. So to be clear, you know, we think that they're both Israelite and Judahite traditions in the Hebrew Bible.
We think they're both early and late, but we also think that Judahites were ultimately at the helm, and relatively late Judahites, of putting it all together. So we see them picking up and putting together traditions and giving themselves a prominent place, like you say. So one example is when you read the story of Abraham.
So Jacob seems like an Israelite figure. He mostly wanders in Israelite geography. He's mentioned in early Israelite prophetic works. Abraham mostly wanders around in Judah. His geography is very Judahite. So they seem to be from two different circles of tradition that have kind of been, uh, wedded together over time.
Genesis 49 is the best potential evidence for an early 12 tribe vision. There's what we call, there's three different dialects of Hebrew in the Hebrew Bible. There's archaic biblical Hebrew, of which there's not much. There's a lot of standard biblical Hebrew and then there's late biblical Hebrew.
Genesis 49 has 12 tribes.
Pete: Can you give dates for that? Especially for standard and late?t
Andrew: Yeah, so we don't, we don't know for sure, uh, but late biblical Hebrew is the Persian period because we see Aramaic loan words in it and. Uh, Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Persian Empire at the time, so we can say that.
Pete: Late sixth, fifth century BCE, right?
Andrew: Yeah. Sixth century, fifth century. Standard biblical Hebrew was probably a long time, let's say 800 BCE to 600 BCE or so, maybe even 900 BCE. But we identify archaic biblical Hebrew group because it looks like earlier Semitic languages. So, you know, some people say 1100 BCE, some people say 900 BCE.
It really depends. Because we don't have, the really interesting and difficult thing about the Hebrew Bible is, unlike ancient Greece, unlike ancient Rome, we don't have any literature from this historical context that survives outside of the Hebrew Bible.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: So you got, you know, all kinds of Greek myths.
You got all kinds of Roman traditions, you don't have any other books.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: So we're, we're guessing a lot of the time. But Genesis 49, as I say, you know, it has some archaic Hebrew, and it has 12 tribes and it has Jacob. So it's the best, it's the best possible case for an early 12 tribe tradition. Um, I think it's not, I think when you look at it, what you see, it's a blessing from Jacob.
But Jacob only seems to be talking in the first four blessings. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. Simeon, Levi, and Judah again, the three Judahite tribes, um, missing from Judges 5. Uh, it's a pretty consistent pattern, but when you read that text, what you see is that Jacob says, Reuben, you, you know, slept with my concubine.
Basically, you're out.
Levi and Simeon, you, um, so they avenge the assault of their sister, uh, Dinah, uh, by attacking the state of Shechem, he says, you're out. Judah, you are my blessed one. Basically. So that's one example where you really see the author like saying, you know, in the birth narratives, these ones are older than Judah, but they're not worth anything compared to Judah.
And then the Judah blessing is really, really long. Um, yeah, that's one example of how the pro-Judahite bias really shows up.
Pete: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jared: Let maybe fast forward to the New Testament, you mentioned a group that I think a lot of our listeners would've heard of, the Samaritans. How do they play in historically and then in the biblical tradition?
Andrew: Yeah. So outside of the Samaritan, so the Samaritans are people who still exist today. There's maybe 800 or a thousand of them. They live mostly on what has always been their Holy Mountain, Mount Gerizim, and the vicinity of Neblus, um, outside of their community, their history has always been told through the lens of 2 King 17, which claims that all of the Israelites or Israel were taken away and replaced by foreigners, brought in by the Assyrians.
So in the rabbinic traditions, for example, in the Talmud, they're usually referred to as Cutheans, which is one of the five groups that are said to have been brought in by the yearn in 2 King 17. But they have always claimed that they are in fact, the descendants of the Israelites who were not taken away by the Assyrians.
That's probably true. They've been there for a very long time. As you say, they're, they're mentioned in the New Testament, they're already making that claim. Um, I think our earliest evidence, you know, I don't wanna say earliest, but um, there's a couple, you know, if you go into a synagogue today, you'll see plaques honoring donors, you know, so and so gave this amount of money.
So we have a couple from the, the Island of Delos in the third and second century BCE that say they are from the Israelites, um, who worship at Mount Gerizim, which is the holy side of the Samaritans. I don't know if they're calling themselves Samaritans, yet. They exist. They're already calling themselves Israelites.
