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80-686: The Tribe of Judah played a central role in the Deuteronomistic history , which encompasses the books of Deuteronomy through II Kings . After the death of King Solomon , the Tribe of Judah, along with the Tribe of Benjamin , the Tribe of Dan and the Levites formed the Southern Kingdom of Judah , with Jerusalem as its capital. The kingdom lasted until its conquest by Babylon in c. 586 BCE. The tribe's symbol

160-535: A tombstone dated to the Second Temple Period claiming to mark the grave (or, reburial) site of Uzziah, was discovered in a convent on the Mount of Olives in 1931, but there is no way of determining if the remains were genuinely Uzziah's as the stone had to have been carved more than 700 years after Uzziah died and was originally interred, and the tablet's provenance remains a mystery. A controversial artefact called

240-691: A 14th-century treatise, the " Kebre Negest ", assert descent from a retinue of Israelites who returned with the Queen of Sheba from her visit to King Solomon in Jerusalem , by whom she had conceived the Solomonic dynasty's founder, Menelik I . Both Christian and Jewish Ethiopian tradition has it that these immigrants were mostly of the Tribes of Dan and Judah; hence the Ge'ez motto Mo`a 'Anbessa Ze'imnegede Yihuda ("The Lion of

320-549: A 33rd-generation descendant of Johanan HaSandlar , who was a fourth-generation descendant of Gamaliel , who was reputedly descended from the Davidic line. Similarly Maimonides claimed 37 generations between him and Simeon ben Judah ha-Nasi , who was also a fourth-generation descendant of Gamaliel. Meir Perels traced the ancestry of Judah Loew ben Bezalel to the Hai Gaon through Judah Loew's alleged great-great-grandfather Judah Leib

400-562: A comparatively modest Israelite society in Judah and not regents over a kingdom proper. According to the Tanakh , upon being chosen and becoming king, one was customarily anointed with holy oil poured on one's head. In David's case, this was done by the prophet Samuel . Initially, David was king over the Tribe of Judah only and ruled from Hebron , but after seven and a half years, the other Israelite tribes, who found themselves leaderless after

480-483: A protracted conflict with Ish-bosheth of the Tribe of Benjamin after the latter succeeded his father Saul to become the second king of an amalgamated Israel and Judah . Amidst this struggle, God had sent his prophet Samuel to anoint David as the true king of the Israelites . Following Ish-bosheth's assassination at the hands of his own army captains, David officially acceded to the throne around 1010 BCE, replacing

560-456: Is Jerusalem. It also shows a special concern for the poor, widows and the fatherless: all Israelites are brothers and sisters, and each will answer to God for his treatment of his neighbour. This concern for equality and humanity extends also to the stranger who lives among the Israelites. The stranger is often mentioned in tandem with the concern for the widow and the orphan. Furthermore, there

640-580: Is a specific commandment to love the stranger. Davidic line The Davidic line refers to the descendants of David , who established the House of David ( Hebrew : בֵּית דָּוִד Bēt Dāwīḏ ) in the Kingdom of Israel and Judah . In Judaism , it is based on texts from the Hebrew Bible , as well as on later Jewish traditions . According to the biblical narrative, David of the Tribe of Judah engaged in

720-563: Is a traditional Christian artistic representation of Jesus' genealogical connection to David. The Quran mentions the House of David once: "Work, O family of David, in gratitude. And few of My servants are grateful." and mentions David himself sixteen times. According to some Islamic sources, some of the Jewish settlers in Arabia were of the Davidic line, Mohammad-Baqer Majlesi recorded: "A Jewish man from

800-438: Is attested to by numerous royal seals and Sennacherib's Annals ; Manasseh is recorded giving tribute to Esarhaddon ; Josiah has no relics explicitly naming him; however, seals belonging to his son Eliashib and officials Nathan-melech and Asaiah have been discovered; and the kings Jehoahaz II , Jehoiakim , and Zedekiah are never explicitly named in historical records but are instead alluded to; however, Jeconiah

880-463: Is expected to rule over the Jewish people during the Messianic Age and in the world to come . Very little is conclusively known about the House of David. The Tel Dan Stele mentions the death of the reigning king from "BYTDWD", (interpreted as "House of David") and thus far is the only extrabiblical explicit mention of David himself. The stele is dated to circa 840 BCE; however, the name of

