>>4057339 Previous Bread, Answer to how Israel went from being a person to a nation.
The Old Testament is an ancient history of a nation that was told that the savior of mankind would be tracked through their bloodlines. Because of this, as a religious matter, they literally had to put down a fathers age at the date of the birth of his first son, registered at the Synagogue.
This is why you see all that begetting in the bible. It creates an exact calendar of years from the man Adam, to the birth of Jesus, unbroken.
This is also why the bible is heavily used in the secular world as a calendar upon which we hang things like "what year Anthony Cleopatra.... What year this event or that. The bible is loaded with cities, locations, Kings of ancient worlds. It is an archaeologists treasure.
The lineage is important to draw the prophecy line to Christ. It was official Temple record, like we use a birth certificate today.
The NATION Israel was put on the east side of the Mediterranean, by God, I suspect so that they could keep history by contact with travelers and traders.
It is located right in the middle of the trade routs between Europe, Asia, and Africa. So the Scribes of Israel were able to write about events in other lands through information they got from traders on the route through.
The lineage goes like this"
Abraham bore Isaac, who bore Jacob.
God changed Jacobs name to Israel.
Jacob had 12 sons, each creating one tribe of "Israel"
When they went to Israel, they drew sticks to divide up their tribal lands. All tribes got land except for the priestly tribe Levites, who got the land in every city. Guess what the cities were called? "Sanctuary cities".
So, the name of the Nation was Originally called Israel, after the father of the 12 sons. Note, it was a name given by God, not the mans father, who called him Jacob.
There was a civil war between the tribes. This broke the nation into two Nations.
The Northern 10 Tribes were still called Israel.
The Southern 2 Tribes became the Nation of Judah, from which we get the word "Jew".
Israeli people were expert fighters, and at one point, the Assyrian empire pushed down among the northern tribes. They lived in peace with their idol worshiping neighbors. But, the Assyrians needed a military buffer to the west of the empire, so, they abducted all ten tribes and stuck them up to the east of the Caucus mountains but west of their empire.
The people of the nation of Judah were called Jews, after their tribal names.
The 10 Tribes were watched by the Romans closely. You know the Romans did a census on everything that moved around them, prolly for military reasons. The 10 tribes were never lost and there are beautiful records of the tribal names of Israel all over Europe. Check out, for instance, the "scottish declaration of independance". The people of Israel had migrated clear to Scotland.
Israel was always a place. Israel was always named after the father of the 12 tribes.
If you have European ancestors, you are highly probably at least part of one of the 12 tribes of Israel, that came over the Pass of Israel in the Caucus mountains, that the Romans recorded as "Caucasians" (Asians from the Caucus mountains I guess, is what the Romans meant)