Judah (son of Jacob)

Not to be confused with Judas Iscariot.
Judah
יְהוּדָה‎
Portrait of Judah from Judah and Tamar (1840) by Horace Vernet
Bornc. 1600 BCE
Paddan Aram, Aram-Naharaim
(present-day Harran, Turkey)
Died
Yehud, Canaan
(present-day Yehud, Israel)
Resting place32°01′51″N 34°53′15″E / 32.030797°N 34.887616°E / 32.030797; 34.887616
SpouseAliyath
Children
Sons through Aliyath:
Twin sons through his daughter-in-law Tamar
Parents
Relatives
See list

Judah (Hebrew: יְהוּדָה‎, Modern: Yəhūda, Tiberian: Yŭhūḏā)[1] was, according to the Book of Genesis, the fourth of the six sons of Jacob and Leah and the founder of the Tribe of Judah of the Israelites. By extension, he is indirectly the eponym of the Kingdom of Judah, the land of Judea, and the word Jew.

According to the narrative in Genesis, Judah alongside Tamar is a patrilineal ancestor of the Davidic line. The Tribe of Judah features prominently in Deuteronomistic history, which most scholars agree was reduced to written form, although subject to exilic and post-exilic alterations and emendations, during the reign of the Judahist reformer Josiah from 641 to 609 BCE.[2]

  1. ^ Khan, Geoffrey (2020). The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1. Open Book Publishers. ISBN 978-1783746767.
  2. ^ Finkelstein, Israel (2002). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin. Touchstone. pp. 369–373. ISBN 9780684869131.