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960-618: Is generally agreed that the Deuteronomistic history originated independently of the books of Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus and Numbers (based on the Priestly source and the Jahwist ), and independently of the historical Books of Chronicles . Most scholars trace all or most of Deuteronomistic history to the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE), and associate it with editorial reworking of both

1040-584: Is mentioned as such by a contemporary in 1046. An unsuccessful attempt of David ben Daniel of the Davidic line to establish an Exilarchate in the Fatimid Caliphate failed and ended with his downfall in 1094. In the 11th–15th century, families that descended from the Exilarchs that lived in the South of France ( Narbonne and Provence ) and in northern Iberian peninsula ( Barcelona , Aragon and Castile ) received

1120-653: Is mentioned by name in Babylonian documents detailing the rations he and his sons were given while held prisoner during the Babylonian captivity . The origins of the dynasty, on the other hand, are shrouded in mystery. The Tel Dan Stele, as aforementioned, remains the only mention of David himself outside the Bible, and the historical reliability of the United Monarchy of Israel is archaeologically weak. The Stepped Stone Structure and Large Stone Structure in Jerusalem , assuming Eilat Mazar 's contested stratigraphic dating of

1200-448: The Book of Jeremiah . The adjectives "Deuteronomic" and "Deuteronomistic" are sometimes used interchangeably; if they are distinguished, then the first refers to the core of Deuteronomy and the second to all of Deuteronomy and the history. The Deuteronomist is one of the sources identified through source criticism as underlying much of the Hebrew Bible . Among source-critical scholars, it

1280-563: The Dayan family of Aleppo , who paternally descend from Hasan ben Zakkai, the younger brother of the Exilarch David I (d. 940). One of Hasan's descendants Solomon ben Azariah ha-Nasi settled in Aleppo were the family became Dayan's (judges) of the city and thus adopted the surname Dayan. In Jewish eschatology , the term mashiach , or " Messiah ", came to refer to a future Jewish king from

1360-460: The House of Saul with his own and becoming the country's third king. He was succeeded by his son Solomon , whose mother was Bathsheba . Solomon's death led to the rejection of the House of David by most of the Twelve Tribes of Israel , with only Judah and Benjamin remaining loyal: the dissenters chose Jeroboam as their monarch and formed the Kingdom of Israel in the north ( Samaria ); while

1440-745: The Israelite tribes (the Jebusites still held Jerusalem ), Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes. Judah's portion is described in Joshua 15 as encompassing all the Southern Land of Israel , specially the Negev , the Wilderness of Zin and Jerusalem. However, the consensus of modern scholars is that this conquest never occurred. Other scholars point to extra-biblical references to Israel and Canaan as evidence for

1520-507: The Jehoash Tablet recalls deeds performed by Jehoash of Judah , who reigned about 44 years before Uzziah; however, scholars are tensely divided on whether or not the inscription is genuine. After Uzziah, each successive king of Judah is attested to in some form, with the exception of Amon of Judah : Jotham , Uzziah's successor, is named on the seals of his own son and successor, Ahaz , who ruled from 732 to 716 BCE. Hezekiah , Ahaz's son,

1600-853: The Land of Israel , usher in an era of peace, build the Third Temple , father a male heir, re-institute the Sanhedrin , and so on. Jewish tradition alludes to two redeemers, both of whom are called mashiach and are involved in ushering in the Messianic age : Mashiach ben David ; and Mashiach ben Yosef . In general, the term Messiah unqualified refers to Mashiach ben David (Messiah, son of David). In 2012, The Jerusalem Post reported that philanthropist Susan Roth created Davidic Dynasty as subsidiary of her Eshet Chayil Foundation, dedicated to finding, databasing, and connecting Davidic descendants and running

1680-525: The Levites and Kohanim were preserved, but Jerusalem became the sole place of worship and sacrifice among the returning exiles, northerners and southerners alike. According to the biblical account, at its height, the tribe of Judah was the leading tribe of the Kingdom of Judah, and occupied most of the territory of the kingdom, except for a small region in the northeast occupied by Benjamin , and an enclave towards

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1760-664: The Maccabees , established their own monarchy in Judea following their revolt against the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty . The Hasmoneans were not considered connected to the Davidic line nor to the Tribe of Judah . The Levites had always been excluded from the Israelite monarchy, so when the Maccabees assumed the throne in order to rededicate the defiled Second Temple , a cardinal rule

