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OTL 210/211/212 Exam Summary
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OTL 210/1/2Graham Smith
,1. DISCUSS THE PROBLEM OF THE HISTORICITY O F THE BOOK OF JOSHUA BY
REFERRING TO THE DIF FERENT CONQUEST MODE LS AS W ELL AS THE
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. (COLLINS 2004:186-191)
The Book of Joshua presents a description of how the Israelite tribes took possession of the land of Canaan west
of the Jordan through means of a grand conquest. However, a closer reading of the book of Joshua suggests a
more limited conquest. Comparing Joshua with Judges also presents further challenges in determining the scale
of the conquest. The biblical evidence for a sweeping conquest is not as straightforward as it might initially appear.
Consequently, different models have been proposed to explain the origin of Israel in Canaan. In light of the
challenges with the biblical evidence for the conquest of Canaan, scholars have consequently looked to various
plausible explanations to describe how Israel originated in Canaan.
There are four models that scholars have presented to explain how the nation of Israel originated in Canaan: the
immigration model (favoured especially by German scholars in the mid-twentieth century); the conquest model
(defended especially in North America); the revolt model (which tries to explain the origin of Israel as social
upheaval); and the gradual emergence model (which suggest that the Israelites originated as Canaanites and
only gradually attained a distinctive identity). These four models as well as the restrictive archaeological evidence
for the conquest of Josua will be considered in turn.
The immigration model suggests a quite different description of Israel’s settlement in Canaan than is presented in
a surface reading of the book of Joshua. The immigration model is associated with Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth.
Alt noted the significance of geography in the region of Canaan. The main cities were in the plains, whereas the
central highlands were sparsely inhabited in the second millennium. He proposed that the Israelites first occupied
the highlands, and only gradually extended their control to the plains. This view of the Israelite settlement could
claim support from the account in Judges 1, which admits that the Canaanites were not initially driven out from
many of the lowland cities. Some of the patriarchal stories in Genesis could also be understood as part of this
process of settlement. Alt and Noth accepted the biblical account, however, insofar as it assumed that the
Israelites came from outside the land, whether as violent invaders or as peaceful settlers. Thus, the immigration
model presents a plausible explanation for Israel’s origin in Canaan by describing that Israel immigrated to
Canaan from the highlands to the plains.
The conquest model attempts to follow the biblical description of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. This model
presents the biblical evidence as fully trustworthy and views the conquest of Canaan accordingly. However, this
model experiences challenges in light of the available archaeological evidence. The rise of archaeology
dominated American scholarship during the same period that Alt and Noth proposed the immigration model (i.e.
the 20th century). Unlike the stories of Genesis or Exodus, the account of the conquest in Joshua should admit to
verification by archaeology. The Near East is dotted with tells, flat-topped mounds that were the sites of ancient
cities. These mounds grew because of the frequency with which cities were destroyed. After the destruction, the
ruins were levelled off and the city was rebuilt on top of them. Typically, a “destruction layer” of debris was trapped
under the new floors. If the cities of Canaan had been violently destroyed, there should be evidence that could be
found by the archaeologists. William Foxwell Albright led this endeavour. He and his colleagues believed that the
biblical account was essentially correct and could be supported by archaeological evidence. The Albrightean
account of the history of Israel was given classic expression in John Bright’s History of Israel.
Unfortunately, the attempt to corroborate the biblical account by archaeological research backfired. There was
indeed extensive upheaval in Canaan in the Late Bronze Age (thirteenth and twelfth centuries b.c.e.), the
presumed time of the conquest. However, the archaeological evidence does not match the biblical account of the
conquest. According to the biblical accounts, the first phase of the conquest took place in Trans-jordan, before the
crossing of the river. The conquest of this territory is described in Numbers 21. In Josh 1:12 Joshua tells the tribes
of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh that they may settle beyond the Jordan, although their warriors
should accompany the invading army. The account in Numbers claims that there was a settled population in this
region, and specifically mentions the cities of Heshbon and Dibon. Both of these sites have been excavated and
shown to have been unoccupied in the Late Bronze period. Thus, they cannot have been destroyed by the
Israelites in the late thirteenth century b.c.e. Jericho and Ai (the two showpieces of the conquest
in Joshua) yielded similar results. Neither was a walled city in the Late Bronze period.
