Hundreds of years before Moses from the heart of the fertile crescent, a semi-circle that stretched from Egypt, the Mediterranean lands of Palestine and Syria, following the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf, there burst a horde of nomadic tribes of Semitic stock known as the Amorites, "Westerners". The empire of the kings of Sumer and Akkad collapsed in 1960 BC under their violent attacks and the Amorites founded a number of states and dynasties. One of these was eventually to become supreme, the first dynasty of Babylon. Some of these Semitic tribes was still nomadic at that time and one of them was the family of Tera the father of Abraham who left with his father Tera their birthplace Ur in the land of the Chaldees to migrate to the land of Haran in Mesopotamia.
The earliest reference to the nation of Israel in a non-Israelite record appears in an inscription of Merenptah, king of Egypt, approximately 1230. before Christ, 'Israel is desolate; it has no seed left'. Another non-Israelite references come in inscriptions of Shalmaneser III of Assyria, about, approximately 853 before Christ, mentioning 'Ahab the Israelite', and of Mesha of Moab, whose victory-inscription, written on the famous Moabite stone about, approximately 830 before Christ makes repeated mention of Israel, including the boast, 'Israel perished utterly for ever' (Genesis 11:31 and 11:3)
They where familiar with the God El for there was numerous Amoritic personal names containing the God El and some contained the element jawhi e.g. jawhi-il meaning El brings about or "he creates" or jawhi-Haddad meaning Haddad brings about or creates. It is conceivable that Yahweh as a proper name was developed by people like the Midianites from what was once a characteristic of the God El, the god of the fathers. But the partriahcs knew God by the name of El. Even in Canaan, Baal-Habad, the God of storm and fertility often mentioned in the Bible, was belived to be the son of the Canaanite High God El. In the case of the religion of the Yahwist, Yahweh is also referred to in other ways, such as Yahweh Olam or Shadday, in the Bible he is also referred to as the "ONE of Sinai" Deuteronomy 33:2 and Judges 5:4.
This god "the one of Sinai" the god Yahweh, a god that works from a mountain (Sinai) like many other gods of the ancient world take for instance Zeus on mount Olympus . Jethro who was Moses' father-in-law, was a Midianite priest and he belonged to a Priestly class in the worship of Yahweh. And it was only from the time of Moses onwards that we hear for the first time of priests in Israel's religious tradition. The ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests by Moses is recorded in Leviticus 8 and in Exodus 29. Secondly the Moses people had not such direct access to Yahweh as the patriarchs had to El. here access was through a mediator Moses or a priest was the mouthpiece through which communication was affected.
The history of Israel starts with a number of clans or small tribes of Hebrews and Aramaeans living in Palestine, living as semi-nomads, in the vicinity of places such as Hebron, Shechem, Penuel, Bethel, and Beer-sheba. It is from these quarters that the so-called patriarchal narratives of Genesis are based on. A group of people, members of a pastoral clan, who were anthropologically related to some of the patriarchal groups left for Egypt during the Reign of the Hyksos pharaohs in order to avoid starvation in Canaan and settled in the Wadi Tumilat. They lived a slave like existence in Egypt.
The early kings of Dynasty 19 drafted these hungry refugees in large numbers into voluntary and partly forced labor gangs for the building of fortified cities on Egypt's frontier. Under these circumstances they might have been completely assimilated to their fellow-serfs had not their ancestral faith been reawakened by Moses. He came to them in the name of the God of their fathers and led some of them out of Egypt amid a series of phenomena in which he taught them evidence of the power of God, who send these signs as a promise of their deliverance. Under the leadership of Moses some left Egypt and entered Canaan, where they occupied the central highlands and mixed with the above mentioned patriarchal groups. In the meantime another group of people, not led by Moses also entered Palestine and settled there under his successor.
Moses was in many ways a legislator; he introduced to those Jews he converted, to Yahweh, a whole legalistic way of life filled with religious laws and rituals. He also appointed for the first time among the Hebrew people priests, yet in his own person he combined the functions of prophet priests and king. He judged their lawsuits and taught them the principles of religious duty; he led them from Egypt to the Jordan. He died, a generation after the Exodus. They too where assimilated into the ranks of the patriarchal groups and the people of Exodus. In due course they formed a religious unity at Shechem and continued to be so for about one and a half centuries.
Composition of the tribes
There exist further a clear distinctions regarding the composition of the people. Firstly, there is a distinction between the forefathers, who worshipped other gods and the group who assembled at Shechem after the conquest as recorded in Joshua 24:2 Secondly it becomes clear that the Hebrews and the Israelite's were not necessarily the same people read 1 Samuel 14:21 " The Hebrews from the country round about, that were on the Philistine side had gone with them to the camp, and changed sides again, to be with the Israelites that were with Saul and Jonathan." Abraham was attached to the Hebrew group Genesis 14:13 "And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Ayr: and these were confederate with Abram". Thirdly it is interesting that neither the confession of faith in Deuteronomy 26 nor Joshua's speech in Joshua 24 makes any mention of Sinai and the giving of the Ten Commandments.
Israel was not a unity right from the time of the exodus; different groups of people who were in some way related to each other, become one large group. Some of these people were descended from the patriarchal groups and were El worshippers. Others shared in the experience of the exodus, while still others were present at Sinai. They eventually came together in Palestine to form a nation. There their several traditions were bonded together. Israel in Hebrew means is, 'God strives'.
This new name was given to Jacob after his night of wrestling at Penuel: 'Your name', said his supernatural antagonist, 'shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven (from the Hebrew word for, 'strive') with God and with men, and have prevailed' (Genesis. 32:28). This account, assigned to Yahwist in the four-document hypothesis, and recorded in Hosea. 12:3, 'in his manhood Jacob strove with God. He strove [, from the same verb] with the angel and prevailed'.
The re-naming is confirmed at Bethel in Genesis. 35:10 (assigned to Priestly Narrative), where God Almighty appears to Jacob and says: 'Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.' 'So', adds the narrator, 'his name was called Israel.' Thenceforward Israel appears throughout the Old Testament as an occasional synonym for Jacob; it is used most frequently when the Patriarch's descendants are called 'the children (or people) of Israel' in Hebrew it is). The nation which according to legend traced its ancestry back to the 12 sons of Jacob, referred to variously as 'Israel' (Genesis. 34:7, etc.), 'the people of Israel' (Ex. 1:8, etc.), 'the (twelve) tribes of Israel' (Genesis. 49:16, 28), 'the Israelites' (Genesis. 32:32, etc.).
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