Kingdom of Judah

The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the House of David for four centuries. Jews are named after Judah, and primarily descend from people who lived in the region. The Hebrew Bible depicts the Kingdom of Judah as one of the two successor states of the United Kingdom of Israel, a term denoting the united monarchy under biblical kings Saul, David, and Solomon and covering the territory of Judah and Israel. However, during the 1980s, some biblical scholars began to argue that the archaeological evidence for an extensive kingdom before the late 8th century BCE is too weak, and that the methodology used to obtain the evidence is flawed. In the 10th and early 9th centuries BCE, the territory of Judah might have been limitedly populated, comprising some fortified sites and many unfortified rural settlements. The Tel Dan Stele, discovered in 1993, shows that the kingdom existed in some form by the middle of the 9th century BCE, but it does not indicate the extent of its power. Recent excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa and other sites, however, support the existence of a centrally organized and urbanized kingdom by the 10th century BCE. In the 7th century BCE, the kingdom's population increased greatly, prospering under Neo-Assyrian vassalage despite Hezekiah's revolt against the Assyrian king Sennacherib. Josiah took advantage of the political vacuum that resulted from Assyria's decline and the emergence of Saite Egyptian rule over the area to enact his religious reforms. The Deuteronomistic history, which recounts the history of the people of Israel from Joshua to Josiah and expresses a worldview based on the legal principles found in the Book of...