The Bible presents Israel as having twelve tribes from both northern Israel and southern Judah. In older northern lists, however, the southern tribes do not appear, and the full list seems to have developed in Judah, after the destruction of Israel. Moreover, the idea that the tribes are descended from Jacob developed even later. The depiction of the twelve tribes comprising Israel is central to Genesis through Kings. Nineteen of the roughly twenty-six complete or nearly complete lists of the tribes in biblical literature appear in these books.[1] Until the 1980s, most scholars assumed that the descriptions of this twelve-tribe...