1840-582: The genealogies of Jesus in the New Testament . One Christian interpretation of the Davidic line counts the line as continuing to Jesus son of Joseph , according to the genealogies which are written in Matthew 1 :1-16 descendants of Solomon and Luke 3 :23-38 descendants of Nathan son of David through the line of Mary. Because Jews have historically believed that the Messiah will be a male-line descendant of David,

1920-484: The "Jeremiah" Deuteronomists represent a distinct party from the "DtrH" Deuteronomists, with opposing agendas. Deuteronomy is conceived of as a covenant (a treaty) between the Israelites and Yahweh , who has chosen ("elected") the Israelites as his people and requires them to live according to his law. Israel is to be a theocracy with Yahweh as the divine suzerain . The law is to be supreme over all other sources of authority, including kings and royal officials, and

2000-499: The "united monarchy" are exaggerated, and a minority believe that the "united monarchy" never existed at all. Disagreeing with the latter view, Old Testament scholar Walter Dietrich contends that the biblical stories of circa 10th-century BCE monarchs contain a significant historical kernel and are not simply late fictions. On the accession of Rehoboam , Solomon 's son, in c. 930 BCE, the Ten Northern Tribes of Israel under

2080-404: The 11th century; according to one version Hezekiah ben David , who was the last Exilarch and also the last Gaon , was imprisoned and tortured to death. Two of his sons fled to Al-Andalus, where they found refuge with Joseph, the son and successor of Samuel ibn Naghrillah . However, The Jewish Quarterly Review mentions that Hezekiah was liberated from prison, and became head of the academy, and

2160-463: The Bible. In David's time, the capital probably served as little more than a formidable citadel, and the Davidic "kingdom" was most likely closer to a loosely-confederated regional polity, albeit a relatively substantial one. On the other hand, excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa and Eglon , as well as structures from Hazor , Gezer , Megiddo and other sites conventionally dated to the 10th century BCE, are interpreted by many scholars to show that Judah

2240-583: The Book of Jeremiah occurring some time before the end of the Exile (pre-539 BCE) – a process which also involved the prophetic books of Amos and Hosea . The biblical text records about the "authors" of the Deuteronomistic works that Jeremiah the prophet used scribes such as Baruch to accomplish his ends. It is also noteworthy that the Deuteronomistic History never mentions Jeremiah and some scholars believe that

2320-525: The Book of Judges is a reliable historical account. The Book of Samuel describes God's repudiation of a monarchic line arising from the Southern Tribe of Benjamin due to the sinfulness of King Saul , which was then bestowed onto the tribe of Judah for all time in the person of King David . In Samuel's account, after the death of Saul, all the tribes other than Judah remained loyal to the House of Saul, while Judah chose David as its king. However, after

2400-409: The Davidic king is not totally preserved, as much of the stele has not survived since the 9th century BCE. All that remains of the name is the final syllable, the extremely common theophoric suffix -yahū . Because the stele coincides the death of the Davidic king with the death of [Jeho]ram , the king of the Kingdom of Samaria , scholars have reconstructed the second slain king as Ahaziah of Judah ,

2480-721: The Davidic line was largely excluded from the royal house in Judea, but some members had risen to prominence as religious and communal leaders. One of the most notable of those was Hillel the Elder , who moved to Judea from his birthplace in Babylon. His great-grandson Simeon ben Gamliel became one of the Jewish leaders during the First Jewish–Roman War . The Exilarchate in the Sasanian Empire

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2560-654: The Davidic line, refusing to accept Solomon's son, Rehoboam , and instead chose as king Jeroboam and formed the northern Kingdom of Israel . This kingdom was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE which exiled much of the Northern Kingdom population and ended its sovereign status. The bulk population of the Northern Kingdom of Israel was forced to relocate to Mesopotamia and mostly disappeared from history as The Ten Lost Tribes or intermixed with exiled Judean populations two centuries later, while

2640-562: The Davidic line, who is expected to be anointed with holy anointing oil and rule the Jewish people during the Messianic Age . The Messiah is often referred to as "King Messiah", or, in Hebrew, מלך משיח ( melekh mashiach ), and, in Aramaic, malka meshiḥa . Orthodox views have generally held that the Messiah will be a patrilineal descendant of King David , and will gather the Jews back into

2720-480: The Elder and therefore also from the Davidic dynasty; however, this claim is widely disputed, by many scholars such as Otto Muneles. Hai Gaon was the son of Sherira Gaon , who claimed descent from Rabbah b. Abuha , who belonged to the family of the exilarch, thereby claiming descent from the Davidic line. Sherira's son-in-law was Elijah ben Menahem HaZaken . The patriarch of the Meisels family , Yitskhak Eizik Meisels,

