(I think it's cool because it shows all the signs of multiple historic traditions, squished and mangled and spliced together, with a leavening (so to speak) of magic numbers to always keep things at a perfect Twelve. Except when it doesn't. This is the kind of stuff historians live for, even if it causes fundamentalists to get the twitches, or else spin improbably elaborate webs of explanation to make it all "clear.")
Reshared post from +Bruce Baugh
I like this kind of good-natured but intensely alert approach to seeing just what historical records actually say.
http://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/the-twelve-or-so-tribes-of-israel/
The Twelve (or So) Tribes of Israel
The identity of Israel in the Bible is closely linked to the notion that the ancient nation was an alliance of twelve distinct tribes, each with its own territory. Reading the Old Testament in its …
I've been reading Asimov's Guide to the Bible, and he explores these issues. He also explains how many of the the lists of ancestors are actually references to the tribes of the area.
Asimov's scholarship is (sadly) a some decades out of date, but there's a lot of solid foundation work in his books.