Um, most likely, as I say, they, their ancestors, um, were just Israelites. And they, you know, it all gets complicated because Judaism develops in continuity with Judahite traditions, but I wouldn't call, uh, Judahites in the biblical period Jews. Uh, just as a, a scholar, it's complex, but you know, for example, this is a religion of, um temple sacrifice priests.
And you know, I'm Jewish myself. Judaism is a, a, a religion of rabbis and synagogues and no sacrifices. It's very different. I think Samaritan Israelite religious practice stands in the same relationship to Israelite practice as Jewish practice does with Judahite. But biologically, their ancestors are probably Israelites and they're already constructing the Israelite past differently than, um, than the Judahites do in the ancient world.
Pete: So Samaritans, um, Mount Gerizim, which rivals Mount Sinai. Or, or it's an alternate mountain. And do we have, I mean, do you have any thoughts about which might be older and I, again, I think that, I think many people don't think about, I don't know if there's an easy answer to that or do you wanna speculate a bit?
Andrew: Yeah, it's a really tough question. I mean, in the Pentateuch and Genesis or Deuteronomy. There are many references to the place where God will put his name, but it's never named. The name Jerusalem never shows up in the Pentateuch, which is very strange. Uh, you know, there's one time where Abraham meets a priest of Salem named Melchizadek.
Maybe that's Jerusalem, but mostly God keeps referring to God's holy site. Uh, Samaritans claim that was always meant to be Mount Gerizim. Jews claim that was always meant to be Jerusalem. And which one is older? You know, I mean we, I think there was a temple at Jerusalem earlier than there was a temple at Gerizim.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Um, as far as I understand, there was quite an early temple at Gerizim. We find, I think fifth century, BCE, we find what seems to be a temple precinct of sorts, uh, as far as I understand the archeology. So around the same time, the second temple is being built. But it's likely the site at Jerusalem is a fair amount older.
There may also have been earlier Israelite sites at other places, but you know, what you're pointing to is really important. The Samaritans have a Pentateuch, you know, just like the Jews do. Um, it's very similar in most respects. It's different in that it mentions Mount Gerizim. And it's different in that it is all they have in terms of canonical scriptures.
So they don't have a canonical book of Samuel, canonical book of Kings. They just have the Pentateuch. But it appears to emerge at around the same time and in the same milieu as the Pentateuch that you, you read in Hebrew Bibles, Jewish Bibles today.
Jared: I, I'm getting a little, um, lost, so I want to go back for a minute because I was trying to reconstruct.
Maybe you, maybe you said this when we were talking about the value of this myth in the biblical tradition. Can you say more specifically about, like, why 12?
Andrew: Yeah.
Jared: Why did it devolve in, in this particular way?
Andrew: Right. Um, I think 12 was not the first pan-Israelite vision of the tradition. I don't have to get into it too much, but when you, we read the story of the division of the kingdoms, uh, in 1 Kings 11 through 12.
So Solomon has just died. They're dividing up the kingdoms. It's pretty clear from that text that there's actually imagined to be a ten-and-one division.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Um, this guy, this prophet Ahijah, he tears up his cloak into 12 pieces, but he only gives 11 away. He gives 10. Jeroboam is gonna be the next king of Israel.
And he says, but one I will keep to myself for the House of David. And I think it's, uh, like 12:20 and 12:21. One of them says, you know, Rehoboam rallied Judah and Benjamin, and one of them says none followed Rehoboam, except the tribe of Judah alone. So my sense is that the first pan-Israelite vision of tribal Israel was the 10 tribes of Israel, which are already the tribes of Israel, which are the ones that are, they go back to Judges 5, even though they're a little bit different.
And Judah first adds itself to this tribal system by inventing the idea of a tribe of Judah as a stand in for the entire region.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And that this is an 11 tribe vision. And that's basically what you see in Deuteronomy 33. Simeon is not present. Um, for example, and then I think for various reasons, I still, you know, Simeon is a big puzzle for me.
Jared: Yeah.
Andrew: But, um, you know, Levi, they're the priest. They're in Jerusalem. A lot of times when they talk about Levites in the Hebrew Bible, it's not at all clear. They're talking about tribes. The term tribe of Levi appears like, I don't know, eight or nine times compared to the number of times that the Levites come up in the Bible.
