Tribe of Issachar

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Issachar was one of the twelve tribes of Israel and one of the ten lost tribes. In Jewish tradition, the descendants of Issachar were seen as being dominated by religious scholars and influential in proselytism. The sons of Issachar, ancestors of the tribe, were Tola, Phuvah, Job and Shimron. Biblical narrative In the biblical narrative of the Book of Joshua, following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes, Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes. The territory allocated to Issachar stretched from the Jordan River in the east to Mount Carmel on the west, near to the Mediterranean coast, including the fertile Esdraelon plain between present-day Lower Galilee and Samaria. It was bounded on the east by East Manasseh, the south by West Manasseh, and the north by Zebulun and Naphtali. There is a consensus among scholars that the accounts in the Book of Judges are not historically reliable. Alternatively, scholars and historians such as Barry G. Webb believe Judges to be a challenging book to parse and grasp, but nevertheless believe it possesses substantially greater historicity than most modern secular scholars give it credit for. lists the generations of the tribe of Issachar, totaling 87,000 "mighty men of valour". describes the tribe as men who "had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do". W. E. Barnes, writing in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges argues that "times" are "opportunities", and the phrase means, therefore, "men of experience, having knowledge of the world". The Tribe of Issachar and the Tribe of Simeon are the only tribes that have not been criticized for failing to complete the conquest of their land in the land of Canaan at the beginning of the Book of Judges.