Quote:Beyond the texts: an archaeological portrait of ancient Israel and
Judah, by William G. Dever, Atlanta, Society of Biblical Literature, 2017,
xxi + 749 pp., $49.95 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-88414-218-8
The consensus among mainstream historians and archaeologists ‒ that is,
among those scholars with no extraneous agendas to serve ‒ in respect of
the history of ancient Israel has shifted dramatically over the past few decades,
principally as a result of the wealth of archaeological discoveries during this
time. The patriarchal narratives, the Exodus saga and the Israelite conquest of
Canaan are today considered to be essentially didactic tales meant to advance
the theocratic agenda of the scribes who compiled the Hebrew Bible.
Moreover, even those parts of the bible that do preserve a significant amount
of genuine historical information about ancient Israel ‒ for example, the
Deuteronomistic History ‒ are thought to offer a highly distorted portrait of
the past for the same reason.
Nowadays, it is well established that the earliest Israelites (or proto-
Israelites) were actually Caananites (possibly with an admixture of nomads
from the east bank of the Jordan River). Displaced by the collapse of urban
society at the end of the Bronze Age, they migrated from the lowlands to the
central highlands of Canaan, where they practised farming and animal husban-
dry as they gradually morphed into Israelites during the thirteenth‒eleventh
centuries BCE.
I'll have to get this book. Dever is always worth reading.
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