I think it was just somebody's idea to kind of organize the history better, but kind of transformed them into a tribe so they could be aggregated with the other ones into this tribal system. But yeah, I think originally it was, you know, it went from 10 to 11 and then to 12.
Pete: Well, 12’s a better number than 11 anyway.
Andrew: 12 isn't the only number. Um, there's at least two revisions to the 12 tries of Israel and the Hebrew Bible. One of it has, one of them has Joseph and Levi, and one of them has a tribe of Manasseh, right? So there's at least 14 groups that are, you know, sometimes regarded as part of the 12 tribes of Israel.
Pete: So we're seeing this fluidity of the tradition, and it seems to get stamped into 12 at some point.
And, and I mean, let's, let's push that further. This, this myth has an afterlife and it's sort of the gift that keeps on giving, um. Talk a little bit about like later on, maybe Medieval Judaism and Christianity and how yeah, this idea sort of got new life, right?
Andrew: So I wrote this book, it's called The Myth of the 12 Tribes of Israel, which traces the history of people identifying as Israelites from the biblical period into the present.
And there are Israelites all around the world. You know, the last two chapters are about the Beta Israel of Ethiopia, the Mormons of America. Both of them identify as Israelites. There's a lot of interesting things we can say about that. But the, what you, what you really see throughout is what you just mentioned, that the story becomes a medium through which people constantly reinvent Israel for useful reasons.
And I wanna be clear that that is what this kind of tradition is always meant to do.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Uh, this is what we call a segmented genealogical tradition. There's linear genealogical traditions if you think of so and so, begot so and so, but got so-and-so, you know, that biblical trope that's a linear tradition, but a genealogy that follows multiple lines at once, uh, we call it a segmented tradition.
In Greek mythology, and I promise I'll get back to your question, it's just a second. These are just the medium of competition between groups all the time. So it's very strange that in the Bible it never really admits that that's what's happening. The participants in the system saying, Judah is better. No, Reuben is better. No, Simeon is better.
It's the normal thing to happen to a segmented identity tradition. What makes this tradition portable is also that, that Israel is already divided into 12 parts, so it's never strange, and then the Bible loses 10 of them. It says they've all been taken away. So it's never strange for the next 2000, 2,500 years for somebody to say part of Israel came over here and became something else.
Um, so already by the first century CE you see in Josephus, you see in other places the idea that the 10 lost tribes have gone somewhere else. Throughout the medieval period, you have various legends about where they might be and how they might be coming back.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: They're constantly being applied to historical events. Uh, when the Mongols first started invading, um, initially a lot of Christians in Europe think that they are a different guy. They think they're Prester John, because for centuries there's been a tradition where, uh, of a priest king in the East who has this mighty army of Christians is gonna help them with the crusades.
So, because the, the more, more, uh, the Mongols start out defeating some Christians, uh, so there some, some Muslims in the East are like, it's definitely, uh, Prester John. But as they get closer, they get more threatening. You know, people start, start saying that the, the, the lost tries of Israel. Um, and when we get into the 1500’s and 1600’s, you know, one of the things that I, that I always say is you have to put yourself in the mindset of somebody who you know really believes that the flood story, for example, is literally true.
Because after the flood, the whole world is repopulated by the sons of, uh, of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
So that means if you're a European explorer, you think that everybody in the world is descended from somebody who's probably mentioned in Genesis 10, somewhere else in the Bible. So everywhere they go, they find Israelites, and sometimes they're Jews who have just wandered. And you know, there's Jews on the Silk Road, there's Jews in, you know, a lot of other places and sometimes they're not.
So, uh, the Native Americans started being identified as Israelites probably as early as the 1500’s. It's called the Jewish Indian Theory. Um. But it plays a thousand different roles in, in different traditions.
Pete: Yeah. Um, so what's, what's the payoff for even thinking like that right, mean, is it, is it just to tie everything to the Bible or is there, is there, um, are there, let's say self-serving motives in this kind of ideology?
