The Israelite-Judahite Struggle for the Patrimony of Ancient Israel The Bible describes the people of Israel as a single entity, from the time of its emergence as nation in Egypt, the wanderings through the desert and the conquest of Canaan, to its peak during the United Monarchy, when all twelve tribes were included within the unifying political, religious and cultural bounds of the monarchy. Although the name “Israel” was associated for about two hundred years only with the Northern Kingdom, while the kingdom to its south was called by a different name, for many years scholars assumed that the notion of unity had been preserved throughout the long period of the monarchical division. The names “Israel” and “Israelites” were therefore extended to the early history of Israel and the United Monarchy, as well as to the Kingdom of Judah and its inhabitants throughout the monarchical period and beyond. Questions about the primordial unity of Israel, however, have been raised since the 1990s. Today, it is widely accepted that biblical historiography — which extended the name “Israel” to cover both kingdoms, collectively designating their inhabitants “ Israelites ” — did not, in fact, appear prior to the annexation of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrian empire in 720 BCE 1, and that the extension of the name “Israel” in the prophetic literature to include the Kingdom of Judah and its inhabitants dates no earlier than 720 P.R. DAVIES, In Search of Ancient Israel (JSOTSup 148; Sheffield 1992) 1 11-74 ; idem, The Origins of Biblical Israel (Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 485; New York – London 2007) 1-24; I. FINKELSTEIN – N.A. SILBERMAN, The Bible Unearthed. Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York 2001) 243-250; idem, David and Solomon. In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York 2006) 129-149; idem, “Temple and Dynasty: Hezekiah, the Remaking of Judah and the Rise of the Pan-Israelite Ideology”, JSOT 30 (2006) 259-285; W.M. SCHNIEDEWIND, How the Bible became a Book. The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge 2004) 68-90; R.G. KRATZ, The Composition of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament (London – New York 2005) 181-182, 209, 218-219, 304-306, 309-319.