Bryant G. Wood
Background
When the Israelites divided the land following the Conquest, they did so by clan allotment (Nm 33:54). A clan (Hebrew mishpacha) is a subtribal unit characteristic of a nomadic or semi-nomadic society. The primary nature of the clan is that it is a unit of recognizable kinship. It is made up of a number of extended families, each ruled by an elder. In Israelite society, tribal and clan descent was determined through the male line (called patrilineal descent).
Israelite tribal designations can be traced back to the sons of Jacob (Gn 29:31–30:24; 49). Each of his 12 sons became the head of a tribe, with one exception – Joseph. Jacob adopted Joseph’s two eldest sons Ephraim and Manasseh as his own, so that they became tribes of equal status with Jacob’s other 11 sons. Technically, then, there were 13 tribes. However, since the tribe of Levi was devoted to religious service, it did not receive a land allotment (Jos 13:14). Thus, the land was divided among 12 tribes (12 original sons, less Levi and Joseph, plus Ephraim and Manasseh).
An Israelite was identified by his extended family (Hebrew, beth ab, “house of the father”), clan (mishpacha), and tribe (Hebrew shebet) (see
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Jos 7:16–18). The name of each clan came from its patriarch, a descendant of one of the sons of Jacob. Each clan existed for the good of the constituent families and was governed by the elders, i.e., the heads of each of the families that made up the clan. Additionally, in time of war, clans apparently supplied a military unit of fighting men, an ‘eleph (Mendenhall 1958). The term ‘eleph has been incorectly translated “1,000” in many passages of the Old Testament, leading to a misunderstanding of some of the numbers quoted.
In this article, we will focus on the clans of the half-tribe of Manasseh that settled in Canaan. A very important archaeological discovery has been made relating to these clans.
At the time Joshua divided the land, half of the tribe of Manasseh received an inheritance in Transjordan east of the Jordan river (Jos 13:29–31), and the other half received an inheritance in Canaan west of the Jordan river (Jos 17:1–13). The half-tribe in Canaan received 10 tracts of land, one for each of Gilead’s five sons and one for each of Zelophehad’s five daughters (Jos 17:5). Gilead, who descended from Makir, the firstborn of Manasseh, who was the firstborn of Joseph, son of Jacob (Jos 17:1), had a total of six sons. The five clans named after the sons of Gilead that received an allotment were Abiezer, Asriel, Helek, Shechem and Shemida (Jos 17:2).
The sixth son, Hepher, was a special case. He had a son Zelophehad who had only daughters. That presented a problem, since lineage and land ownership was through the males in the family. Concerned that they would lose their family allotment, the daughters of Zelophehad brought their case before Moses and the leaders of Israel while the tribes were camped in the plains of Moab about to cross the Jordan river and attack Jericho (Nm 27:1–11; Jos 17:3–6). The daughters won their suit and were given allotments along with the brothers of their father. As a result, clans were named after the five daughters of Zelophehad: Hoglah, Mahlah, Milcah, Noah and Tirzah (Nm 26:33; 27:1; 36:11; Jos 17:3). An addendum to the case was a later ruling that the daughters of Zelophehad had to marry within the clan of their father in order to prevent land from being transferred to another tribe through marriage (Nm 36).
Samaria Ostracon 27: “In the 15th year from [the clan/district of] Helek to Asa Ahimelek. Baala [the] Baalmeonite.”
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The territory given to the 10 clans of Manasseh is outlined in Joshua 17:7–13. It is the area south of the Jezreel Valley, extending to a few miles south of Shechem/Mt. Gerizim, and running from the Jordan Valley on the east to the Mediterranean on the west. In the early periods of Biblical history, the most important city in the tribal area of Manasseh was Shechem. But then, in ca. 880 BC, Omri, king of the Northern Kingdom, purchased land 8 mi to the northwest of Shechem from a man named Shemer and built a new capital. He named it Samaria after the former owner (1 Kgs 16:24). Samaria remained the capital and most important city of the Northern Kingdom until its capture by the Assyrians in 722 BC (2 Kgs 17:5–6).
That is the background to our story, now let us look at the archaeological discovery relating to the clans of Manasseh.
