Inside, Outside: Where Did the Early Israelites Come From?

Biblical Archaeology Review [34:06] ^ | Nov/Dec 2008 | Anson Rainey

[SunkenCiv]

On one thing all scholars agree: In the period archaeologists call Iron Age I, from about 1200 to 1000 B.C.E., approximately 300 new settlements sprang up in the central hill country of Canaan that runs through the land like a spine from north to south. Almost everyone also agrees that these were the early Israelites settling down. The famous hieroglyphic text known as the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1205 B.C.E., refers to "Israel" at this time as a people (not a country or nation) probably located in Transjordan...

In 1962 George E. Mendenhall... introduced a new theory of Israelite origins, however. According to him, the Israelites who settled in the hill country came not from outside, east of the Jordan, but from inside, from the Canaanite cities of the coastal plain. This massive influx of new settlers into the hill country was the result of an "internal revolt" by beleaguered peasants against the Canaanite city-states. To support his thesis, Mendenhall grossly distorted a number of passages from the Amarna Letters that mention the 'apiru, a term often mistakenly associated with the early Israelites (see article)...

The new hill-country settlers acquired their pottery traditions from their life on the Transjordanian plateau and the Jordan Valley.

...there is also a general dissimilarity in domestic house construction between the hill-country Israelites and the earlier Canaanite cities of the plain.

[SunkenCiv]

I like to be prepared.

[SunkenCiv]

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[SkyDancer]

Well from my history at least, the word Hebrew means “they who crossed over” as in a river. There was a river of sorts separating from where the future Israelites came from to where they were going ....

[Nachum]

He-Brews = Beer and Wine makers

[yooper]

They came from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They by necessity crossed Lake Michigan to escape the FIBS.

Hope this helps.

[count-your-change]

Very roughly from 1500+ b.c. to 1000 b.c. was the time from Moses to Solomon. Lots of building work going on in Israel during that time.

[bcsco]

I like to be prepared.

Well then, read the Bible. That will tell you exactly where the Israelites came from. Far better information than what the yahoos in this story have speculated over...

[SkyDancer]

Shouldn't it be "They-brews"??????

[Nachum]

You know, we get the gender thing mixed up in California...

[SkyDancer]

meaning that guys look like gals and ...... I remember being in Santa Monica and was driving around lost. I pull up to a stop sign and there’s this person with the back to me looking in a store window. The person was dressed in a blue silk pants suit with long blond hair (to die for) I called out “Miss, can you tell me how to get to .....” It was a guy.

[SunkenCiv]

Well then, read the article. The point of the author is that the Biblical version is supported by archaeology, while the minimalist crap is not.

[SunkenCiv]

Canoe give more details. /rimshot!

[SunkenCiv]

What you said. :') Thanks C-y-C. One of *those* topics...

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[count-your-change]

I started to write that there was a female Israelite and a male Israelite and....and...go ask your mother!

[SunkenCiv]

;’)

[bcsco]

My bad. I read the first page about this fellow with his theories and said “That’s it”. I didn’t finish. Sorry.

[tarheelswamprat]

Well, I know there were some words on that pic, but I couldn’t seem to focus on them...

[SunkenCiv]

I grok that.

[SunkenCiv]

No harm, no foul. There’s also (uh, I think I posted it) a link to a companion story by the same author.

[Fred Nerks]

Building on this model in a massive monograph, Norman K. Gottwald, then of Union Theological Seminary in New York, did not emphasize the role of religion, as Mendenhall had done, but explained the move to the hill country as an application of a universal Marxist paradigm. The subtitle of his book refers to “liberated Israel.” Its reasoning is informed by what the author considers a universal anthropological or sociological model: The early peasants who became Israel successfully emerged from the Canaanite cities as a result of a “peasant revolt.” The revolt was fueled not by Yahwism, as Mendenhall maintained, but by “socio-political egalitarianism.”2 The earliest Israelites, according to this theory, were really Canaanites.

To make my position clear at the outset, I have dubbed Gottwald’s theory, which has become wildly popular in academia, the “revolting peasant theory.”

I also find the theory revolting.