2800-559: The House of David in the male line. The position holder was regarded as a king-in-waiting, residing in Babylonia in the Achaemenid Empire as well as during the classic era. The Seder Olam Zutta attributes the office to Zerubbabel , a member of the Davidic line, who is mentioned as one of the leaders of the Jewish community in the 6th century BC, holding the title of Achaemenid Governor of Yehud Medinata . The Hasmoneans, also known as

2880-445: The House of David. These tribes formed the Kingdom of Judah , which existed until Judah was conquered by Babylon in c. 586 BCE and the population was deported. When the Jews returned from Babylonian exile , residual tribal affiliations were abandoned, probably because of the impossibility of reestablishing previous tribal land holdings. However, the special religious roles decreed for

2960-625: The Karaite Exilarchs have been referred to above. A number of Jewish families in the Iberian peninsula and within Mesopotamia continued to preserve the tradition of descent from Exilarchs in the Late Middle Ages , including the families of Abravanel , ibn Yahya and Ben-David. Several Ashkenazi scholars also claimed descent from King David. On his father's side, Rashi has been claimed to be

3040-569: The King David Legacy Center in Jerusalem. In 2020, Roth chose Brando Crawford, a descendant from both grandfathers, to represent the organization internationally. The King David Legacy Center has seen support from Haredi Jews in Jerusalem. In the Christian interpretation the " Davidic covenant " of a Davidic line in 2 Samuel 7 is understood in various ways, traditionally referring to

3120-615: The Kingdom of Judah fell to the Neo-Babylonian Empire . Nearly 450 years later, the Hasmonean dynasty established the first independent Jewish kingdom since the Babylonian conquest, though it was not considered to be connected to the Davidic line nor to the Tribe of Judah. In Jewish eschatology , the Messiah ( מָשִׁיחַ ) will be a Jewish king whose paternal bloodline traces to David. He

3200-518: The Tetrateuch and Jeremiah . Since the mid-20th century, scholars have imagined the Deuteronomists as country Levites , a junior order of priests, or as prophets in the tradition of the northern Kingdom of Israel , or as sages and scribes at the royal court. Recent scholarship has interpreted the book as involving all these groups, and the origin and growth of Deuteronomism is usually described in

3280-436: The Tribe of Judah has conquered"), one of many names for Jesus of Nazareth. Deuteronomistic history The Deuteronomist , abbreviated as either Dtr or simply D , may refer either to the source document underlying the core chapters (12–26) of the Book of Deuteronomy , or to the broader "school" that produced all of Deuteronomy as well as the Deuteronomistic history of Joshua , Judges , Samuel , Kings , and also

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3360-507: The death of Ish-bosheth , Saul's son and successor to the throne of Israel, all the other Israelite tribes made David, who was then the King of Judah, king of a single Re-United Kingdom of Israel. The Book of Kings follows the expansion and unparalleled glory of the United Monarchy under King Solomon . A majority of scholars believe that the accounts concerning David and Solomon's territory in

3440-404: The death of Ish-bosheth , chose him to be their king as well. All subsequent kings in both the ancient first united Kingdom of Israel and the later Kingdom of Judah claimed direct descent from King David to validate their claim to the throne in order to rule over the Israelite tribes. After the death of David's son, King Solomon , the ten northern tribes of the Kingdom of Israel rejected

3520-665: The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Many more Jews migrated to Babylon in CE 135 after the Bar Kokhba revolt and in the centuries after. The triumph or victory of "the Lion of the Tribe of Judah", who is able to open the scroll and its seven seals , forms part of the vision of the writer of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Ethiopia 's traditions, recorded and elaborated in

3600-456: The early 500s BC, when Jeremiah cursed the main branch of the Solomonic line, by saying that no descendant of "[Je]Coniah" would ever reign on the throne of Israel again ( Jeremiah 22:30 ). Some Christian commentators also believe that this same "curse" is the reason why Zerubbabel , the rightful Solomonic king during the time of Nehemiah , was not given a kingship under the Persian empire . The Tree of Jesse (a reference to David's father)

