The name "Israel" is rooted in the Hebrew bible, the Tanakh, where Jacob is renamed Israel after wrestling with a mysterious adversary ("a man", and later "God" according to Gen. 32:24-30; or "the angel", according to Hosea 12:4). Israel means "he who has wrestled with God." The Jews, the nation fathered by Jacob, were then called "the children of Israel" or the "Israelites."The earliest known mention of the name 'Israel', probably referring to a group of people rather than to a place, is the Egyptian Merneptah Stele dated to about 1210 BCE.
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