who was the first king of israel according to the bible
Saul
title: Israelites text: Israelites The Israelites (; "Bnei Yisra'el") were a confederation of Iron Age Semitic-speaking tribes of the ancient Near East, who inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. According to the religious narrative of the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites' origin is traced back to the Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham and his wife Sarah, through their son Isaac and his wife Rebecca, and their son Jacob who was later called Israel, whence they derive their name, with his wives Leah and Rachel and the handmaids Zilpa and Bilhah. Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the title: History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel text: History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel The Jewish people originated in the land of Israel, and have maintained physical, cultural, and religious ties to it ever since. Although they had first emerged centuries earlier as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites, and the Jewish Bible claims that a Jewish monarchy existed starting in the 10th century BCE, the first appearance of the name "Israel" in the secular (non-Biblical) historic record is the Egyptian Merneptah Stele, "circa" 1200 BCE. During the Biblical period, two kingdoms occupied the highland zone, the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north, title: Israelites text: to the Hebrew of the Old Testament as does the language of Chaucer to modern English." The Canaanites were also the first people, as far as is known, to have used an alphabet. The name Israel first appears c. 1209 BCE, at the end of the Late Bronze Age and the very beginning of the period archaeologists and historians call Iron Age I, on the Merneptah Stele raised by the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah. The inscription is very brief: As distinct from the cities named (Ashkelon, Gezer, Yenoam) which are written with a toponymic marker, Israel is written hieroglyphically with a title: Kings of Israel and Judah text: kingdom was a separate development. There are some dissenters to this view. The Bible describes a succession of kings of a united kingdom, and then of divided kingdoms. According to the Bible, the Tribes of Israel lived as a confederation under "ad hoc" charismatic leaders called judges. In around 1020 BCE, under extreme threat from foreign peoples, the tribes united to form the first United Kingdom of Israel. Samuel anointed Saul from the Tribe of Benjamin as the first king. After Rehoboam reigned three years, the United Kingdom of Israel was divided in two – the northern Kingdom of Israel title: History of Israel text: Christian and Islamic texts. Standard Biblical chronology suggests that around 930 BCE, following the death of Solomon, the kingdom split into a southern Kingdom of Judah and a northern Kingdom of Israel. The Bible's Books of Kings state that soon after the split Pharoh "Shishaq" invaded the country plundering Jerusalem. An inscription over a gate at Karnak in Egypt recounts such an invasion by Pharoh Sheshonq I. The archaeological evidence for this period is extremely sparse, leading some scholars to suggest that this section of the Hebrew Bible, which includes texts written two centuries later, exaggerates the importance of David