Andrew Tobolowsky: Were There Really Twelve Tribes of Israel?

Andrew Tobolowsky, “Were There 12 Tribes of Israel?” Biblical Archaeology Review 49, no. 4 (Winter 2023), 66, 68.

So were there actually 12 tribes of Israel? Broadly, I think probably not. I would suggest that the tradition of the 12 tribes was invented in Judah, sometime after the Assyrian conquest of Israel, by expanding a more ancient Israelite tribal tradition, like Judges 5, into a form that included Judah itself. This might have happened for many reasons, including a desire to incorporate Israelite refugees into Judah, to claim greater prestige, or even to claim some former Israelite territory. It was likely also accompanied by the switch of the tribe of Benjamin from Israel to Judah, which would explain why 1 Kings 11 – 12 seems to go back and forth on the number of tribes – one or two – in the Kingdom of Judah.

Ultimately, then, we should probably think of the 12 tribes tradition as an idealized vision of Israelite identity that developed some time after the heyday of Israel’s – and not Judah’s – tribes. This idealized vision may well have been considerably more important to the biblical authors, writing in the sixth through fourth centuries BCE, than to any historic tribe, judging from the lack of epigraphic evidence. Then again, we must have some explanation for the survival of at least a handful of tribes into the late eras of biblical composition and even into the time of the New Testament.