Who Were the Early Israelistes and Where Did They Come From?

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Spring, 2004 by John Barclay Burns

By William G. Dever. Grand Rapids, MI/ Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans, 2003. Pp. xi 268. Cloth, $25.00.

In his recent book, WHAT DID THE BIBLICAL WRITERS KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT?, Dever asserted that the writers of the First Testament knew a good deal about Israel's past, using his extensive archaeological experience to support his claim. This volume addresses the origins and identification of those early Israelites who began Israel's "past." Like the previous book, it blends archaeology and textual sources to discredit those historical "minimalist" or "revisionist" scholars who reject the possibility of identifying an early Israel. Dever begins by discussing the present crisis in understanding Israelite origins, noting that the Exodus and Conquest are still "hot topics" (p. 3) in the Biblical truth stakes. He examines the Exodus, the conquest of Transjordan and the land west of Jordan. Then he introduces the archaeological evidence for the presence of the "proto-Israelites" (p. 67) and summarizes the material culture of Iron Age I (ca. 1200-1000 BCE) the proposed period for Israel's emergence. Archaeological data and textual sources are then brought together in an effort to answer two closing questions: who were of the early Israelites, and Should the Biblical tradition be regarded as history or myth.

The chapter on the Exodus notes that, despite the efforts of conservative scholars, archaeological support for the biblical account is severely lacking. Concerning the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites according to the book of Numbers, Dever concludes that "the silence of the archaeological record is deafening" (p. 32). He says the same of the conquest narrative of Canaan found in Joshua: modern excavations of the sites of Joshua's conquests do not support the Biblical account--see the useful table on pp. 56-57. In fact, as Dever notes (p. 74), most scholars now accept the fact that the Israelites were an indigenous group, from the Canaanite population. He then turns to the more recent, post-1970s, excavations of the small sites that lie in what the First Testament hints was the heartland of ancient Israel: sites that include Shechem, Shiloh, and Beersheba. In three chapters (5-7) he provides a careful and readable description of the excavations at these sites, the opinions of the principal archaeologists, and their methods in surveying, all abundantly illustrated with line-drawings of site-plans, maps of site-distributions and demography, and isometric reconstructions of villages and dwellings. He collects the material culture produced by archaeology under the headings of subsistence and economy, social structure, political organization, technology and aesthetics, and ideology and religion. The problem of synthesizing the data produced by archaeology and the texts occupies the next three chapters (8-10). He conveniently recaps the positions of biblical scholars and archaeologists on Israelite origins, German, Israeli, and American from Albrecht Alt in the 1920s to the present. He includes conservatives and those minimalist scholars, based in Sheffield, England and Copenhagen, Denmark, who reject the existence of any ancient Israel and skillfully exposes the implausible conclusions of both sides. Those who have little or no archaeological experience justifiably incur his ire.

As he approaches his own synthesis, he engages with the Israeli archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, to agree and to differ. The areas of agreement are significant: a future emphasis on archaeology over texts, and population growth in the hill country west of the Jordan in Iron I that came from within Canaanite society and, in fact, represented an ethnic mix. The important difference for the reader is that while Finkelstein refuses to classify these settlers as early Israelites, Dever is willing to do so. After a concise summary of the reasons for the collapse of Late Bronze Age Canaan and the ensuing disruption, he suggests that the vacant hill country was occupied by dissidents and refugees coming mainly from the Canaanite lowlands--mostly already skilled farmers who could meet the challenges of hill-country agriculture, perhaps joined by some pastoral nomads. He further asserts that there was a level of social revolt against the feudal model that had obtained in the now defunct society of the Canaanite city-states. Thus he envisions an "agrarian movement with strong reformist tendencies" (p. 189) as motivating his early Israelites and the continuing dislike of monarchy and large estates that certainly appears in much of the literature of the First Testament. Dever is aware, however, that his identification of those agrarian reformist settlers as early Israelites may be perceived as facile, and he attempts to counter this. He admits to the presence of a variety of ethnic groups in Iron I, but believes that archaeology, ethnicity and textual sources can place a unique group in the hill-country that may with some confidence be termed Proto-Israelite. At the very end he refers to the sad and dangerous practice of modern Palestinian and Israeli extremists identifying themselves with these ancient groups.