Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?
By William G. Dever
Eerdmans, 280 pages, $25.
Excerpts:
All of this has since changed, and there is now an eagerness in some scholarly circles to be liberated from dependence on the Hebrew Bible, to assign primacy to the archeological record and other sorts of external evidence. Such approaches are not entirely new, but they have come to the fore during the last several decades, as open rebellion has broken out against the "biblio-centric" mentality that had long prevailed. There is, however, a major problem in attempting to use archeological evidence alone to reconstruct Israelite history, and it is the paucity of inscriptional material uncovered through archeological activity in biblical lands. Only written remains would allow us to identify with certainty the ethno-cultural identity of the builders, owners and manufacturers of the many artifacts and edifices that have been uncovered in various regions of the Holy Land, and such sources unfortunately are scarce. Even if we assume that changes in architectural and artistic style point to the introduction of a new population in Canaan, we cannot identify precisely that new population as Israelite. Furthermore, archaeologists are no longer sure that there was major population change in Canaan at the time the Israelites were supposed to have arrived there.
[...]
In the present study, Dever, who has excavated at numerous major biblical sites, attempts to come to terms with this recent upsurge of interest in Israelite origins and identity, seeking middle ground in the process. He begins with a chapter titled "The Crisis in Understanding the Origins of Early Israel," and proceeds to take up pivotal issues in the reconstruction of early Israelite history. These include the historicity of the exodus and conquest narratives, covering both Transjordan and Canaan west of the Jordan. He analyzes the very limited epigraphy unearthed in archeological excavations, and summarizes the evidence provided by surveys and excavations, including assemblages of pottery. All the while, Dever provides reliable information on the various social models and research methods being used at the present time, and offers a reasoned critique of them. His style is perhaps too colloquial at times, and he pays a disproportionate amount of attention to theories that even he regards as highly unlikely, diverting attention from his own methodology and argumentation. He partially makes up for this in an appended section entitled "Some Basic Sources," where he provides what amounts to a classified bibliography of recent works that is extremely helpful in directing the reader to the relevant literature.
It is not until chapters 11 and 12 that Dever begins to clearly formulate his own conclusions. He is fairly confident in identifying at least one large group of inhabitants of Canaan during the early Iron Age (circa 1200-1000 BCE) as "proto-Israelites," the direct antecedents of the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible. He bases his findings on what he calls "convergences" between text and artifact ? namely, areas in which the biblical and archaeological evidence point in the same direction and seem to corroborate one another. In this spirit, his concluding chapter is titled "Salvaging the Biblical Tradition," and indeed, he successfully "salvages" a good deal of it. In essence, Dever accepts the historicity of the ancient Israelites as a people, and the reality of their religious, social and political experience in Canaan. His discussion of the House of Joseph traditions is particularly enlightening for tracing the emergence of the early Israelites, as is his treatment of the victory stele of Pharaoh Merneptah, a remarkable text from the late 13th century BCE attesting to the early presence of a group called "Israel" in central Canaan.
On the other hand, Dever finds no evidence on the ground (or beneath it) to indicate that the Israelites arrived from elsewhere to invade Canaan, or that they migrated to the land. Hence, he considers the exodus saga to be more mythic than real, a metaphor of liberation.
Halperin also raises the theory that "The Israelites may have been one of those groups who migrated southward from Syria following the fall of the Neo-Hittite Empire and the kingdom of Amurru, much like the contemporaneous Amorites of whom the Bible speaks." This is one I haven't heard before, although I haven't made much effort to keep up with such things for some years.
UPDATE: Then there's Kenneth Kitchen, who makes Dever look like a minimalist.
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