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The Jebusites (; ) were, according to the Book of Joshua and Books of Samuel from the Hebrew Bible, a tribe that inhabited Jerusalem, called Jebus () before the conquest initiated by Joshua (, ) and completed by David (). According to some biblical chronologies, it was conquered in 1003 BC.
A majority of scholars agree that the Book of Joshua holds little historical value for early Israel and reflects a much later period.
1 Chronicles 11:4 states that Jerusalem was known as Jebus before this event. Scholars sometimes dispute the identification of Jebus with Jerusalem.
The Sumero-Akkadian name for Jerusalem, uru-salim,See Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17, p. 410 (1990). Hamilton also asserts that Sumerian uru is yerû, meaning "city." is variously etymologised to mean "foundation of or: the god Shalim": from Semitic yry, "to found, to lay a cornerstone", and Shalim, the Canaanite god of the setting sun and the nether world, as well as of health and perfection.Meir Ben-Dov, Historical Atlas of Jerusalem, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002, p. 23.See the Anchor Bible Dictionary for an extensive discussion with citations. See Holman Bible Dictionary, http://www.studylight.org/dic/hbd/print.cgi?n=3384 ; National Geographic, http://education.nationalgeographic.com/media/file/Jerusalem_ED_Sheets.FasFacts.pdf ("As for the meaning of the name, it can be assumed to be a compound of the West Semitic elements "yrw" and "shlm," probably to be interpreted as "Foundation of (the god) Shalem." Shalem is known from an Ugaritic mythological text as the god of twilight.").
Lemche states:
There is no evidence of Jebus and the Jebusites outside of the Old Testament. Some scholars reckon Jebus to be a different place from Jerusalem; other scholars prefer to see the name of Jebus as a kind of pseudo-ethnic name.
Theophilus G. Pinches has noted a reference to "Yabusu", which he interprets as an old form of Jebus, on a contract tablet that dates from 2200 BC. Pinches , Theophilus G., The Old Testament: In the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia (London: SPCK, 1908), p. 324.
Before modern archaeological studies, most biblical scholars held the opinion that the Jebusites were identical to the Hittites, which continues to be the case, though less so. However, an increasingly popular view, first put forward by Edward Lipiński, professor of Oriental studies and Slavic studies at KU Leuven, is that the Jebusites were most likely an Amorite tribe; Lipiński identifies them with the group referred to as Yabusi'um in a cuneiform letter found in the archive of Mari, Syria. Lipinski also suggests that more than one clan or tribe bore similar names and thus the Jebusites and Yabusi'um may have been separate people altogether. Biblical Archaeology Review 32:02, March–April 2006, Who Were the Jebusites?. "The letter refers to an Amorite ethnic group known as the Yabusi'um. This, Lipinski says, implies the existence of a tribe or clan of Yabusi, or Jebusites. (The Semitic letter Y becomes a J in Germanic languages such as English.) However, the clan of Jebusites in the Mari letter may not be the same as the clan of Jebusites living in pre-Davidic Jerusalem. More than one clan or tribe could have had the same name, Lipinski cautions."
In the Amarna letters, mention is made that the contemporaneous king of Jerusalem was named Abdi-Heba, which is a theophoric name invoking a Hurrian religion named Ḫepat. This implies that the Jebusites were either Hurrians, were heavily influenced by Hurrian culture, or were dominated by the maryannu (a warrior-class elite). Moreover, the last Jebusite king, Araunah, mentioned in 1 Chronicles 21:15, bore a name generally understood as based on the Hurrian honorific ewir-ne.
Richard HessRichard S. Hess, "Getting Personal: What Names in the Bible Teach Us," Bible Review 13/6 (Dec 1997) pp.30, 34–36. shows four Hurrian names in the Bible's conquest narrative: Piram, king of Jarmuth and Hoham, king of Hebron (), and Sheshai and Talmai, sons of Anak () with Hurrian-based names. Zev Farber believes that the Jebusites were unrecognized Israelites. According to Farber, it explains why the Judahites were confident in delivering the corpse of Adoni-Bezek, a foreign enemy king, to Jebus in Judges 1:7. A similar incident occurred in 1 Samuel 17:54, where David delivers Goliath's head to Jebus, which occurs before the city's conquest. In addition, the Jebusites are portrayed in a more positive light than the residents of Gibeah in the Levite's concubine narrative. Farber believes this was anti-Saul propaganda, with Gibeah being the city of Saul and Jebus being the city of David.
