Introduction
In the following paper, I have been assigned the thought-provoking task to briefly explore the hypotheses concerning the arrival of the nation of Israel into the land of Canaan. This brief paper will examine four hypotheses that scholars have wrestled with for the last century. These hypotheses are military conquest, peaceful infiltration, peasant revolt, and societal collapse. The first two hypotheses deal with Israel being an outside force that comes into the land of Canaan. The second two look at Israel as an indigenous population within the land of Canaan. In the following paper, we will briefly explore each hypothesis on its own merits, by looking at how scholars present both archaeological and textual data for their case. We will then conclude by examining both the biblical framework given for Israel’s entrance into Canaan, and which, if any, best matches this biblical framework. At the end of this brief exploration of this topic, the hope is to see how the hypothesis’ of modern scholarly work in light of both textual and archeological evidence and see which one comes closest to the biblical description, or if a modified hypothesis is needed.
Due to the restrictive nature of the paper and of the subject matter in the following discussion, we will not go to great lengths in dealing with dates and archaeological details. Therefore, the reader is encouraged to supplement their study into such topics by reading the cited sources in this paper. However, one assumption that is made in regards to this paper must be quickly addressed. Due to the limitations, a discussion on dates is beyond this writing. Therefore a date of the 13th century is assumed, with the acknowledgment that scholars dispute this date. Yet, for the purposes of this writing, the assumption is not made lightly but rather to keep simple the exploration of the topic at hand.
Conquest
The first hypothesis that we will cover is one that has been traditionally put forth. The conquest theory is most associated with the teachings of W.F. Albright and Yigael Yadin. The former from America and the latter from Israel. The conquest hypothesis observes the words and actions given in the biblical account of how the Israelite nation made their way into the land of Canaan. The conquest model puts forth that the Israelites went into Canaan forcibly and conquered the land relatively quickly; this was done through both a southern and northerner campaign. As David Howard rightly points out, “An important backdrop to all the episodes in this section is Deut 20:16– 18.” In passages such as Deuteronomy 20, it seems clear that the Israelites’ movement into Canaan would be one of war and death. In addition to this, early in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 7, we read, “You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.” Joseph Coleson puts a point on this understanding that the land of Canaan was to be taken as a sweeping military conquest, “Moreover, in a number of places in the Pentateuch, God seems to command such a total destruction of the population of Canaan.” Paul Benware agrees with this point when he writes, “nations inside of [Israel’s] boundaries were to be totally destroyed, and no treaties or covenants could be made with them.”
In addition to biblical support, proponents of the conquest model point to archaeological evidence to support the theory. As Helene Dallaire observes, “Scholars who support this view point to archaeological data that reveal a thirteenth-century destruction of several cities in Canaan.” Dallaire cite these destroyed cities as Bethal, Debir, Eglon, Hazor, and Lachish. This, then, would make it seem that the conquest model has sturdy footing on both biblical and archeological legs.
Yet, as Dallaire writes, “Scholars who challenge this view raise several objections.” One of these objections is that, “The book of Joshua mentions only two cities that suffered total destruction during the conquest; thus, evidence of a major military conquest is barely evident.” In fact, in his article, “Archaeology and the Israelite’ Conquest,’” William Dever challenges the theory of conquest based on archaeological data. Dever states that “Since the infancy of modern topographical research and archaeology more than a century ago, biblical scholars and archaeologists have sought to locate the numerous cities said to have been taken and to identify 13th-12th century ‘destruction layers’ that might be attributed to incoming Israelites.” Dever goes on to write that, in so far as the archaeological data reveals, “there is no conclusive data to support the notion that Israelites were the agents of destruction.”