1 © Copyright reserved/Kopiereg voorbehou Graham Smith ©
, Of nearly twenty identifiable sites that were captured by Joshua or his immediate successors according to the
biblical account, only two, Hazor and Bethel, have yielded archaeological evidence of destruction at the
appropriate period. Ironically, the biblical evidence on Hazor is problematic, since it is said to be still in Canaanite
hands in Judges 4–5. Archaeology is not an infallible science, and its results are always open to revision in light of
new excavations. Nevertheless, in light of the available evidence, the account of the conquest in Joshua seems
largely, if not entirely, fictitious.
Yet, the results of archaeology have not been entirely negative. Excavations and surveys in the last quarter of the
twentieth century brought to light hundreds of small sites that were established in the thirteenth to eleventh
centuries b.c.e., primarily in the central highlands, but some as far north as Galilee and some to the south in the
northern Negev. Nearly all of these are small, unwalled sites, and most were abandoned by the eleventh century.
These settlements are generally assumed to be Israelite, although they do not provide explicit self-identification.
The identification of these settlements as Israelite is suggested first of all by the fact that this region is the
stronghold of early Israel according to the biblical account, and it was clearly Israelite in later times. Moreover, the
Merneptah stela of Egyptian Pharao Merneptah in about 1220 b.c.e. mentions the existence of Israel in Canaan
before the end of the thirteenth-century b.c.e. The stela does not clearly describe whether Israel is a people or
land, but the inscription nevertheless confirms Israel’s existence in Canaan. Although the Bible does not present
an encounter between Merneptah and Israel, this stela serves as significant archaeological evidence for Israel’s
settlement in Canaan.
Archaeological evidence for Israelite or proto-Israelite settlements in the central highlands, however, stops far
short of confirming the biblical account. Moreover, the settlements excavated by archaeologists are explicitly
Canaanite in their material culture. As the prominent archaeologist Dever states: “It must be stressed that there
is no evidence whatsoever in the material culture that would indicate that these Iron I villagers originated outside
Palestine, not even in Transjordan, much less in Egypt or the Sinai. There is nothing in the material remains to
suggest that these are ‘pastoral nomads settling down’—on the contrary, they appear to be skilled and well-
adapted peasant farmers, long familiar with local conditions in Canaan.”
Archaeologists of an earlier generation thought they had found some distinctively Israelite features in the central
highlands. The typical style of house there is usually referred to as “the four-roomed courtyard house” (consisting
of a cluster of rooms around a courtyard). This has often been called “the Israelite-style house,” and it was
the typical kind of house in ancient Israel. However, there were some earlier examples, and a growing number of
such houses has now been found at sites that were obviously not Israelite. Similarly, the “collar-rimmed jar” is
typical of these settlements, but not unique to them. The pottery in the new villages is usually of poorer quality
than what is found in Canaanite cities such as Gezer, but of the same general type. (One aspect of the material
remains of the highland settlements that may be distinctive, however, is the absence of pig bones, which is of
interest in view of the biblical dietary laws.)
Since these villages were not fortified, they lend support to the view that the settlement was a process of peaceful
immigration instead of the grandiose conquest as described in Joshua. Unlike the older immigration hypothesis of
Alt and Noth, however, the new evidence suggests that the settlers did not come from outside the land, but were
of Canaanite origin. Considering the archaeological evidence, one may be led to believe that if some Israelites
had been slaves in Egypt and spent a period wandering in the wilderness, they failed to make an impact on the
material culture. These archaeological findings do not prove that no exodus took place, but they suggest that the
origin of the people of Israel cannot be explained primarily by the story of escape from Egypt.
George E. Mendenhall (an American student of Albright) in 1962 hypothesised that Israel had its origins in a social
revolution within Canaan. Prompted by dissatisfaction with the biblical account rather than by new
archaeological evidence, Mendenhall developed the revolt model to explain Israel’s origins in Canaan. The
Amarna letters (letters written in Akkadian on clay tablets by people in Canaan, and addressed to the pharaohs
Amenophis III and Amenophis IV or Akhenaten in the fourteenth-century b.c.e), found in Egypt in 1888, served as
the basic idea from which Mendenhall’s revolt model was derived. Amenophis IV or Akhenaten in the fourteenth
century b.c.e launched a religious revolution in Egypt by promoting the cult of the sun-god Aten to the exclusion of
other deities (this was the so-called Aten heresy). He evidently did not pay very close attention to the affairs of the
Egyptian empire in Canaan. The letters from Canaan frequently complain about groups who were causing
2 © Copyright reserved/Kopiereg voorbehou Graham Smith ©
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