Drawing on ancient inscriptions, archaeological discoveries, and biblical texts — that explains why scholars conclude there was a long, recurring Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem from the late Bronze Age / Iron Age through the Roman and medieval periods.

This article aim to be precise about what the sources say (and do not say): archaeology rarely proves “unbroken” cultural or demographic continuity in a single sweep, but the combination of textual and material evidence documents repeated, sustained Jewish habitation, institutions, and identity in these places across millennia.

1. Earliest external mentions: Egyptian and Near Eastern inscriptions

The Merneptah (or “Israel”) Stele (c. late 13th century BCE) is the earliest widely accepted extra-biblical mention of “Israel” and indicates a named people or group in Canaan at the end of the Bronze Age. Its reference shows that a social/political entity called Israel was known in the region by that time — consistent with the picture in early biblical traditions about Israelite groups in the hill country (Judges/Joshua). 

Later Iron-Age inscriptions from neighboring polities refer to Israelite/Judahite actors and dynasties. The Tel Dan Stele (9th–8th century BCE) famously refers to the “House of David,” providing an extra-biblical marker that a Judahite dynasty (linked in the Bible to Jerusalem) was recognized by neighboring kingdoms. Such inscriptions corroborate the existence of Judah and Israel as political/cultural entities in the same centuries in which the biblical historical books place them. 

2. Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian records: conquest and return

Assyrian and Babylonian royal inscriptions and annals document campaigns in the Levant (including references to Lachish, Jerusalem, and other Judahite sites) and the deportations and destructions that affected Judah in the late 8th and early 6th centuries BCE. These records, read alongside the biblical historical books (2 Kings, Jeremiah), show that while political independence collapsed at times and elites were deported, populations associated with Judah and Jerusalem continued to be mentioned in the region’s political geography — and some groups returned. The Persian period inscriptions and the Cyrus Cylinder are often cited as evidence that Persian rulers pursued policies that allowed exiled populations to return and rebuild their temples and communities — a point that aligns with the biblical accounts of return under Ezra and Nehemiah (though scholars debate details and timing). (See below for archaeological signs of returns and rebuilding.) 

3. Local administrative and daily-life documents from Judah: the Lachish ostraca and other finds

Short inscribed texts from within Judah — notably the Lachish ostraca (iron-age letters written on pottery sherds, c. late 7th century BCE) — record the language, place names, military dispatches and administrative networks of Judah in the decades before the Babylonian destruction. These finds demonstrate literate Judahite administrative life tied to fortified Judean centers (Lachish, Jerusalem, etc.) and are independent, contemporary evidence of an organized Judahite society in the land. 

4. Jerusalem archaeology: defensive works, waterworks, inscriptions and Second-Temple remains

Excavations in and around Jerusalem have repeatedly produced material remains that connect the city to Judean/Israelite habitation across periods:

• Hezekiah’s Tunnel and the Siloam Inscription: the rock-cut channel that brought water into the city and the contemporaneous Siloam inscription in the tunnel are tangible Late Iron-Age (8th century BCE) projects associated in biblical tradition with King Hezekiah and show an organized urban population working to sustain Jerusalem in wartime. 

• The “Broad Wall” (a massive city wall) and administrative buildings in the City of David area date to the same general period and reflect an urban Judahite capital.

• Second-Temple and Herodian layers (temple enclosure, ritual baths, miqva’ot, the Cardo street, numerous royal and private seal impressions — “bullae” — bearing Hebrew names) testify to a thriving Jewish religious, civic and commercial center in Jerusalem through the late Second Temple period (and into the Roman era). Excavations in the Jewish Quarter and the City of David have revealed homes, ritual installations, and artifacts routinely associated with Jewish ritual practice and daily life.

These multiple strata show the city’s function as a Judaean/Jewish center across centuries, not merely as an episodic or temporary occupation. 

5. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran: Jewish textual life in Judea (Late Hellenistic–Herodian period)

The Dead Sea Scrolls (manuscripts found in caves near Qumran, dating roughly from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE) are a direct witness to religious, legal, and scriptural traditions current in Judea on the eve of — and during — the early Roman period. They include Hebrew copies of biblical books, sectarian regulations, and liturgical materials. The scrolls show the existence of active Jewish communities and textual production in Judea during the Hellenistic and Second-Temple eras; scholars have debated the precise relationship of Qumran’s inhabitants to Jerusalem, but the manuscripts demonstrate a living, local Jewish textual culture in the region. 

6. Continuity after the destruction of 70 CE: rabbinic literature, epigraphy, and archaeological traces

The destruction of the Second Temple and subsequent revolts (66–73 CE; 132–135 CE) created profound demographic changes, but did not erase Jewish presence in the land. Multiple types of evidence indicate continued Jewish life in and around Jerusalem and in Judea/Samaria after 70 CE:

• Roman and later-era archaeology in Jerusalem shows neighborhoods, synagogues, tombs, and ritual installations dating to the late Roman, Byzantine and early Muslim periods — frequently with inscriptions in Hebrew or Aramaic and adaptations of Jewish ritual architecture.

• Rabbinic literature (the Mishnah, Talmud, midrashim) — compiled in the centuries following the Temple’s destruction — is an internal, continuous Jewish textual tradition that presumes a body of teachers, towns, and pilgrimage patterns in the land and records ongoing agricultural, calendrical, and cultic practices linked to Judea and Jerusalem.

• Epigraphic finds (inscriptions, tombstones, ossuaries) and travelers’ accounts show Jewish families and communities living in and returning to towns and agricultural villages across the region during Late Antiquity and the medieval era. The persistence of synagogues (or re-built synagogues) in Galilee and parts of Judea into Late Antiquity is archaeological testimony to community continuity.

Taken together, these sources show that while there were forced removals, population losses, and changing political masters, Jewish communal identity and populations persisted in the land in many periods rather than disappearing altogether.

7. Medieval and early modern evidence: Geniza documents, travelers, and Ottoman records

Medieval documentary evidence further documents Jewish residence and institutional life in and around Jerusalem and the hill country. The Cairo Geniza (a library of medieval Jewish manuscript fragments) preserves letters, legal documents, and petitions that mention travel to and from Jerusalem, synagogues and communities there, and commercial links. Crusader and Islamic period accounts and administrative records also note Jewish neighborhoods and communal institutions in Jerusalem and other towns; later Ottoman tax registers and communal documents show an identifiable Jewish population in the city and region. These documentary and material traces testify to a continuous, though variable, Jewish presence across centuries.

8. Biblical texts as memory and local claim

The Hebrew Bible itself preserves layers of memory, law, genealogy, prophecy and historical narrative that anchor Israelite/Judahite attachment to the land, to cities such as Jerusalem, and to place names in Judea and Samaria. Books such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles record settlement narratives, monarchic institutions centered in Jerusalem, and the cult of the Temple. Ezra-Nehemiah narrate the post-exilic return and rebuilding in the Persian period; the Psalms and prophetic books repeatedly locate religious and national identity in Zion/Jerusalem. While scholars carefully critique and test biblical texts against archaeology, these texts remain central documents for understanding how Jews in antiquity and later generations conceived their continuous bond to these places.

9. How scholars summarize the picture

Most historians and archaeologists stress two balanced points: (1) the biblical claims of an all-encompassing, uninterrupted political control by Israel/Judah are more complicated than a simple reading suggests, and (2) there is strong, multi-sourced evidence (inscriptions, archaeological layers, manuscripts, epigraphy, and later documentary material) that people who identified as Israelites/Judeans/Jews lived, labored, worshiped and left material traces in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem across the late Bronze Age, Iron Age, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic and later periods. The combined weight of independent external inscriptions, local administrative texts (ostraca), monumental and civic archaeology (tunnels, walls, temples, synagogues), and manuscript finds (Dead Sea Scrolls, Geniza) makes a sustained Jewish presence in these regions the best explanation for the corpus of evidence.