The Oxford History of the Biblical World

by Coogan, Michael D.

The poem portrays Israel as a confederation of ten (not twelve) tribes, a theopolity known as the “people [kindred] of Yahweh” (Judg. 5.13). Marching forth from the southeast, from Seir and Edom, Yahweh leads his people to victory over the Canaanites “at Taanach, by the waters of Megiddo.” Through divine succor from the heavenly host and a flash flood in the Wadi Kishon, the Israelites rout the better-armed Canaanites, who are equipped with chariots. The final blow of the battle is struck by Jael, a woman of the Kenite clan (a subgroup of the Midianites), who drives a tent peg through the head of Sisera, leader of the Canaanite coalition.

  Early in the twelfth century BCE the confederation of ten tribes was occupying a variety of ecological niches on both sides of the Jordan, and carrying on a variety of professions, such as highland farming (Ephraim, Machir, Benjamin, Naphtali), sheep and goat herding (Reuben), and seafaring (Dan and Asher). Such a wide-ranging confederation of disparate groups committed to the kindred of Yahweh did not always act in concert, as the Song of Deborah indicates. Sometimes individual tribal interests and economic entanglements prevailed: Reuben, Gilead, Dan, and Asher declined to answer the call to arms. The positive response to the muster came from the highland village militia of the six other members of the confederation.

  The Israelite understanding of themselves as a kindred of Yahweh in Judges 5 is compatible with the Egyptian designation of Israel as a “people,” although the constituency of that polity probably changed from the late thirteenth into the early twelfth centuries. When considered together with the archaeology of the region, both documents provide an invaluable resource for reconstructing aspects of the social, political, and religious life of nascent Israel.

  The Conquest Narratives

  The literary sources for the biblical account of the conquest of Canaan by twelve tribes under the command of Joshua are embedded in the great work of the Deuteronomic Historian(s) (DH), writing some six hundred years after the event he purports to describe. From the perspective of DH, the conquest of Canaan was a unified, lightning-fast event that swept from east to west—from Ammon and Moab, across the Jordan River to the hill country of central Canaan, and then north to Galilee. It was a conquest of the indigenous “Canaanites” by “outsiders,” namely, the “Israelites,” under the protection and guidance of their deity Yahweh. Although DH’s theological perspective is incompatible with modern historiographic methods, he can by ancient standards be considered among the “first historians,” as Baruch Halpern has phrased it, every much a historian of ancient Israel as Herodotus was of ancient Greece.

  DH tells a coherent story from entry into the Promised Land to the end of the monarchy. He creates dialogue for his leading characters. At the same time, however, DH makes use of the limited sources available to him. These include a variety of earlier oral traditions and written documents, the only survivals of which are now in the Bible. They range in date and genre from early poetry of the twelfth century, such as Judges 5, to boundary lists of the seventh century, such as Joshua 15.

  DH sometimes weaves multiple accounts of the same event into his narrative, even when they are at variance or are contradictory. The most obvious example is the prose account of the battle of Kishon (Judg. 4), in which two tribes battle the Canaanites. This is followed in the next chapter by the poetic account, the Song of Deborah, in which at least six tribes fight. All scholars agree that the prose account is later and dependent on the poetic version. Nevertheless, perhaps wishing to preserve a variety of traditions, DH chose to present both versions of the same event.

  This same concern for sources leads to the tension between the monolithic conquest of Canaan as presented in the book of Joshua and the partial takeover that introduces the book of Judges. In his use of sources DH differs radically from another ancient Israelite historian, the Chronicler, writing more than a century later. The Chronicler has winnowed his sources and constructed a narrative into a unified whole that does not allow for variant or multiple accounts of a single event.

  Nevertheless, for all the care that DH lavished on his sources, most of them derive from the period of the monarchy, several centuries later than the purported era of Joshua and the conquest of Canaan. As Nadav Na’aman has observed, many of the conquest narratives were modeled on later battles, such as those of David against the Philistines or the Arameans, or Sennacherib’s campaign against Judah. Thus it is extremely difficult for the modern historian to disentangle the many strands of DH’s braided narrative, composed as it is from a very particular historiographic perspective, and including invented dialogue and limited sources presumed to be contemporary with the era of conquest but mostly dating much later.

