The framework of this history of the Kingdom of Israel is based on

information provided by epigraphic sources. They show that the religion

and the ethnic identity of Israel connect traditions of semi-nomadic

tribes of the Cisjordanian highland with conceptions and practices of

pastoralists living in Transjordan, Midian, Negeb, and Sinai. They are

known as Shasu in Egyptian texts, which provide the earliest written

sources. The book is divided in six chapters. The first one deals with

the proto-history of Israel in the second millennium B.C., starting with

the mention of the Joseph-El and Simeon tribes in the Egyptian

Execration texts of the 19th-18th centuries B.C. Jacob-El, Reuben, and

Israel appear somewhat later, as well as the Shasu of the Yahwe-El area

in Northern Sinai. The figure of Moses is related to this region and

dates presumably from the second half of the 12th century B.C., when

starts the period of the Judges. Graeco-Aegean Philistines settled in

Canaan in the late 12th century were a serious menace to the

confederation of Israelite tribes whose elders decided ca. 980

B.C. to adopt a royal government system. The first king was Saul,

followed by his son Ishbaal. The unsettled period of David's and

Solomon's reigns (ca. 960-927 B.C.) still belongs to the

transition period from tribal confederacy to monarchy, continued by wars

between Israel and Judah and by internal troubles. This is examined in

chapter II. Chapter III deals with the dynasty of Omri, which ruled from

ca. 882 to 749 B.C., a period documented also by Moabite,

Neo-Assyrian, and Aramaic inscriptions which show that Jehu belonged to

an Omride side-branch and that Jehoram and Ahaziah were killed by

Aramaeans at the battle of Ramoth Gilead (841 B.C.), not by Jehu or his

men. The rule of the Omrides was followed by a restless period and by

Assyrian invasions ending with the annexation of the country to the

Assyrian Empire and deportations of some of its elite, as presented in

chapter IV. Since monotheism goes to the hearth of Israelite

self-understanding, chapter V examines the religion of Israel,

characterized by the cult of El, whose identity was specified by the

full name Yahwe-El. A certain continuity of the Israelite political

entity appears in the Persian period with Samarian governors, often

members of the Sanballat lineage, as proposed in chapter VI.