3680-413: The families of the "Sons of the Free" are the families of Abravanel and Benveniste . In his book, A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France , Arthur J. Zuckerman proposes a theory that from 768 to 900 CE a Jewish Princedom ruled by members of the Exilarchs existed in feudal France. However, this theory has been widely contested. Descendants of the house of exilarchs were living in various places long after

3760-407: The following terms: Deuteronomy was formed by a complex process that reached probably from the 7th century BCE to the early 5th. It consists of a historical prologue; an introduction; the Deuteronomic Code followed by blessings and curses; and a conclusion. The book's core is the law code (chapters 12–26). 2 Kings 22 – 23 tells how a "Book of the Law," commonly identified with the law code,

3840-443: The king, particularly Hezekiah . After the Assyrians destroyed their cities, survivors fled to Jerusalem and fully assimilated with the inhabitants by 538 BC, when the Babylonian exiles returned to Jerusalem. Many of the Jewish leaders and prophets of the Hebrew Bible claimed membership in the tribe of Judah. For example, the literary prophets Isaiah , Amos , Joel , Micah , Obadiah , Zechariah , and Zephaniah , all belonged to

3920-496: The last five years an increasing number of commentators have expressed grave doubts about fundamental tenets of Noth's classic study." The prose sermons in the Book of Jeremiah are written in a style and outlook closely akin to, yet different from, the Deuteronomistic history. Scholars differ over how much of the book is from Jeremiah himself and how much from later disciples, but the Swiss scholar Thomas Römer has recently identified two Deuteronomistic "redactions" (editings) of

4000-564: The late 1960s. In 1968, Frank Moore Cross made an important revision, suggesting that the history was first written in the late 7th century BCE as a contribution to King Josiah of Judah 's program of reform (the Dtr1 version), and only later revised and updated by Noth's 6th-century author (Dtr2). Dtr1 saw Israel's history as a contrast between God's judgment on the sinful northern Kingdom of Israel of Jeroboam I , who set up golden calves to be worshiped in Bethel and Dan, and virtuous Judah, where faithful king David had reigned and where now

4080-417: The leadership of Jeroboam from the Tribe of Ephraim split from the House of David to create the Northern Kingdom in Samaria . The Book of Kings is uncompromising in its low opinion of its larger and richer neighbor to the north and understands its conquest by Assyria in 722 BCE as divine retribution for the Kingdom's return to idolatry. The Tribes of Judah, Southern Dan and Benjamin remained loyal to

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4160-528: The lineage of Jesus is sometimes cited as a reason why Jews do not believe that he was the Messiah. As the proposed son of God, he could not have been a male descendant of David because according to the genealogy of his earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, he did not have the proper lineage, because he would not have been a male descendant of Mary, and Joseph, who was a descendant of Jeconiah , because Jeconiah's descendants are explicitly barred from ever ruling Israel by God. Another Christian interpretation emphasizes

4240-405: The loyalists kept Solomon's son Rehoboam as their monarch and formed the Kingdom of Judah in the south ( Judea ). With the success of Jeroboam's Revolt having severed Israel's connection to the House of David, only the Judahite monarchs, except Athaliah , were part of the Davidic line. In the aftermath of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem around 587 BCE, Solomon's Temple was destroyed and

4320-421: The minor, non-royal, line of David through Solomon 's brother Nathan as it is recorded in the Gospel of Luke chapter 3 (entirely undocumented in the Hebrew Bible), which is often understood to be the family tree of Mary's father. A widely spread traditional Christian interpretation relates the non-continuation of the main Davidic line from Solomon to the godlessness of the line of Jehoiachin which started in

4400-459: The office became extinct. The grandson of Hezekiah ben David through his eldest son David ben Chyzkia, Hiyya al-Daudi , died in 1154 in Castile according to Abraham ibn Daud and is the ancestor of the ibn Yahya family. Several families, as late as the 14th century, traced their descent back to Josiah, the brother of David ben Zakkai who had been banished to Chorasan (see the genealogies in [Lazarus 1890] pp. 180 et seq.). The descendants of

4480-427: The only king contemporary to Jehoram with a name ending in -yahū . The earliest unambiguously attested king from the Davidic line is Uzziah , who reigned in the 8th century BCE, about 75 years after Ahaziah, who is named on bullae seals belonging to his servants Abijah and Shubnayahu. Uzziah may also be mentioned in the annals of Tiglath-Pileser III ; however, the texts are largely fragmentary. Additionally,

