The Origins of Israel
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The issue of the origins of Israel has been approached from different perspectives, and several models have been offered to explain the presence of Israel in Canaan. There are three primary models to explain this issue. The first is the Conquest Model, which explains the matter in terms of Israel seizing Canaan in a massive, unified military conquest. The second contends that Israel occupied Canaan by peaceful infiltration, treaty making, and natural population growth--the Immigration Model. The third is more recent and holds that Israel was a sector of the native Canaanite population that revolted against the city-state overlords and upper classes and established its own sociopolitical and religious alternative order--the Social Revolution Model. Each will be considered in turn for its strengths and weaknesses. The Conquest Model derives from the description in Joshua 1-12 of a united twelve-tribe invasion and seizure of the land under the direction of Joshua. The biblical text states that there was a series of lightning attacks that defeated armies, overthrew cities, and annihilated or expelled the Canaanite populace. The attackers are described as a people who had escaped from slavery in Egypt. After their victory, they divide the land and settle it unhindered. A sharp demarcation is made between Israelites and Canaanites as mortal antagonists, which is in agreement with the conception of two national and religious entities struggling for control of territory. T
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al and religious separation between Canaanites and Israelites is seen as initially a difference between resident peoples and pastoral nomads and in some cases as the difference between politically established people and social drifters. This model stresses the normalcy of bedouin penetration into settled areas, and the earliest Israelites are conceived as seasonal or seminomads who would become numerous only over time and also who would only in time become coordinated enough to threaten the Canaanites. There are different forms of the model. One holds that the Israelites entered empty spaces between the widely scattered highland Canaanite cities where the Israelites fell outside the jurisdiction of the city-states and developed for some time without significant contact with their agricultural and urban neighbors. Other theories postulate more contact and treaty relations between the two parties and even measurable intermixing of the two populations (Gottwald 270).
This "peaceful infiltration" model was developed by German archaeologists as early as the 1920s and 1930s. The theory was based on an advance beyond the earlier, strictly literary criticism of the materials in Joshua-Judges and moved to a new method called "form cr
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Revolution Model, Hebrew Bible, Canaanites Israelites, Conquest Model, Israel Gottwald, Israelites Canaanites, Beit Mirsim, Galilee Dever, Joshua Arguments, Immigration Model, conquest model, immigration model, hebrew bible, revolt model, peaceful infiltration, canaanite cities, social revolution, exodus israelites, social revolution model, history germans, pastoral nomads,
Approximate Word count = 1543
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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