The Merneptah Stele, Erected in 1208 BCE, is First Proof of Israel

The Merneptah Stele, erected in 1208 BCE, contains the earliest known mention of Israel outside the Bible. Carved to celebrate Pharoah Merneptah’s victories, it lists Israel separately from Canaanite cities—using grammar that denotes a people group rather than a territory. This distinction is crucial.

Archaeology and linguistics together reveal that Israel existed in Canaan as a decentralized tribal society, matching the biblical account of the Judges period. With no capital, no monarchy, and settlements concentrated in the hill country, Israel fits perfectly into the historical window Scripture provides. The stele places Israel in the land shortly after Joshua’s death and rules out alternative Exodus timelines. The stone doesn’t preach theology—but it speaks history very clearly. And its testimony aligns with the Bible.”

The Canaanites had a pantheon of gods, and the main or chief deity in that culture was named “El” (Baal was a subsidiary God in that same pantheon). This information comes from texts excavated from Ugarit (Lebanon). Parts of the Pentateuch (first 5 books of the hebrew scriptures) also refer to God as “El” or some variant of that. It is thought that Hebrews who called their God “El” lived in the north of Israel, and constituted the “10 lost tribes” of Israel, who were lost from history after the Assyrian defeat.

The name “YHWH ” was used by the 2 southern Hebrew tribes, which included the tribe of Judah (which had Jerusalem as their capital city). The origin of that name for God may be from Midian or other sites south of Israel (where Moses fled from Egypt). Other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures use the word “YHWH” 3,000+ times to refer to the YHVH name of God.

It is hypothesized that, perhaps, when the northern 10 tribes of Israel were defeated and their confederation broken up (around 722 BCE), some of the elites (priests etc) may have fled south to Judah and brought their religious scriptures with them. Eventually what we know as the Hebrew scriptures were constructed, using both the ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ documents as sources, so the names of God (El and YHWH) are sometimes mixed together in the text we have today. This is the basis for some of the ‘couplets’ of text fragments, where the same story seems to be told twice, with some variations, but different names for God.

So the name of God for an ancient Hebrew may depend on whether they lived among the northern tribal zone, or the southern tribal zone, and also the date, as things changed after the (neo)-Assyrian defeat and dissolution of the kingdom of Israel (the northern entity).

Also note that prophets in the old testament constantly rail against Israel (Hebrews) worshiping other gods, which may be an indication that the monotheistic worship of a single god (and the belief that there were truly no other gods) may have been a somewhat later development in the religion of the Hebrews, and to project that concept back to earlier times may be an anachronism.

Both the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) and Judah were Yahwistic. As in, they both considered Yahweh as the “highest” god, but continued to worship other gods. Its a form of polytheism called henotheism . Only after the exile did the Israelites become monotheists. Although there was a Yahweh only party in Jerusalem even before the exile. Kings Hezekiah and Josiah probably pushed for some kind of monotheistic reforms. Although we’re not really sure how much of it is actual history and how much idealizing the past by the writers. In any case the majority of Israelites even in and around Jerusalem stayed polytheists.

Israel is the new God-given name of Jacob (Genesis 35:10), according to the Bible and the followers of the Abrahamic religions. The children of Israel are the descendants of Prophet Jacob.

It is unclear precisely when “Israel” started to refer to an area of land instead of just a group of people; though in the ninth century, Omri, King of Israel, is associated with a specific area north of Judah.

The Merneptah Stele, erected in Egypt in 1208 BCE, is an Egyptian victory stele erected by Pharaoh Merneptah that tells how he (and his army) defeated the Libyans, and put down uprisings in Canaanite cities, followed by a claim about the destruction of a people called “Israel”. The Egyptian inscription describes the Israelites as a stateless group of semi-nomadic men and women inhabiting Canaan at a time when Canaan was under Egyptian rule. Pharaoh Merneptah groups them together with several Egyptian-ruled city states in Canaan that were crushed.

The Hebrew’s Exodus from Egypt occurred just a generation or two prior to this 1208 BCE victory stele. Pharaoh Merneptah’s totally false claim that Israel had been destroyed is evidence that the Pharaohs were still angry that the Pharaoh of the Exodus had been defeated by the one, imageless, God of the Hebrews.

In the Book of Exodus itself, in chapter 1, verse 11, where the text talks about the enslaved Israelites being forced to build the cities of Pithom and Ramesses. Those cities did really exist, and were built at around the time of the reign of Ramses 1or 2 (late 13th century BCE).

Almost all of the Bible’s texts were passed down verbally for many generations before they were finally written down. The earliest reference to Prophet Moses from outside the Bible appears in the Egyptian history of Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the 4th century BCE. Parts of it’s account of Moses were passed down to us by Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the 1st century BCE.

Maybe the Sea Peoples, recorded as invading Egypt, Gaza and the Eastern Mediterranean around 1200-1100 BCE, destroyed the early pre-Biblical texts like the song of Prophet Deborah (Judges 5. The Song of Deborah (there were 7 female Biblical prophets) as an ancient victory hymn sung by the prophetess Deborah and her military commander Barak, after the Israelites defeated the Canaanite army of King Jabin, but whose identity of this seaborne coalition remains one of antiquity’s greatest whodunits.

Canaanites and Israelis entered the Land about the same time; and should share the land today to fulfill the will of the Holy One; “We will remove whatever bitterness they had in their hearts. Rivers will flow under their feet. And they will say, “Praise be to Allah for guiding us to this. We would have never been guided if Allah had not guided us. The messengers of our Lord had certainly come with the truth.” It will be announced to them, “This is Paradise awarded to you for what you used to do.”” (Quran 7:43) Share now!