Twelve Tribes of Israel

In post modern scholarship, there is skepticism as to whether there ever were twelve Israelite tribes, with the use of the number 12 thought more likely to signify a symbolic tradition as part of a national founding myth,[1] although most scholars disagree with this opinion.

[2] Jacob, later called Israel, was the second-born son of Isaac and Rebecca, the younger twin brother of Esau, and the grandson of Abraham and Sarah.

The sons of Jacob were born in Padan-aram from different mothers, as follows:[4] Deuteronomy 27:12–13 lists the twelve tribes: Jacob elevated the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh (the two sons of Joseph and his Egyptian wife Asenath)[5] to the status of full tribes in their own right due to Joseph receiving a double portion after Reuben lost his birth right because of his transgression with Bilhah.

[6] In the biblical narrative the period from the conquest of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua until the formation of the United Kingdom of Israel passed with the tribes forming a loose confederation, described in the Book of Judges.

Modern scholarship has called into question the beginning, middle, and end of this picture[7][8] and the account of the conquest under Joshua has largely been abandoned.

According to the Babylonian Talmud (Baba Bathra 106b), the lots did not actually function as a legal allocation of property but only clarified the division.

[35] Translator Paul Davidson argued:[36] "The stories of Jacob and his children, then, are not accounts of historical Bronze Age people.

Rather, they tell us how much later Jews and Israelites understood themselves, their origins, and their relationship to the land, within the context of folktales that had evolved over time."

They may indeed partly reflect dim reminiscences of the Hebrews' tribal past, but in their specific detail they are fiction.

"[39] Norman Gottwald argued that the division into twelve tribes originated as an administrative scheme under King David.

[42][43] Recent studies of genetic markers within Jewish populations strongly suggest that modern Ashkenazi Levites (Jewish males who claim patrilineal descent from the Tribe of Levi) are descendants of a single Levite ancestor who came to Europe from the Middle East roughly 1,750 years ago.

This means that a relatively small number of original ancestors have had a large impact on the genetic makeup of today's Ashkenazi population.