For many years, archaeologists and theologians accepted the biblical descriptions on the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel at face value, and therefore explained the formation of this territorial polity against the background of an “historical incident”—i.e., the division of the United Monarchy in the late 10th century BCE. Following many studies, which demonstrated the highly ideological nature of the biblical descriptions of the United Monarchy, scholars began to search for other explanations for the formation of the Northern Kingdom. Some, for instance, emphasized the settlement oscillations in the central hill country, and correlated the settling of semi-nomadic groups in the northern highlands during the Iron I with the social components from which the Northern Kingdom emerged. Other scholars linked the emergence of the House of Omri, one of the most important local dynasties, to internal competition between different social groups in the northern highlands. Such studies exemplify that the processes which led to the establishment of the Northern Kingdom were much more complicated than what is described in the biblical sources, and, in fact, presents a very different picture.

In this course we will discuss the environmental, social and political conditions which led to the formation of the Northern Kingdom, and finally, also to its destruction. The review will cover the timeframe between the collapse of the Late Bronze Age regional systems, and the destruction of Samaria in the second half of the 8th century BCE (ca. 1150–700 BCE). In advance stages of the course we will try to clarify various issues, which concern to the material culture of the Kingdom of Israel and its relations with neighboring polities.