4560-404: The position of some scholars, as described by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman , authors of The Bible Unearthed , espouses that David and Solomon may well be based on "certain historical kernels", and probably did exist in their own right, but their historical counterparts simply could not have ruled over a wealthy lavish empire as described in the Bible, and were more likely chieftains of

4640-502: The potential historicity of the conquest. In the opening words of the Book of Judges , following the death of Joshua , the Israelites "asked the Lord" which tribe should be first to go to occupy its allotted territory, and the Tribe of Judah was identified as the first tribe. According to the narrative in the Book of Judges, the Tribe of Judah invited the Tribe of Simeon to fight with them in alliance to secure each of their allotted territories. However, many scholars do not believe that

4720-445: The prophets are the guardians of the law: prophecy is instruction in the law as given through Moses, the law given through Moses is the complete and sufficient revelation of the Will of God, and nothing further is needed. Under the covenant, Yahweh promised the Israelites the land of Canaan , but the promise was conditional: they would lose the land if they were unfaithful. The Deuteronomistic history explains successes and failures as

4800-432: The remaining Israelite peoples in Samaria highlands have become known as Samaritans during the classic era and to modern times. Later rabbinical authorities granted the office of exilarch to family members that traced its patrilineal descent from David , King of Israel. The highest official of Babylonian Jewry was the exilarch ( Reish Galuta , "Head of the Diaspora"). Those who held the position traced their ancestry to

4880-451: The result of faithfulness, which brings success, or disobedience, which brings failure; the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 721 BCE and the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians in 586 BCE are Yahweh's punishment for continued sinfulness. Deuteronomy insists on the centralisation of worship "in the place that the Lord your God will choose"; Deuteronomy never says where this place will be, but Kings makes it clear that it

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4960-440: The righteous Josiah was reforming the kingdom. The exilic Dtr2 supplemented Dtr1's history with warnings of a broken covenant, an inevitable punishment and exile for the sinful (in Dtr2's view) Kingdom of Judah . Cross's "dual redaction" model is probably the most widely accepted, but a considerable number of European scholars prefer an alternative model put forward by Rudolf Smend and his pupils. This approach holds that Noth

5040-419: The second half of the 6th century, have been preserved. The Exilarchate in Mesopotamia was officially restored after the Arab conquest in the 7th century and continued to function during the early Caliphates . Exilarchs continued to be appointed until the 11th century, with some members of the Davidic line dispersing across the Islamic world. There are conflicting accounts of the fate of the Exilarch family in

5120-448: The south-west which was occupied by Simeon . Bethlehem and Hebron were initially the main cities within the territory of the tribe. The size of the territory of the tribe of Judah meant that in practice it had four distinct regions: According to the Torah , the Tribe consisted of Descendants of Judah , the fourth son of Jacob and of Leah . Some biblical scholars view this as an etiological myth created in hindsight to explain

5200-538: The southern kingdom being too far away to be involved in the battle, but Israel Finkelstein et al. claim the alternative explanation that the southern kingdom was simply an insignificant rural backwater at the time the poem was written. Professor Aaron Demsky argues that the genealogical record of Shelah and his sons was an allegory of the history of Shelanite clans in Shephelah (i.e. Judean foothills). These clans established cities such as Lecah (or Lachish ) and Mareshah . They also worked as potters and craftsmen for

5280-402: The structures to the Iron Age I is accurate, show that Jerusalem was at least somewhat populated in King David's time, and lends some credence to the biblical claim that Jerusalem was originally a Canaanite fortress; however, Jerusalem seems to have been barely developed until long after David's death, bringing into question the possibility that it could have been the imperial capital described in

5360-437: The title " Nasi " in the communities and were called "free men". They had a special economic and social status in the Jewish community, and they were close to their respective governments, some serving as advisers and tax collectors/finance ministers. These families had special rights in Narbonne, Barcelona, and Castile. They possessed real estate and received the title " Don " and  de la Kblriih ( De la Cavalleria ). Among

5440-427: The tribe's name and connect it to the other tribes in the Israelite confederation. With Leah as a matriarch, biblical scholars regard the tribe as having been believed by the text's authors to have been part of the original Israelite confederation. Like the other tribes of the Kingdom of Judah, the Tribe of Judah is entirely absent from the ancient Song of Deborah . Traditionally, this has been explained as being due to