It is here that a problem occurs. It would seem that where proponents see clear evidence in the biblical account of the conquest model, the archaeological data does not line up. Yet, the fault may not lie in the biblical account but rather the interpretation of it. Though a passage like Deuteronomy 20 seems to make it clear that total destruction, an almost cleansing of the land as it were, is what was suppose to happen, other passages reveal that this would not be the case. Exodus 23 gives us insight into how the process of Israel’s movement into the land of Canaan would proceed. The writer of Exodus pens these words, “29 But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.” This reveals that the conquest of Canaan would not necessarily be a glorious campaign where all people are either killed or drive out but would be a gradual generational work. So the conquest model, though trying to keep to the biblical account of a military entrance into the land of Canaan, does not seem to account for factors.
Peaceful Infiltration
The second hypothesis that approaches the topic from an external entrance point of view, is peaceful infiltration. As the conquest view was championed in both America and Israel, the peaceful infiltration theory was being advocated by Albrecht Alt and would be alluring to European scholars. The peaceful infiltration hypothesis purports that there was no military conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelite nation; instead, the Israelites came into Canaan gradually and peacefully. Concerning the peaceful infiltration hypothesis, which he calls the “Settlement Model,” Howard writes, “the Israelites are seen to have been loosely connected to pastoral nomads from independent tribes who gradually infiltrated Canaan from the desert and settled there in a largely peaceful enterprise. And conflicts with Canaanites were certainly not military in nature but rather natural ones between settled farmers and incoming nomads.”
From an archeological perceptive, the peaceful infiltration theory seems to have some footing. Dever points out that there are several villages in the hill country of Israel, that like those described in the book of Judges. These hill country villages have been dated to Iron Age I. These he believes could be Israelite villages, which would point to a peaceful invasion, rather than a military conquest. Dever concludes that “If that proposition should be sustained by further data, these discoveries would constitute the most significant correlation between archeology and biblical history.”
Yet, Dallaire draws our attention that this peaceful infiltration does not hold to the biblical description of events. True Israel was nomadic before entering Canaan, but as Dallaire recognizes, “[The peaceful infiltration theory] dismisses the archaeological evidence that reveals a sudden increase in population in Canaan during the thirteen-century B.C.” Howard appears to agree with Dallaire when he writes, “This model was based on a traditio-historical approach, which exhibited a thoroughgoing skepticism concerning the accuracy of both the biblical and archaeological records. It was never accepted by those with confidence in either or both of these records, and it has been severely criticized from both directions.”
Though the peaceful infiltration seems to have some merit, the biblical record and archeological deficiency in connecting the Israelites to the land over time seem to bring the theory to a stop. Thus, what seemed at first to have sure footing, turns out to be another theory that cannot account for biblical and archeological evidence.
Peasant Revolt
Whereas the first two hypotheses approached the issue by taking into consideration the biblical account of Israel being an outside group entering into the land of Canaan, the following two hypotheses dismiss this approach, opting, instead, to view the Israelites as an indigenous people group already established in the land of Canaan. The first of these two indigenous approaches is the peasant revolt model. Dever describes the peasant revolt as those in the Canaanite community who were nonconforming and did not own or had their land taken from them somehow. These peasants then “colonized new areas in the hinterland and there adopted a less strafed social order better suited to an agrarian economy.” Geroge Mendenhall, the scholar who introduced the peasant revolt hypothesis, gives the reason for the conquest as being the product of religion. “The Hebrew conquest of Palestine took place because a religious movement and motivation created a solidarity around a large group of pre-existent social units, which was able to challenge and defeat the dysfunctional complex of cities which dominated the whole of Palestine and Syria at the end of the Bronze Age.”
Dever claims that this hypothesis seems to be “well attested to” in the archaeological evidence found in the Canaanite regions. Yet, he does admit that the “force presumed to be behind this movement is not susceptible to direct archaeological illumination.” Though Dever does see evidence for this hypothesis in some of the archeological data, the hypothesis is based more on contemporary sociology than in dealing with the biblical text. What can be seen in Mendenhall’s view, from a textual perspective, is that at some point, several ethnic groups came together and began to intermarry. Israelite and Canaanite ethnic groups intermarrying is biblically documented in such passages as Judges 3:5-8, Ezra 9:2, and Hosea 7:8. Therefore, as Howard points out, a proceeding power struggle within the Canaanite cities could have led to the preparation of Israelite victory in Canaan. The power struggle would then lead to the merging of Israel with the other nations, as described throughout the Old Testament.
