Ancient Israel in the context of Shechem

In Judaism, a minyan (Hebrew: מניין \ מִנְיָן mīnyān [minˈjan], lit. (noun) count, number; pl. מניינים \ מִנְיָנִים‎ mīnyānīm [minjaˈnim]) is the quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious obligations. In all traditional orthodox practising Jewish religious movements, only men aged 13 years and older may constitute a minyan. The minimum of 10 Jews needed for a minyan has its origin (in part) in Abraham's prayer to God in Genesis 18:32. The minyan has additional roots in the judicial structure of ancient Israel as Moses first established it in Exodus 18:25 (i.e., the "rule of the 10s"). Cyrus Adler's and Lewis Naphtali Dembitz's entry for "Minyan" in the Jewish Encyclopedia states: "The minimum of ten is evidently a survival in the Synagogue from the much older institution in which ten heads of families made up the smallest political subdivision. In Ex. xviii. Moses, on the advice of Jethro, appoints chiefs of tens, as well as chiefs of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. In like manner there were the decurio among the Romans and the tithingman among the early English."

The most common activity requiring a minyan is public prayer. Accordingly, the term minyan in contemporary Judaism has taken on the secondary meaning of referring to a given prayer service, in general.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Levitical cities were 48 cities in ancient Israel set aside for the tribe of Levi, who were not allocated their own territorial land when the Israelites entered the Promised Land.

Numbers 35:1-8 relates God's command to Moses to establish 48 cities for the Levites, of which six would also function as Cities of Refuge to which manslayers could flee. Each settlement was to comprise a walled city and the common land around it for pasture, measured radially as one thousand cubits (about 460 m (0.29 mi)) in each direction, or as a square measuring two thousand cubits (about 920 m (0.57 mi)) along each side. The land for the cities was to be "donated" by the host tribe and was allocated to the Levites according to their tribal sub-divisions.

Ancient Israelite cuisine was similar to other contemporary Mediterranean cuisines. Dietary staples were bread, wine, and olive oil; also included were legumes, fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and fish and other meat. Importance was placed on the Seven Species, which are listed in the Hebrew Bible as being special agricultural products of the Land of Israel.

Like many cultures, the Israelites abided by a number of dietary regulations and restrictions that were variously unique or shared with other Near Eastern civilizations. These culinary practices were largely shaped by the Israelite religion, which later developed into Judaism and Samaritanism. People in ancient Israel generally adhered to a particular slaughter method and only consumed from certain animals, notably excluding pigs and camels and all predators and scavengers, as well as forbidding blood consumption and the mixing of milk and meat. There was a considerable continuity in the main components of the diet over time, despite the introduction of new foodstuffs at various stages.

A regnal list or king list is, at its simplest, a list of successive monarchs. Some regnal lists may give the relationship between successive monarchs (e.g., son, brother), the length of reign of each monarch or annotations on important reigns. The list may be divided into dynasties marked off by headings. As a distinct genre, the regnal list originates in the ancient Near East. Its purpose was not originally chronological. It originally served to demonstrate the antiquity and legitimacy of the monarchy, but it became an important device for structuring historical narratives (as in Herodotus) and thus a chronological aid.

In antiquity, regnal lists were kept in Sumer, Egypt, Israel, Assyria and Babylonia. King lists have made it into sacred religious texts, such as the Puranas and the Hebrew Bible, which contains an Edomite king list.

Source criticism, in biblical criticism, refers to the attempt to establish the sources used by the authors and redactors of a biblical text. It originated in the 18th century with the work of Jean Astruc, who adapted the methods already developed for investigating the texts of classical antiquity (in particular, Homer's Iliad) to his own investigation into the sources of the Book of Genesis. It was subsequently considerably developed by German scholars in what was known as "the higher criticism", a term no longer in widespread use. The ultimate aim of these scholars was to reconstruct the history of the biblical text and also the religious history of ancient Israel.

Ahab (/ˈeɪ.hæb/, AY-habb; Hebrew: אַחְאָב, romanized: ʾAḥʾāḇ; Akkadian: 𒀀𒄩𒀊𒁍, romanized: Aḫâbbu; Koine Greek: Ἀχαάβ, romanized: Akhaáb; Latin: Achab) was a king of Israel, the son and successor of King Omri, and the husband of Jezebel of Sidon, according to the Hebrew Bible. He is depicted in the Bible as a Baal worshipper and is criticized for causing moral decline in Israel, though modern scholars question this.

The existence of Ahab is historically supported outside the Bible. The contemporary Kurkh Monolith inscription of king Shalmaneser III from the Neo-Assyrian Empire documented in 853 BC that Shalmaneser III defeated an alliance of a dozen kings in the Battle of Qarqar; one of these was Ahab. Though not named, he is also mentioned on the inscriptions of the Mesha Stele.