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  • From: "David N. da Silva" <huyxh8s02 AT sneakemail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] A model of Hebrew settlement
  • Date: 22 Oct 2004 17:33:40 -0000

There are three main models:

1) An invasion as described in Joshua and Judges.
2) Peaceful infiltration
3) That the Hebrews were in Canaan all along.

The principle evidence comes from the archaeological surveys of the last 30
years. These show that at the start of the iron age, starting a bit before
1200, there were hundreds of new villages founded in the central highlands of
Israel. Adding the area of the villages and towns for an estimate of the
settled population (excluding nomads), the settled population is ten times
higher after this wave of settlement than in the late bronze age. So the
question is, why did this wave of village-dwelling occur at just this time?
I think the answer is obvious:
(4) Before 1200, the place was an Egyptian province, and the Egyptians and
their Canaanite client-kings actively suppressed settlement.

We have a good picture of Egyptian Canaan from the Amarna letters, and there
is no reason to suppose things changed much up to a bit before 1200. The
kings in Sechem and Jerusalem, kept on their thrones by Egypt, and helped by
Egyptian garrisons, were struggling with nomads called 'Apiru. It can't have
been easy controling rootless nomads, but the kings could prevent the nomads
from building settlements. If any 'Apiru had tried to settle down and plant
a crop without permission, the kings could have just burned their crops and
torn down their houses.

Around 1200, there were battles between the Egyptians and the Sea Peoples,
which resulted in the Philistines and Tjekker settling along the south coast.
Most likely, the Sea Peoples came through Syria and Palestine by land, with
their fleets following them offshore. So they would have passed through
Canaan some time before the battles with Egypt - just at the time the
settlement wave started. We don't know what happened to the Canaanites
when the Sea Peoples passed through, but the effect would have been massive -
the Sea Peoples wiped out empires. Whatever power Sechem and Jerusalem had
to control the nomads, would have surely been destroyed, and help from Egypt
would have ended.

Israel Finkelstein supports option (3) - that the founders of the circa 1200
villages had been in the land of Canaan all along. He offers a model of the
settlement that works like this: in the bronze age, nomadic herdsmen of the
highlands traded with the cities of the coastal plain, animal products for
grain. When these arrangements were disrupted by the Philistine and Tjekker
settlements, the herdsmen, who needed grain, were forced to plant crops on
less fertile land in the highlands. These new farmers built the villages.
Only some of the herdsmen settled - the newly settled farmers traded with
those who continued as herdsmen. (See his and Neil Asher Silberman's The
Bible Unearthed)

But to me it seems unlikely that the grain-for-meat trade would have been
stopped completely, since some Canaanite cities remained, and trade with the
Philistines could have been arranged. And any partial ending of trade would
have been temporary (for a somewhat later period, we know that trade was
taking place) but there is no sign of settlements being abandoned. The
sheer size of the settlement wave, and the permanence of the settlements once
established, both seem to argue that settling was not a contrivance to deal
with a temporary difficulty in buying grain.

David Nunes da Silva
--------------------------------------
(first of two posts on the subject)




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