5520-403: The tribe. The genealogies given in Matthew 1:1–6 and Luke 3:23–34 in the New Testament describe Jesus as a Descendant of David, Matthew through Solomon and Luke through Nathan . As part of the Kingdom of Judah, the tribe of Judah survived the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians , and instead was subjected to the Babylonian captivity ; when the captivity ended, the distinction between

5600-467: The tribes were lost in favour of a common identity. Since Simeon and Benjamin had been very much the junior partners in the Kingdom of Judah, it was Judah that gave its name to the identity—that of the Jews . After the fall of Jerusalem, Babylonia (modern-day Iraq), would become the focus of Judaism for 1,000 years. The first Jewish communities in Babylonia started with the exile of the tribe of Judah to Babylon by Jehoiachin in 597 BCE as well as after

5680-494: The work of a single 6th-century BCE author/compiler seeking to explain recent events (the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile ) using the theology and language of the Book of Deuteronomy . The author used his sources with a heavy hand, depicting Joshua as a grand, divinely guided conquest, Judges as a cycle of rebellion and salvation, and the story of the kings as recurring disaster due to disobedience to God. A series of studies that modified Noth's original concept began in

5760-481: The worship of Yahweh featured prominently in the Deuteronomistic history , encompassing the books of Deuteronomy through II Kings , which most scholars agree was reduced to written form, although subject to exilic and post-exilic alterations and emendations, during the reign of the Judahite reformer Josiah from 641–609 BCE. According to the account in the Book of Joshua , following a partial conquest of Canaan by

5840-539: Was added during Josiah's time, thus creating the earliest version of Deuteronomy as a book, and the historical prologue (chapters 1–4:43) was added still later to turn Deuteronomy into an introduction to the entire Deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy to Kings). The term was coined in 1943 by the German biblical scholar Martin Noth to explain the origin and purpose of Joshua , Judges , Samuel , and Kings . These, he argued, were

5920-627: Was an alleged 10th generation descendant of the Exilarch, Mar Ukba . The Berduga family of Meknes claim paternal descent from the Exilarch, Bostanai . The Jewish banking family Louis Cahen d'Anvers claimed descent from the Davidic Line Rabbi Yosef Dayan , who is a modern-day claimant to the Davidic throne in Israel and the founder of the Monarchist party Malchut Israel , descends from

6000-621: Was briefly abolished as a result of a revolt by the Mar-Zutra II in the late 5th century CE, with his son Mar-Zutra III being denied the office and relocating to Tiberias , then within the Byzantine Empire . Mar Ahunai lived in the period succeeding Mar Zutra II, but for almost fifty years after the failed revolt he did not dare to appear in public, and it is not known whether even then ( c.  550 ) he really acted as Exilarch. The names of Kafnai and his son Haninai, who were Exilarchs in

6080-680: Was broken. According to scholars within Orthodox Judaism , this is considered to have contributed to their downfall and the eventual downfall of Judea; internal strife allowing for Roman occupation and the violent installation of Herod the Great as client king over the Roman province of Judea ; and the subsequent destruction of the Second Temple by the future Emperor Titus . During the Hasmonean period,

6160-449: Was capable of accommodating large-scale urban societies centuries before minimalist scholars claim, and some have taken the physical archaeology of tenth-century Canaan as consistent with the former existence of a unified state on its territory, as archaeological findings demonstrate substantial development and growth at several sites, plausibly related to the tenth century. Even so, as for David and his immediate descendants themselves,

6240-457: Was found in the Temple in Jerusalem during the reign of Josiah . According to the story in 2 Kings, reading the book caused Josiah to embark on a series of religious reforms, and it has been suggested that it was written to validate this program. Notwithstanding, it is generally accepted that at least some of the laws are much earlier than Josiah. The introduction to the code (chapters 4:44–11:32)

6320-482: Was right to locate the composition of the history in the 6th century, but that further redactions took place after the initial composition, including a "nomistic" (from the Greek word for "law"), or DtrN, layer, and a further layer concerned with the prophets, abbreviated as DtrP. For a time, the Deuteronomistic history enjoyed "canonical" status in biblical studies. However, writing in 2000, Gary N. Knoppers noted that "in

6400-415: Was the lion, and it was often represented in Jewish art. After the Babylonian captivity , the distinction between the Tribes was largely lost, but the term "Judah" gave rise to the word " Jews " In later traditions, including Christianity and Ethiopian Judaism, the " Lion of the Tribe of Judah " became a messianic symbol. The tribe of Judah, its conquests, and the centrality of its capital in Jerusalem for

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