  The Conquest Hypothesis

  Of the three regnant scholarly hypotheses formulated to account for the emergence of Israel in Canaan, the “conquest” hypothesis conforms most closely to the biblical presentation of DH. W. F. Albright developed a powerful formulation of the conquest hypothesis, which many American and Israeli archaeologists later espoused, G. Ernest Wright and Yigael Yadin being two of its most notable proponents. They were confident that the essential historicity of the conquest narratives could be vindicated by the use of external evidence provided by archaeology. Until relatively recently, many archaeologists believed that excavations at sites thought to be identified with biblical Heshbon, Jericho, Bethel, Ai, Lachish, Eglon, Debir, and Hazor actually supported the notion of a unified conquest of Canaan by outsiders in the latter part of the thirteenth century BCE. This interpretation relies heavily on the conquest narratives in the book of Joshua (chapters 6–12) and, to a lesser extent, in Judges 1. For this group of scholars the archaeology of widespread and synchronous destruction at many of these key cities as well as the cultural change that followed about 1200 BCE buttress the validity of the biblical accounts preserved in the Deuteronomic History, many of which are based, according to this view, on much older oral and written sources. In this view, Israel swept into Canaan from the eastern desert and swiftly conquered city after city.

  Archaeologists agree that dramatic cultural change affected not only parts of Canaan but also much of the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1200 BCE). How much of that change was brought about by the migrations and/or invasions of newcomers to Canaan, and specifically by invading Israelites, is still an open question. To make a persuasive archaeological case for the mass migration of peoples from one homeland to another, certain criteria must be met:

  1. The implanted culture must be distinguishable from the indigenous cultures in the new zones of settlement. If the intrusive group launches an invasion (as proponents of the Israelite “conquest” postulate), then there should be synchronous discontinuities, such as destruction layers, separating the previous “Canaanite” cultures from the newly established “Israelite” cultures in the zone of contention.

  2. The homeland of the migrating/invading groups should be located, its material culture depicted, and temporal precedence established in its place of origin. In the case of invading Israel, this should be in Transjordan or in Egypt.

  3. The route of migration/invasion should be traceable and examined for its archaeological, historical, and geographical plausibility. If the new immigrants took an overland route, the spatial and temporal distribution of the material culture should indicate the path and direction of large-scale migrations.

  As the Israelites advanced from Egypt toward Canaan, the conquest narratives have them taking Heshbon (modern Hesban), the city of Sihon, and Medeba in Ammon, as well as Dibon (modern Dhiban) in Moab (Num. 21.21–31). At Heshbon and Dibon, extensive excavations have uncovered no Late Bronze Age occupation, and only meager remains from Iron Age I. The situation at Medeba is being investigated. As the settlement map indicates (see above), most of Transjordan was unoccupied when the Israelite invaders are said to have moved through these territories in the late thirteenth century BCE.

  Highland Settlements in the Late Bronze and Iron I Periods

  After crossing th
e Jordan River, Joshua and his troops conquered Jericho (Josh. 6). They blew the rams’ horns and shouted in unison until the walls of Jericho collapsed. This miracle has no archaeological reflex; in fact, there is little or no occupation at Jericho in the thirteenth century. Kathleen Kenyon, the British archaeologist who pioneered stratigraphic excavations at the site, thought that erosion had deprived history of the Late Bronze Age city that Joshua captured. But the absence of tombs and even potsherds from this period makes Kenyon’s view highly unlikely.

  Highland Settlements in the Iron I and Iron II Periods

  When Joshua and his troops moved farther west, up the wadi to Ai (Josh. 7.2–8.29), they ultimately scored a great victory over the king of Ai and the inhabitants of the city. But here again archaeology demonstrates that a tall tale is being told. Ai, whose name means the “ruin,” had not been occupied during the second millennium. Its “ruins” dated from the latter part of the third millennium, among which an Iron Age I village was planted in the twelfth century. As German scholars have long maintained, Ai is a showcase example of how etiological explanations were used to enhance the conquest narratives by explaining extensive ruins as the result of early Israelite victories. Nearby Bethel was put to the sword (Judg. 1), and archaeology has confirmed its destruction in the thirteenth century.