Societal Collapse
The final hypothesis that will be discussed in this paper, is the second of the two indigenous approaches, the social collapse model. Gordon McConville is a scholar who holds that to Israel being a sub-group that emerged from within Canaan society. “The archaeology, rather, is thought to suggest that Israel was part of the indigenous population, and emerged into a distinct group out of a specific social and cultural context.” From McConville’s writings, he believes Israel gradually came to be as a “distant group” and that the Joshua story is written to given an account of this emergence by attaching religious meaning to it. With the understanding of McConville’s sub-group emergence, we now turn our attention to the final hypothesis, social collapse. Dallaire looks at Dever’s work in Who Were the Early Israelites?, and sees a decline in society. The social collapse is attributed to Egyptian taxes on trade routes and the influx of the Sea People. Due to these factors, an exodus, as it were, occurred. However, this was not the exodus of the biblical text, but rather people feeling from urban areas to the hills. Dever combines the archeology of the Canaanite world with the archeology of the hill country to bring both indigenous hypotheses together.
Dever admits that there must have been some “military action” between the subgroup of Israel and their fellow Canaanites, but nothing on the scale that we see in the book of Joshua. Thus, Dever’s use of the biblical text is limited to helping us identify that there is a people group called Israel. For Dever, this is where textual analysis seems to end. Therefore Dever concludes, “We can only suppose that in the cultural vacuum following the collapse of Canaanite society in the 12 century B.C., there arose in central Palestine a new ethnic consciousness and solidarity, a new polity, a new social order. The emergence of this ethnicity need not have been accompanied by a ’revolt’ at all; it may be viewed rather as simply a normal and even unpredictable historical development in the evolution of complex society.” Dever seems to seek to combine both his and Mendenhall’s hypothesis through the archeological evidence, apart from the biblical text, in what he may describe as the “converging of histories.”
Reconciling the Hypothesis
Each of the above hypotheses has their own strengths and weaknesses. Out of the four premises reviewed in this paper, the conquest model takes the most strict stance on the biblical text, reading it in a literal military conquest and destruction of the Canaanite land. Yet, the conquest hypothesis seems to falter with the archeological evidence showing that a complete destruction of the people of Canaan did not occur. On the other hand, the peaceful infiltration hypothesis does seem to give us a little more archaeological standing; yet it does not consider the very clear military engagements that the book of Joshua puts forth. The final two hypotheses almost wholly disregard the textual evidence favoring a nearly strict understanding of the archaeological information. The question then becomes, can these hypotheses be reconciled to give both an accurate view of the biblical text and the evidence from archaeology?
One of the essential steps to understand biblical and archaeological evidence is to step backward. A step back from the text needs to occur, so that a correct reading of the text may occur. As Coleson writes in his commentary, Joshua, “we must begin reading these texts for what they were intended to say, by their own literary and historical canons, and not for what our own unexamined presuppositions have imposed upon them for too long.”
David Howard helps do just that when he writes, “The book’s [Joshua’s] central message—that of Israel’s possession of the promised land in fulfillment of God’s promises—is found in every one of its aspects in the early chapters of the book. The land was God’s gift to his people; he was its legal owner and could give it to whom he willed. He was in process of giving it to the Israelites now (1:2), and yet he had already given it to them (1:3). The already-accomplished nature of the act emphasizes the connections with earlier times and that God had already given Israel legal title to the land (Gen 12:7; 15:18–20; Deut 1:8,21; etc.). Despite the fact that the Israelites were receiving the land as God’s gift, however, they still had to enter into the land and take possession of it as their inheritance. The battles ahead are deemphasized—after all, the Lord would be giving Israel its victories—but Israel’s taking possession and inheriting the land is foreshadowed in the early chapters.”
