God told Abraham to settle in Canaan. A shortage of food later forced the Israelites to leave Canaan. Many Israelites moved to Egypt.
Who were the Ancient Israelites? The Israelites were a nation of people who lived in the land known as Canaan, which included the area of the modern-day state of Israel.
According to the Bible, the migrant ancient Semitic-speaking peoples who appear to have settled in the region included (among others) the Amorites, who had earlier controlled Babylonia. The Hebrew Bible mentions the Amorites in the Table of Peoples (Book of Genesis 10:16–18a).
The land known as Canaan was situated in the territory of the southern Levant, which today encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, and the southern portions of Syria and Lebanon.
Biblical Israel is generally thought of as that region south and southwest of the Lebanon mountains, north and east of Egypt, east of the Mediterranean coastal plain, and west of the Arabian desert.
Nearly half of all Israeli Jews are descended from immigrants from the European Jewish diaspora. Approximately the same number are descended from immigrants from Arab countries, Iran, Turkey and Central Asia. Over 200,000 are of Ethiopian and Indian-Jewish descent.
“God blesses those who bless Israel.” “The land and people of Israel are blessed.” “Israel is the Promised Land of the Bible being fulfilled today.”
The oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans found outside Africa are the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids, who lived in northern Israel 120,000 years ago. Around 10th millennium BCE, the Natufian culture existed in the area.
The Battle of Jericho, as described in the Biblical Book of Joshua, was the first battle fought by the Israelites in the course of the conquest of Canaan.
According to the Bible, the Israelites are the descendants of Jacob, who was later renamed Israel. Following a severe drought in Canaan, Jacob and his twelve sons fled to Egypt, where they eventually formed the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Israelite, descendant of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel after an all-night fight at Penuel near the stream of Jabbok (Genesis 32:28). In early history, Israelites were simply members of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
The Motivation of the Conquest
The conquest was more about ending the Canaanites' religious and cultural practices than ending their lives. The problem wasn't the people, but idolatry.
After a century of excavations trying to prove the ancient accounts true, archeologists say there is no conclusive evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, were ever enslaved, ever wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years or ever conquered the land of Canaan under Joshua's leadership.
A group of Israelites led by Korah, son of Izhar, rebels against Moses, but Yahweh opens the earth and sends them living to Sheol (Numbers 16:1-33). The Israelites come to the oasis of Kadesh Barnea, where Miriam dies and the Israelites remain for forty years.
The most important affluent foragers in the story of Jericho were the Natufian people, who began occupying the western Fertile Crescent (present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria) just over 14,000 years ago.
According to Dever, the authentic ancestors of the "Israelite peoples" were most likely Canaanites -- together with some pastoral nomads and small groups of Semitic slaves escaping from Egypt -- who, through the long cultural and socioeconomic struggles recounted in the book of Judges, managed to forge a new agrarian, ...
Indigenous Peoples in Israel
Israel's Arab Bedouin citizens are Indigenous to the Negev (Naqab, in Arabic) desert, where they have lived for centuries as a semi-nomadic people, long before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
After World War I, Great Britain took over Jerusalem, which was part of Palestine at the time. The British controlled the city and surrounding region until Israel became an independent state in 1948.
In 1917, in order to win Jewish support for Britain's First World War effort, the British Balfour Declaration promised the establishment of a Jewish national home in Ottoman-controlled Palestine.
Under the British Mandate (1920–1948), the whole region was known as 'Palestine' (Hebrew: פלשתינה [א״י], lit. 'Palestine [Eretz Israel]').
The Seven Nations (Hebrew: שבעת העמים, romanized: Shivat Ha'amim) are seven nations that according to the Hebrew Bible lived in the Land of Canaan prior to the arrival of the Israelites. God instructed the Israelites to destroy these seven nations upon entering Canaan.
Canaan, area variously defined in historical and biblical literature, but always centred on Palestine. Its original pre-Israelite inhabitants were called Canaanites.
From a purely historical perspective, “Israel” predates “Palestine” by more than a millennium. But, with the Jewish people then dispersed from their homeland, “Palestine” became home to a substantial Arab population, again for more than a millennium.
The town was originally named Ahuzat Bayit. On 21 May 1910, the name Tel Aviv was adopted.