The Findings of Archaeology
In 1910 the Harvard expedition at Samaria under the direction of G.A. Reisner discovered 63 potsherds with inscriptions written in ink (called “ostraca,” singular “ostracon”). Although seemingly mundane in nature, they remain the earliest corpus of ancient Hebrew writing yet found. The precise dating of the documents has been controversial, but they most likely come from the overlapping reigns of Jehoash and Jeroboam II, 784–783 BC
Clan locations according to the Samaria Ostaca.
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(Rainey 1988). They are records of the receipt of oil and wine from various places in the region, sent to officials in Samaria. The documents are an important source of information on personal and place names in the early eighth century BC, and for studying administrative, political and social practices of the day. Of special interest to students of the Bible is the fact that 30 of the ostraca give the name of the clan or district from which the shipment was made. By this time, the clan names no doubt represented geographical areas rather than groups of extended families.
What about these clan/district names from the ancient tribal area of Manasseh? Are they different from those given in the Bible? One would expect that clan names in use in the late 15th century when the Israelites first entered the land would have long passed out of use by the time of the Samaria Ostraca in the early eighth century BC. But guess what? They are exactly the same! Of the 10 clan names given in the books of Numbers and Joshua, seven are recorded in the Samaria Ostraca. And there are no clan names in the Samaria Ostraca that are different from the clan names listed in the Bible. Following is a listing of the clan names found:
Joshua 17:2–3
Samaria Ostraca
Sons of Gilead:
Abiezer
Abiezer (1 ostracon)
Asriel
Asriel (2 ostraca)
Helek
Helek (6 ostraca)
Shechem
Shechem (1 ostracon)
Shemida
Shemida (17 ostraca)
Daughters of Zelophehad:
Hoglah
Hoglah (2 ostraca)
Mahlah
(unattested)
Milcah
(unattested)
Noah
Noah (1 ostracon)
Tirzah
(unattested)
Apparently, the district of Shemida was very active in oil and wine production!
Beyond the legal rulings concerning Zelophehad’s daughters, and the mention of Gideon as being from the clan of Abiezer (Jgs 6:11), the Bible tells us nothing more about these clans or their founders. Yet, the Samaria Ostraca provide evidence of the reality of the clans and the individuals they were named after. The implications of the documents, however, go even further.
The Samaria Ostraca undermine the theory that the Israelites came into being only in the 12th century BC from disparate indigenous Canaanite groups who were formerly urbanites. Urbanites were not organized according to a tribal/clan
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social system. That is the mark of a nomadic society. The clan designations still in use in the early eighth century BC is in keeping with the Biblical record, which clearly portrays the Israelites as having their roots in a nomadic society.
Another way in which the Samaria Ostraca verify the accuracy of the Biblical record is the fact that the ostraca place the clans of Manasseh in precisely the area the Bible says was assigned to them. In addition, the accuracy of transmission of the Old Testament is demonstrated. The clan names in the Samaria Ostaca written in the early eighth century BC are spelled exactly the same as the names in our Old Testament texts (the oldest of which are from the tenth century AD)! Those names were accurately preserved in the Old Testament from the time the Israelites entered Canaan in the late 15th century BC until modern times.
These humble potsherds with ink inscriptions from Samaria are more than innocuous receipts from an ancient capital. They represent nearly 2800-year-old original records that illustrate the historical reliability of the Biblical text, down to the smallest of details.
Bibliography
Aharoni, Y
1979 The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, trans. and ed. by A.F. Rainey. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.
Kaufman, I.T.
1982 The Samaria Ostraca: An Early Witness to Hebrew Writing. Biblical Archaeologist 45: 229–39.
Mendenhall, G.E.
1958 The Census Lists of Numbers 1 and 26. Journal of Biblical Literature 77: 52–56.
Rainey, A.F.
1988 Toward a Precise Date for the Samaria Ostraca. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 272: 69–74.
Reisner, G.A.; Fisher, C.S.; and Lyon, D.G.
1924 Harvard Excavation at Samaria 1908–1910. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Bible and Spade 10:2 (Spring 1997)