On this channel, I mostly use family tree
charts to explore real world history, although
I do sometimes talk about mythologies and
fictional worlds as well. Over the years,
I've received numerous requests to cover biblical
genealogy but up until today, I've pretty
much avoided the topic. This is because I
know that different people approach the subject
in different ways and I wanted to avoid any
potential misunderstandings. For example,
I know that some people out there believe
that the Bible is100% historical all the way
back to Adam and Eve. Let me say up front
that this is NOT a position that I myself
hold.
Like most mainstream historians, I view the
Bible primarily as a collection of documents
written in many different literary genres
edited over a long period of time whose main
purpose is to make theological points not
to record literal history. However, like most
mainstream historians, I also do recognize
that the Bible does sometimes include references
to real historical people. So, the question
is: At what point in the biblical family tree,
do the characters go from being primarily
mythological or legendary to being primarily
historical? Well, that's the question that
I hope to answer in this video. So regardless
of where you stand on this particular issue,
I hope
that you will find the information that I'm
going to share with you interesting and educational.
Music. Before we begin, let me explain three
key terms that I will be using in this video:
history, mythology, and legend. Let's start
with the word "history". History is a record
of events that happened in real life to real
people. So, for example, we know that, in
the year 49 BC, a man named Julius Caesar
crossed a river called the Rubicon and then
went on to become the dictator of Rome for
the next 5 years before being stabbed to death
by a bunch of Senators. This is not just a
story that someone made up. It's history.
It really happened.Mythology, on the other
hand, IS just a story. A story that someone
made up to explain something or to make a
point. And often, it includes supernatural
elements. So, for example, the ancient Greeks
told a story involving two gods named Zeus
and Prometheus in which Prometheus steals
fire from Zeus and gives it to humans, thus
allowing human culture to advance. Now, most
people today do not think of Zeus and Prometheus
as being real, nor do they think of this story
as being a record of actual events. Instead,
they'd agree that it's "just a story".Now,
as a side note, this doesn't mean that mythology
is not important. In fact, we still use mythology
today, for example in movies and novels, because
mythology can often communicate valuable ideas
in a way that historically based accounts
simply cannot.Finally, we have the word legend.
Legend fits somewhere inbetween mythology
and history. A good example of a legend would
be the story of the Trojan War. That story
includes a character named Menelaus, who was
King of Sparta. Now, we know that Sparta was
indeed a real, historical place. We also know
the exact dates that some of the later kings
of Sparta reigned. But does this mean that
everything we read about Menelaus and the
Trojan War is historical? Well, no. There
very well may have been a real Spartan king
named Menelaus and he may even have gone to
war against a city called Troy. But most of
the details we read in Homer - such as the
part about the wooden horse or the part about
some guy named Achilles being invincible except
for his heel - these things were likely all
embellishments added much later, to make the
story sound more exciting. Kind of like a
movie that is based on a true story but takes
a lot of liberties in the retelling. Okay,
so now that we have some categories to work
with, let's take a look at the biblical family
tree and see which labels we should apply
to which parts.So the first book of the Bible
is Genesis and it starts out with the Creation
story, in which God directly creates the first
two humans, named Adam & Eve. We then get
the Flood story, which occurs about 10 generations
later and involves a man named Noah, who famously
builds a huge boat called an ark so that he
and his family can escape a worldwide flood.Now,
these first two stories are obviously pure
mythology. To believe otherwise is to disregard
everything we know from modern science. But
keep in mind that viewing these stories as
mythology is actually a position
that predates the scientific era. Most Jewish
rabbis will explain to you that the Creation
and Flood stories were never meant to be taken
literally. Even the early Christian writer
Augustine understood this so I think I'm in
pretty good company when it comes to my choice
of label here. Next up, about 10 more generations
down from Noah, are the three patriarchs - Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. Here, the stories get much
more detailed and the setting often involves
place names that we know actually existed
in the real world. But, according to most
historians, we're still dealing primarily
with mythology at this point. You could argue
that it is starting to border on legend because
of the historical place names but the problem
with the place names in Genesis is that they
are off by about 1000 years. So it's kind
of like someone writing a story about the
precolonial Americas but including the cities
of New York and Chicago in the setting. Okay,
so let's continue. Nearer to the end of Genesis,
Jacob gets his name changed to Israel and
has a total of 12 sons who, for reasons I
won't get into in this video, end up living
in Egypt. There, they grow into the Israelite
nation, which consists of 12 tribes.In Egypt,
the Israelites are eventually forced to become
slaves. And this is the situation at the beginning
of the second book of the Bible, called Exodus.