According to 2 Samuel, the Jebusites still controlled Jerusalem at the time of King David, but David wished to take control of the city. Understandably, the Jebusites contest his attempt to do this, and since Jebus was the strongest fortress in Canaan, they gloat that even the "blind and lame" could withstand David's siege.
According to the version of the story in the Masoretic Text, David manages to conquer the city by a surprise attack, led by Joab, through the water supply tunnels (Jerusalem has no natural water supply except for the Gihon Spring). Ever since its discovery in the 19th century, Warren's Shaft, part of a system which connects the spring to the city, has been cited as evidence for the plausibility of such a line of attack. The account in 1 Chronicles 11:5 mentions the advantage of a speedy attack but does not mention use of the water shafts, and the claim could be a scribal error; the Septuagint version of the passage states that the Israelites had to attack the Jebusites "with their daggers" rather than "through the water shaft". 1 Chronicles states that the inhabitants of Jebus forbade King David from entering Jerusalem shortly after he was crowned king. Joab went up first and took the city and became chief and captain of David's armed forces. 1 Kings 9:20-21 states that Solomon forced the surviving Jebusites to become serfdom.
Another Jebusite, Araunah (referred to as Ornan by the Books of Chronicles) is described by the Books of Samuel as having sold his threshing floor to King David, which David then constructed an altar on, the implication being that the altar became the core of the Solomon's Temple. Araunah means "the lord" in Hurrian and was loaned into Hittite, and so most scholars, since they consider the Jebusites to have been Hittites, have argued that Araunah may have been another king of Jerusalem; some scholars additionally believe that Adonijah is a disguised reference to Araunah, the Resh having been corrupted to Dalet. At many periods the letters are virtually indistinguishable. The argument originated from Cheyne, who proposed the reverse. The narrative is considered by some scholars to be Etiology and of dubious historicity. Peake's Commentary on the Bible
It is unknown what ultimately became of these Jebusites.
According to the "Jebusite hypothesis",See:
however, the Jebusites persisted as inhabitants of Jerusalem and comprised an important faction in the Kingdom of Judah, including such notables as Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Bathsheba, queen and mother of the next monarch, Solomon. According to this hypothesis, after the disgrace of a rival Elide faction of priests in the struggle for succession to David,1 Kings i. 7, 19, 25; ii. 22, 26. the Zadokites became the sole authorized kohen, so a Jebusite family monopolized the Jerusalem clergy for many centuries before becoming sufficiently attenuated to be indistinguishable from other or Judahites.
Elsewhere in the Bible, and . the Jebusites are described in a manner that suggests that they worshipped the same God, Elyon, as the Israelites (e.g., Melchizedek). Further support for this theory comes from the fact that other Jebusites resident in pre-Israelite Jerusalem bore names invoking the principle or god Zedek (Tzedek) (e.g., Melchizedek and Adonizedek). Under this theory the Aaronic lineage ascribed to Zadok is a later, anachronistic interpolation.Julius Wellhausen first espoused the theory that Ēl ‘Elyōn was an ancient god of Salem (i.e., Jerusalem), who after David's annexation of Jerusalem circa 1000 was equated to Yahweh, and that the Zadokite priests of Jerusalem were or claimed to be descended from Melchizedek. A Jebusite is mentioned in the Acts of Barnabas as accompanying his martyrdom.
The of the classical era go on to state that King David was prevented from entering the city of Jebus for the same reason, and so he promised the reward of captaincy to anyone who destroyed the bronzes – Joab performing the task and so gaining the prize. The covenant is dismissed by the rabbis as having been invalidated due to the war the Jebusites fought against Joshua, but nevertheless David (according to the rabbis) paid the Jebusites the full value of the city, collecting the money from among all the Israelite tribes, so that the city became their common property.
In reference to 2 Samuel 5:6, which refers to a saying about the blind and the lame, Rashi quotes a midrash which argues that the Jebusites had two statues in their city, with their mouths containing the words of the covenant between Abraham and the Jebusites; one figure, depicting a blind person, represented Isaac, and the other, depicting a lame person, representing Jacob.
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