United Kingdom of Israel

The United Monarchy is the name given to the Israelite kingdom of Israel and Judah, during the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon, as depicted in the Hebrew Bible. This is traditionally dated between 1050 and 930 BCE. On the succession of Solomon's son, Rehoboam, in c. 930 BCE the biblical account reports that the country split into two kingdoms; the Kingdom of Israel (including the cities of Shechem and Samaria) in the north and the Kingdom of Judah (containing Jerusalem) in the south.

Modern historians are divided on the historicity of the United Monarchy as described in the Bible. There is no direct evidence of a United Kingdom of Judah and Israel in the 10th century BCE.

According to standard source criticism, a number of distinct source texts were spliced together to produce the current books of Samuel. The most prominent in the early parts of the first book are the pro-monarchical source and the anti-monarchical source. In identifying these two sources, two separate accounts can be reconstructed. The anti-monarchical source describes Samuel to have thoroughly routed the Philistines, yet begrudgingly accepting that the people demanded a ruler, and thus appointing Saul by cleromancy.

The pro-monarchical source describes the divinely appointed birth of Saul (a single word being changed by a later editor so that it referred to Samuel instead), and his later leading of an army to victory over the Ammonites, which resulted in the people clamouring for him to lead them against the Philistines, whereupon he is appointed king.

Textual critics also point to disparities in the account of David's rise to power as indicative of separate threads being merged later to create a golden age of a united monarchy. David is thought by scholars to have been a ruler in Judah while Israel, comparatively immense and highly developed, continued unfettered. Modern archaeology also supports this view.

...
Wikipedia