In Exodus, God chooses an Israelite named
Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, back
to the region of Palestine. This is where
we get the famous parting of the Red Sea story.
Then, according to the next four books of
the Bible, the Israelites wander in the desert
for 40 years before they finally conquer Palestine
under the leadership of a guy named Joshua
and then finally settle down there for good.So,
what label should we use here? Well, according
to most historians, the best label for the
Exodus story would still be ... mythology.
You see, we're now dealing with events that
supposedly occurred around 1450 BC. The Egyptians
were keeping really good records by this point
and the fact is, there is no mention of the
Israelites ever having lived in Egypt, having
been slaves there, or of their mass migration
out of the country.
But... it is at this point that we do start
to get glimpses of parallels to real world
history. For example, we know that around
1600 BC, a foreign group known as the Hyksos
invaded Egypt and ruled there for about 100
years before being forced to flee back to
Palestine. Perhaps the memory of this event
formed the basis of the Exodus story. But
let's continue down the family tree. Eventually
the Israelites, now living in Palestine, decide
that they want a king. Their first king is
a guy named Saul from the tribe of Benjamin
but he doesn't work out that well so they
end up going with a guy named David from the
tribe of Judah. David's the guy who killed
the famous giant named Goliath.David then
has a son named Solomon, who was supposedly
super rich and who builds the original temple
in Jerusalem. So, according to the Bible,
there was originally a single, unified Israelite
Kingdom which was centered at Jerusalem and
which had three main kings: Saul, David and
Solomon. According to the chronology given
in the Bible, this unified Kingdom would have
existed around 1000 BC. Now keep that date
in mind because we're going to come back to
it.After the death of Solomon, the Kingdom
gets split in two. There's the Kingdom of
Israel in the North, consisting of 10 tribes,
and there's the Kingdom of Judah in the South,
consisting of just 2 tribes. Judah, however,
keeps the capital city of Jerusalem as well
as the Davidic line of kings. This period
is known as the divided monarchy and it comes
to end when the northern kingdom is conquered
by Assyria, leaving the southern kingdom all
by itself.Okay, so now that we've reached
the point in the biblical family tree where
an Israelite monarchy begins, this is where
most historians would stop using the word
mythology and switch to the word legend instead.
But we're not quite to the point of real history
yet. To explain why, let's go back to that
important date I mentioned earlier - 1000
BC.
This actually represents a pretty important
turning point in world history. It roughly
marks the transition between the Bronze Age
and the Iron Age.The transition started a
few hundred years earlier with an event known
as the Bronze Age collapse in which several
major civilizations - such as the Mycenaean
Greeks and the Egyptian New Kingdom - suddenly
fall apart for reasons that may have involved
climate change. We then get what's called
the Greek Dark Ages for a couple hundred years
before we then see the rise of several new
iron-age civilizations like the Neo-Assyrians
and the Republic of Athens.So strangely enough,
the point in which Israel was supposedly unified
and at its peak of power, occurs during this
ancient dark age. So it's kinda like the lights
go off for a bit and when they come back on,
everything is different and we've got to explain
what happened in the dark. Well, according
to the Bible, during the period when the lights
were out, there was a single, united Israelite
Kingdom that was huge, extremely wealthy,
and centered on Jerusalem, where there was
a large population and a major palace and
temple. But, according to the archaeological
record, when the lights were out, Jerusalem
was just a small town and there was no major
kingdom anywhere in the region. We do find
a potential reference to the "House of David"
later in the archaeological record but nothing
from when David himself supposedly reigned.
So the most likely explanation is that David
and Solomon were in fact local historical
rulers who lived around 1000 BC but that the
Bible greatly exaggerates their wealth and
power. Therefore, the best way to describe
them would be to use the word legend. That
puts them in the same category as King Menelaus
of Sparta.
So let me tell you what really happened during
this period, based on what we know from archaeology.