Understanding that the central message of the Israel’s acquisition of Canaan was God’s gifting the land to Israel through their taking possession of it is an essential detail in converging hypotheses to be more in line with the biblical and archeological text. The biblical text is unambiguous. The Israelites entered into the land through military conquest. Yet, the biblical text also informs us, “10 And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant…” Thus, we see that the intention was never to clear the land of all human influence. Instead, the meaning that is clear from the text, is that there was to be an avoidance of destroying buildings. Avoiding the destruction of all human productions can be seen from the textual evidence; only the cities of Jericho, Ai, and Hazor are said to have been burned when the Israelites entered the land. Here the archeological data intersects with the biblical text. In their commentaries on Joshua, Howard, Longman, and Dillard all show that Jericho fell in the Late Bronze Age. In addition, if the sites of Ai and Hazor are correct, then the excavations of those sites point to the cities being burned in the same period.
The point of the conquest was not to destroy the already established builds and the like, but that this work would take time. Provan, Long, and Longman point out that though the book of Joshua’s first half focuses on the military campaigns of destroying the Canaanites, the uses of words such as “subjugation” and “occupation” are textual clues that let the reader know that the conquest was not going to be swift. This subjugation and occupation would take time and effort and would take, perhaps, generations to accomplish. Richard Hess agrees with this understanding when he writes, “However, it is clear from the text that the extermination of the Canaanites will be a gradual process and this is understood as part of the divine plan for Israel (v. 22).”
By gathering all of the information from each hypothesis, we can, perhaps, make a better one. In an environment where the land of Canaan was experiencing the taxation of their trade routes by Egypt in the south and the influx of Sea Peoples to the west, a new group known as Israel came into the land of Canaan from the east. The urban centers were not prepared for open war due to unrest from the peasant classes. The Israelites went into the land quickly and became the dominant power. Whereas they were told to clear out the inhabitants of the land, they failed to do so. They were instead intermarrying with the locals and mixing their religions. In this hypothesis, we can see aspects from each of the four discussed models that seek to integrate biblical and archaeological evidence.
Conclusion
Being roughly thirty-three hundred years detached from the events described in the biblical account, an unambiguous retailing of the historical events surrounding the rise of Israel in Canaan are all but concealed to the modern student. The conquest, peaceful infiltration, peasant revolt, and societal collapse hypotheses seem to see aspects of the tapestry of the historical record. Yet with each additional archaeological discovery and with new insights into the biblical text, a clearer picture of the events of biblical history comes into focus. Scholars will continue to refine their hypothesis through the evidence available and their own worldview, and the discussion will continue. This discussion should point us to diligently seek the truth that the Bible purports, for if the Bible is true, then it contains the very words that point to life. Through the biblical account, a person may trust that what it says happed truly occurred, and that what it says will happen, will someday come to be.
Bibliography
Benware, Paul. Survey of the Old Testament- Everyman’s Bible Commentary. Vol. Revised. Everyman’s Bible Commentary. (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2001).
Coleson, Joseph E., Lawson G. Stone, Jason K. Driesbach, and Philip Wesley Comfort. Joshua. Cornerstone Biblical Commentary. (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 2012).
Dallaire, Helene. 2012. Joshua. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic. Intro. Sect. 5c. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=1884503&site=eds-live&scope=site.
George Mendenhall, “Hebrew Conquest of Palestine”; idem, The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition: 73-73, quotes in Provan, Ian, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. A Biblical History of Israel. 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 192.
Gordon McConville, and Stephen Williams. Joshua. The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).
Howard, David M. Joshua, New American Commentary, vol. 5. (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998).
Longman, Tremper, and Raymond B. Dillard. An Introduction to the Old Testament. 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006).
Provan, Ian, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. A Biblical History of Israel. 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015).
Richard S. Hess. Joshua. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Nottingham: IVP Academic, 2008.
Walton, John H., Mark W. Chavalas, and Victor Harold Matthews. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2000).
William Dever. Anchor Bible Dictionary, “Israel, History of (Archaeology and the “Conquest”)” vol 3. (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
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