  The next major conquest occurs in the north at Hazor, the former “head of all those kingdoms.” All of the dependencies of Hazor were taken, but only Hazor itself was burned to the ground (Josh. 11.10-13). This was the largest city of Canaan, its inhabitants numbering twenty thousand or more. The only agents who claim responsibility for destroying this Canaanite city are the Israelites. There is no reason to deny them their claim.

  Finally, there is a summary of Joshua’s victories west of the Jordan (Josh. 12.9-24). Following this list, the identifications of the ancient sites and the archaeological evidence are summed up in table 3.1 (see pp. 98-99).

  Of the thirty-one cities said to be taken by Joshua and the Israelites, twenty have been plausibly identified with excavation sites. Of these, only Bethel and Hazor meet criterion 1, and even there, it is debated whether the destruction of Hazor XIII was as late as that of Late Bronze Age Bethel. The conquest of Laish/Dan, recounted in Judges 18, may be reflected in the destruction of Tel Dan, Stratum VILA (ca. 1175-1150 BCE)—too late to be synchronized with the demise of Late Bronze Age Bethel and Hazor. The Late Bronze Age city of Lachish VII was destroyed in the latter half of the thirteenth century BCE. This destruction could have resulted from the purported Israelite invasion, but recent excavations have shown that the rebuilt city (Lachish VI) was an Egypto-Canaanite settlement, occupied as a buffer against Philistia during the reign of Rameses III, until about 1150. None of the Transjordanian settlements mentioned in the conquest of Sihon’s “Amorite” kingdom by the Israelites (Num. 21) has Late Bronze Age occupation. The three cities of Philistia—Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron—listed as captured by Judah in Judges 1.18, according to the Masoretic Text, are said not to have been, according to the Greek version.

  Thus by the most generous interpretation of the archaeological data, the “unified conquest” hypothesis fails to meet the minimal standards of criterion 1. Nevertheless, the insistence of the Deuteronomic Historian that Israel was an “outside” force, rather lately “conquering” Canaan and wresting control from the autochthonous population, is not so easily explained. This is especially highlighted by later Near Eastern historiography represented by Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, Berossus’s Babyloniaca, and Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities. All three historians go to great length to establish the antiquity and priority of their respective peoples.

  Perhaps, then, there is something to be said for a migration, if not an actual invasion, of Israelites into Canaan toward the end of the Bronze Age. For this more general explanation of culture change, variants of criteria 1 through 3 are still valid. They pertain to the other hypotheses concerning the emergence of early Israel as well. But before those are explicated, it is necessary to summarize new data in the archaeology of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age I, which have come from excavations and, especially, systematic surface surveys of sites on both sides of the Rift Valley. (For a summary, see tables 3.2 and 3.3 and the settlement maps.)

  The Archaeological Evidence of Early Israel and Neighboring Polities

  In the nine areas surveyed, eighty-eight Late Bronze Age sites occupy a built-up area of more than 200 hectares (500 acres), for an estimated total population of about 50,000. In the same areas there are 678 Iron Age I settlements, each site being a hectare or less, for a total of about 600 hectares (nearly 1,500 acres), with an estimated 150,000 inhabitants (see table 3.2 and settlement maps). Six hundred and thirty-three, or 93 percent, of these Iron Age I sites are new foundations, usually small, unwalled villages. Most of these new settlements are located in the highlands or plateaus on both sides of the Jordan River. Settlement is especially dense in the territories of Manasseh and Ephraim in the west and in Gilead and Moab in the east, both “frontiers” having been sparsely settled in the Late Bronze Age. This extraordinary increase in occupation during Iron Age I cannot be explained only by natural population growth of the few Late Bronze Age city-states in the region: there must have been a major influx of people into the highlands in the twelfth and eleventh centuries BCE.

