As to the central question behind The Rise of Ancient Israel, the lecturers give different answers. William Dever finds no distinction between the early Iron Age Israelites and the Canaanites in terms of things like pottery and house building. So he says they must have been Canaanites who migrated to the hills.
The other scholars go beyond archeology. How do we account for the texts about the exodus and the patriarch stories that have the Israelites coming from Mesopotamia and Egypt? Baruch Halpern finds an explanation in what we know about migration out of Mesopotamia at the end of the Bronze Age and the fit between the exodus story and Semitic presence in Egypt in the 18th dynasty, which is also at the end of the Bronze Age. While not denying some Canaanite connections, he sees the bulk of the early Israelites as recently displaced Arameans influenced by a…
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James' Ramblings 