Andrew: Yeah. So you get this, uh, constant back and forth where people are afraid of Israelites and also wanna be Israelites. Um, so there's a very. Antisemitic aspect to it in Christian Europe where, you know, like I said, when the Mongols are coming, um, the Jews are pretty oppressed in Europe at this time and, uh, you know, so when it seems like maybe they're the avenging Israelites, there's a, there's a wave of antisemitic violence, but at the same time, as far back as Paul, as far back as just a martyr, you have this Christian tradition of trying to identify as the real Israel.
'Cause Israel is prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. Uh, it's the chosen people. It's supposed to be restored at the end of days, and, you know, uh, and, and Christian thought to bring about the second coming. So there are, there's a constant search for Israel in part, uh, as part of Christian European efforts to evangelize, uh, evangelize to, to bring new people.
You know, they meet the Native Americans, they think they're Israelites, so we have to convert them to the true faith. And so we've always been supposed to do. A lot of the times they end up thinking maybe we're Israelites too. You know? Once you start thinking that they're out there somewhere, we don't know where they are, maybe they're us.
Jared: I can't help but also tie that to, I keep going back to this idea of this, this myth allows for, uh, this idea of, of, we keep thinking about it as dispersement. There's all these different tribes, but it's both a contraction and a, uh, and a unifier to say there's all these factions, but they're all one that's kind of, that pan-Israel.
They're all under one umbrella. And if you're kind of an outside group, there's a little opening for you to sort of subsume yourself under this umbrella. And it sounds like this is, uh, not to kind of bring us back 1500 years from where we were in the medieval time, but there's this, uh, pool for Judah to sort of say, there's an opening here.
We can, we can annex ourselves and become part of this Israel identity.
Andrew: Yeah. That's exactly right. So, you know, part of the reason I wrote the book is I wanted to stress the way, so I'm not denying, and I wanna be clear about this, that the Jews, the Judahites, have more of a historical connection to ancient Israel that is verifiable than many of the groups we're talking about.
But in terms of what's happening with stories, there are a ton of similarities between what the Judahites are doing and what everyone else who becomes Israel is doing.
Andrew: They are, and you gotta remember too, that, you know, there are lots of Bible believers out there. So what's true when you are a Bible believer, whether you go to church or synagogue or any other context, is you are identifying with the Israelites at least a little bit.
You read the Exodus story and you think that's just for somebody else. It doesn't mean anything to you, so you're connecting yourself to it. But, um, you know, I think a really good example of what we're talking about is the Mormons.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Who, you know, initially in the, the Book of Mormon was published in 1830.
Um, people who have read it know this, but I think a lot of other people don't. It's not about the religion. It's a story about tribe of Israelites who came to America around the time that Jerusalem was conquered in 586. And the strong implication is that they become the Native Americans. They split into two families, they fight each other.
Um, one defeats the other. Mormon is the, the general who kind of loses this last engagement, writes the history of his people. His son Moroni buries it. Joseph Smith finds it in 1830. But within about 10 or 15 years, um, the Mormons sort of decide, Mormon thought evolves to the point where they say, you know, maybe, so first they see themselves as Gentiles trying to convert the natives and other peoples.
But then they start thinking, you know, maybe we're Israelites too. Maybe an openness to the Mormon message is really a sign of Israelite descent. So today it's still the case that Mormon missionary work, and everyone knows there's a lot of, you know, Mormon missions in the world, is conceptualized as search for Lost Israel.
There's still, you know, there's something called the patriarchal blessing, which is based on the blessing of Jacob we've been talking about where, you know, it's a Mormon coming of age ceremony where they, many times, learn what tribe they're supposed to have been descended from. These, and what you have to sort of understand is that you know, many of these people, they're Christians. They see themselves as Christians. They came, their ancestors came out of a Christian background. They were already identifying as the Israelite. They already saw themselves as the protagonists. And what you're talking about is this quirk of this tradition that 12 things are Israel at once, that Israel's already divided.
It explains how both Judah and Israel can beat Israel at once. It explains how Israel can be split between two kingdoms and still be Israel. The exact same mechanism is what explains how Israel can also be in America, in Asia and Africa and Australia, New Zealand all at the same time.
Pete: Alright, so, um, leaving, uh, Mormons aside for a second, um, are there other examples maybe in, in relatively contemporary American experience of the, you know, making some, something out of this, this 12 tribe idea?