  Table 3.1 Cities in Joshua 12.9-24

  Table 3.2 Survey of Sites by Region and Period Appearing on Settlement Maps

  Recent attempts to distinguish movements from east of the Jordan into the west, or vice versa, lack sufficiently precise chronological control to be convincing. What can be said is that Iron Age I settlements throughout the highlands display a similar material culture, which is best identified with rural communities based on mixed economies of agriculture and sheep-goat herding. That many of these villages belonged to premonarchic Israel (as known from Judg. 5 and perhaps from the Merneptah Stela) is beyond doubt. This is especially clear from the continuity of settlement patterns from Iron Age I into Iron Age II (see table 3.3) in the survey zones of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Gilead, the heartland of monarchic Israel.

  Table 3.3 Continuity of Settlement Patterns from Late Bronze Age II to Iron Age I and from Iron Age I to Iron Age II

  Biblical sources indicate that premonarchic Israel was structured according to tribal principles of social organization. Archaeology is providing support for understanding the social organization of premonarchic Israel and other Transjordanian polities (for example, Moab, Midian, Ammon) as kin-based, “tribal” societies. In the Iron Age I highland villages, the heartland of early Israel, it is possible to distinguish multiple family compounds, such as those at Khirbet Raddana. These family compounds, comprised of two or three houses set off from their village surroundings by an enclosure wall, formed the basic socioeconomic units of the community, usually with a population of no more than one hundred to two hundred persons per village. In such villages, the extended or multiple family unit was the ideal type. Such a household may have constituted a minimal “house of the father” (Hebrew bêt ’āb), or a small patrilineage.

  Further clues to the composition of early Israelite villages can be deciphered from compound place-names. The first element of the place-name reveals the settlement type, such as “hill,” “enclosure,” “diadem”; the second element, the name of the founding families or leading lineages. Examples are Gibeah (“hill”) of Saul (1 Sam. 11.4), Hazar (“enclosure of”)-addar (Num. 34.4), Ataroth (“diadem of”)-addar (Josh. 16.5), and Ataroth-beth-joab (“diadem of the house of Joab”; 1 Chron. 2.54). Likewise, on the regional level territories could take their names from the dominant large families, either lineages or clans, who lived there. Samuel, a Zuphite, lived at his ancestral home at Ramah, or Ramath(aim)-zophim, named after his Ephraimite ancestor (1 Sam. 1.1), in the land of Zuph, through which Saul passed in search of his father’s lost asses (1 Sam. 9.5). District or clan territories remained important subdivisions of tribal society even during the mona
rchical period, as the Samaria ostraca attest.

  Without clear indications from texts, it is doubtful that archaeologists can distinguish one highland group from another. The cluster of material culture, which includes collared-rim store jars, pillared houses, storage pits, faunal assemblages of sheep, goat, and cattle (but little or no pig), may well indicate an Israelite settlement, but this assemblage is not exclusively theirs. Giloh and Tell el-Ful (Saul’s Gibeah) are generally considered to be “Israelite” villages, but they have many things in common (for example, collared-rim store jars) with neighboring “Jebusite” Jerusalem and “Hivite” Gibeon. “Taanach by the waters of Megiddo” seems to be Canaanite in the Song of Deborah, yet its material culture is hardly distinguishable from that of the highland villages. There is a greater contrast between the twelfth-century city of Canaanite Megiddo (Stratum VILA) and the contemporary Canaanite village of Taanach than between putative Israelite and Canaanite rural settlements. The differences derive more from socioeconomic than from ethnic factors.

  The evidence from language, costume, coiffure, and material remains suggest that the early Israelites were a rural subset of Canaanite culture and largely indistinguishable from Transjordanian rural cultures as well.

  The Pastoral Nomad Hypothesis

  In 1925 the German scholar Albrecht Alt articulated the second regnant hypothesis to explain the appearance of early Israel. Alt used texts to compare the “territorial divisions” of Canaan with those of the Iron Age. From this brilliant analysis, made without the aid of archaeology, Alt concluded that early Israel evolved from pastoral nomadism to agricultural sedentarism.