The first mention of Ancient Israel in the
archaeological record is from the Merneptah
Stele in Egypt, dated to around 1200 BC. In
it, Pharaoh Merneptah brags about conquering
a bunch of people groups in Palestine, including
one called Israel.This makes sense based on
the excavations of settlements from around
this time. It appears that the Israelites
were a distinct group of people living in
the hill country and that other groups of
people were still living in the larger coastal
towns. But then, the Bronze Age collapse occurred
which involved a seafaring group known as
the Sea Peoples destroying most of the coastal
areas.This left the coastal areas mostly empty
and so what happened was that the Israelites
slowly took over these areas for themselves.
So rather than coming from Egypt and conquering
the land all at once, they were likely just
a distinct cultural group that emerged in
the hills and then slowly took over the coast
due to the Bronze age collapse.And there likely
never was a single unified Israelite kingdom.
In fact, what the archaeological record tells
us is that the northern kingdom likely evolved
first and that it was definitely the larger
of the two kingdoms. It was centered on the
city of Samaria where the people were consistently
polytheistic. The smaller, southern kingdom
of Judah centered on Jerusalem came much later
and it was there that the idea of worshipping
just one god likely emerged.So, like I mentioned,
the more powerful Northern Kingdom of Israel
eventually gets defeated by Assyria, leaving
the southern kingdom of Judah all by itself.
And it's when Judah was left all by itself
that the biblical narrative finally moves
into the territory of real world history.
Sure, there's still some theological embellishments
here and there but for the most part, the
characters and locations are 100% historically
accurate.
So why is everything up to this point mythology
or legend but here things suddenly switch
to history? Well, the very obvious answer
is that this is the point in which most of
the Hebrew Bible was actually written and/or
compiled. So it makes sense that the writers
and editors would be historically accurate
when they were talking about the time period
in which they were living but more creative
and imaginative the farther back in time they
went.And how do we know that the characters
from this section are in fact historical?
Well, because, many of their names have been
found in the archaeological record. For example,
if we take the last 10 kings from the Kingdom
of Judah, 6 have been confirmed through Assyrian
or Babylonian records. I hope to do a video
on the Kings of Ancient Israel and Judah later
this year and at that point, I'll go through
those sources in more detail.But for now,
I want to answer one more question about this
period: If the Exodus did not really ever
happen and if a unified Israelite kingdom
centered at Jerusalem did not really ever
exist, then why would the people living in
the Kingdom of Judah at this point in time
make these stories up? Were they just bad
historians? No, not at all.They were very
likely trying to build an argument for a military
conquest in their day and age. Remember, the
Northern Kingdom had just been destroyed by
Assyria. This meant that there was a lot of
vulnerable land nearby, ripe for the taking.
What the biblical writers were saying was:
let's conquer the land now. Let's build a
unified Israelite kingdom now. So the stories
of Joshua and of David were actually sort
of a blueprint for what they wanted to happen
in the near future, not a historical record
of what had happened in the distant past.But
unfortunately for them, the Kingdom of Judah
never did achieve its dream of a grand conquest
and unified kingdom. It actually ended up
being conquered by the Babylonian Empire just
a few generations later.
But the story doesn't end there. Eventually,
the Babylonians were replaced by the Persians
and the famous Persian king Cyrus the Great
allowed the former residents of Judah, now
called Jews, to return to their homeland,
now called Judea, and rebuild their temple.
This begins what's called the Second Temple
Period and this is where the Hebrew Bible
ends.Of course, Christians have what's called
the New Testament, which takes place more
than 500 years after the end of the Hebrew
Bible, which they call the Old Testament.
By that point the Romans were now in charge
of Judea.In the New Testament, the followers
of a man named Jesus claim that Jesus was
the long awaited Jewish Messiah. Central to
their claim was that Jesus was a descendant
of the House of David. So the New Testament
starts with some genealogies that attempt
to connect Jesus back to King David. This
is yet another topic that I hope to cover
in more detail in a future video but for now
let me say this: The view of most mainstream
historians is that the genealogies given in
the New Testament were never meant to be taken
literally and are thus best labeled as legend.
This is because they show clear signs of a
poetic structure and include several important
contradictions. Again, I'll delve more into
that at a later date. So, there you have it.
The genealogical information found in the
Bible is neither 100% fact, more is it 100%
fiction. Rather it is a mix of mythology,
legend, and history.For those of you who would
like a good source for all the details on
the archaeology and scholarship behind the
view I've just presented in this video, I
highly recommend a book called The Bible Unearthed,
written by one of the top Israeli archaeologists
in the world today and one of his American
colleagues. I'll leave a link to that in the
description.
Thanks for watching.