Andrew: Yeah, there's a, there's a ton. I mean, one of the most interesting that I came across, there was a group called the House of David. Uh, it was in Bentonville, Michigan.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And they're, they were best known for their baseball team, which was essentially the Harlem Globetrotters of their day.
They would, you know, like, ride camels and stuff in the outfield. But they were really the fundraising arm for, you know, you might call it a cult that was in Bentonville, Michigan that tasked itself with, in gathering the 12 tries of Israel to Michigan. Uh, and this baseball team went around raising money for it.
Um, I think the story of the Hebrew Israelites is really fascinating and poorly understood. You may have heard the Black Hebrew Israelites, which is a very antisemitic group, but far from all black Israelites are antisemitic. A lot of them just wanna live Jewish lives, but this situation, uh, that they arose out of, is exactly what I'm talking about.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Where before the Civil War, many enslaved Africans already connected very strongly to the traditions of what they would've regarded as the Old Testament on an intimate level, because what story could make more sense in that context than a story about being enslaved in foreign bondage, hoping for a divine deliverance.
So you read the spirituals and they're about Moses. They're about Daniel and the lion's den. They're about, and very shortly after the Civil War. This figurative identification with Israel is so common in religious settings, makes the transition to a literal identification.
There's a couple people who identify as prophets. Uh, William Saunders Crowdy, Frank Cherry, who say, you know, we just got this revelation that the original Israelites were actually Africans, that they're black. And you know, it comes because anyone who believes in the Bible has access to identifying themselves as Israel, which combines with the flexibility and the separability of this tradition that allows people to say, we can be part of Israel without being the whole thing.
It's okay for some part of Israel to go somewhere else and become something else and still be Israel. And it, it allows the tradition to be what it already was in the Bible, which is a medium for re-describing an inherited Israelite identity in a way that is useful for the people who are making it.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Well, we've had in the last almost hour, we've swept from, I think the 11th century BCE, all the way through today. Yep. Um, so as we, as we end our time, what do you hope our listeners maybe take away from this idea of, of the myth of the 12 tribes, it's, it's flexibility, how it functions? What, what's the takeaway here for you?
That's important. I mean, everybody's gonna take their own thing away, which is part of the point.
Pete: Like the 12 tribes.
Andrew: Yeah.
Jared: For you though.
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, I think it's, this is what I think is, is the most important thing when, when you start talking about this stuff, it can make people angry because it sounds like what you're saying is your stories are fake.
The stories that you care about are fake, but there are no real stories to compare it to. There's no alternative that is realer. Uh, we make identity out of stories about the past, and that story is always somewhat different from historiography. It's always somewhat different from what, you know, nobody is reading David McCulloch and saying, that's my charter tradition.
It's always about taking the past and making it into something useful for the present. So it's, um, there are, we can look at these things and we can say the Jews, the Samaritans have a more genuine, demonstrable historical connection to the ancient Israelites than many of these groups. But identity is always doing stuff with stories.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: There are no exceptions. And I think this history of people doing so many different things with the same story demonstrates it extremely well. And one of the reasons I started the book with Judahites and Samaritans is, 'cause guess what? They're both biological Israelites.
They're both genuine, legitimate descendants and they still are telling different stories about the past, because that's what, that's what telling stories about the past is. And that's what identity is.
Jared: Well, thank you Andrew, for coming on the podcast. It's great to have you.
Andrew: Well, thanks a lot guys. It was a pleasure.
Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it.
One, if you just want to give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.
Pete: And if you wanna support us and want access to our library of over 50 classes, plus bonus episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, and a thoughtful community of people asking tough questions about the Bible and faith, you can become a member of our online community, the Society of Normal People at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
Jared: And lastly, it goes a long way. If you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com.
Outro: You’ve just made it through another episode of The Bible for Normal People.
Don't forget, you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by The Bible for Normal People team.
[Blooper clip plays]
Pete: Let's rock and roll. I don't know why. Let's do 'cause why not?
Jared: That's Joel, the man behind the curtain.
Pete: That is Joel, who you do not see. No one sees Joel.
Jared: But you hear from him.
Pete: You feel his presence though. He's always lurking.
Jared: So Joel, does he sound good? Yep.
Joel: I think so.
Jared: We built you up, Joel, to be the man, the myth, the legend.
Pete: We’re misleading people.
