SETH, THREE STELES OF mother (though never so named in the text) of the divine triad, is the active nature of the stationary Father (the divine as non-being), and the Self-begotten is the vehicle through which that activity is expressed in the perceptible world. This functional relationship of the triad betrays its strong indebtedness to Neoplatonic thought. Numenius, for example, speaks of a movement from the stationary unity of the primordial god through a motion or energy expressed first in the noetic realm and then in the percep- tible world (Numen, Fragment 15; Tardieu 1973: 560-61). The prevalence of Neoplatonic vocabulary in Steles Seth (c.g. the existence-life-mind triad; 122, 20-23) is extensive (lardiew 1973: 560-67; Claude 1983: 20-31; Robinson 1977). ‘Steles Seth, which presupposes this ontological system, is, best understood in its present form as a liturgical docu- ment. The three redacted hymns, addressed in ascending order to the triadic nature of the divine, represent a mystery of ascension Schenke 1981: 601-602). In Steles Seth one encounters the members of a community in the ‘act of appropriating salvation through liturgical participa- tion in the primordial ascent of their spiritual ancestor Seth. The hymns were likely recited as part of a liturgical process through which the individual ascended and de- scended from the vision of the divine. ‘The date and provenance of the original work is difficult, to determine. The strong Neoplatonic influence on the text together with Porphyry’s mention of Plotinus’ con- frontation with sectarians whose books apparently in- cluded the related Sethian texts of Zost. (8.1) and Allogenes (11.3) suggests a date in the first half of the 3d century cx. (Robinson 1977: 132-33; NHL 362-63). The specula- tive nature of the text and the survival of the only copy in Coptic translation support Alexandria as the most likely place of composition (Claude 1983: 31-33). ‘The text is an extremely important witness to the inter- action of Neoplatonic and gnostic ideas in the latter 24-34 ‘centuries. It offers also a rare opportunity to look into the social or worship setting of a gnostic community graphy Boblig, A. 1975. Zum ‘Pluralismus’ in den Schriften von Nag Hammadi. Pp. 19-84 in Esses on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honor of Pahor Labib, ed. M. Krause. NHS 6. Leiden. Claude, P1981. Approche de la structure des trois stele de Seth Pp. 362-73 in Colloque international sur les textes de Nog Hommadi (Québec, 22-25 aotit 1978), ed. B. Barc, BCNHE 1. Quebec, 10985, Les tos sls de Seth, Hymne gortique& la triade (NHL Vil, 5). BCNHT 8, Québec Krause, M., and Girgis, V. 1973, Viertes Kapite: Die drei Stelen ‘des Seth. Vol. 2, pp. 178-99 in Chrisentum am Roten Meer, ed. E Altheim and R. Stich. Belin, Layton, B. 1987. The Gnsti Seiptures, New York. Robinson, J. M. 1972. The Thrce Sicles of Seth (CG VIL, 5) “American Research Center in Egypt Newseter 81: 24 1077. The Three Steles of Seth and the Gnostics of Plotinus. Pp. 132-42 in Proceedings of the Inerational Collo- ‘uium on Gnosicim. Stachioln, Aug, 20-25, 1973, ed. G. Widen- ‘ren, Filologisk-flosfiska serien 17. Stockholm, ‘Schenke, HM. 1981. The Phenomenon and Significance of Gros tie Sethianism. Vol. 2, pp. 588-616 in The Rediscovery of Gnost- 1120 + V ism: Proceedings of the Conference at Yale March 1978, ed. B. Layton. Leiden. Tardieu, M. 1973. Les trois stéles des Seth. Un écrit gnostique retrouvé a Nag Hammadi. RSPT 57: 545-75. Wekel, K..1975. “Die drei Schriften des Seth.” Die fnfte Schrift ‘aus Nag-Hammadi-Codex VIL. TLZ 100; 571-80. —— 1977. Die drei Stelen des Seth (NHC VI, 5). boldt-Universitit. Berlin. Hum Janes E. GorHRinc SETHUR (PERSON) [Heb sétir]. One of the twelve individuals sent from Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran to spy out the land of Canaan (Num 13:13). Mentioned only in this list of scouts, Sethur was the son of Michael and a representative of the tribe of Asher. He is numbered among the ten who returned from their adventure with a negative report. ‘Terry L. BRENSINGER SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN. The biblical ac- count of how Israel took possession of the land of Canaan presents at first glance a deceptively straightforward pic- ture. The Conquest fulfills Yhwh’s promises to the pa- triarchs and to the generation of the Exodus. It marks the beginning of that period in which Israel, liberated by Yhwh from bondage, enters fully into a treaty-partnership with him, responsible to abide by his ordinances. It ratifies and proclaims Israel’s passage into nationhood through. her passage from the limbo of landlessness to a franchise in the soil; from a protected, but bereft, perambulation in the wasteland to a fruitful, settled possession of the land. ‘The Conquest is the capstone of Israel's national epic. See also ISRAEL, HISTORY OF (PREMONARCHIC PERIOD) and (ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ISRAELITE CON- QUEST). Nevertheless, biblical narratives concerning the Con- quest take an inferior place to those of the Exodus. Joshua does not tower, Moses-like, over the consciousness of bibli- cal authors. Indeed, no text outside the book that bears his name explicitly attributes the Conquest to him. Except as a conclusion foregone from the moment of the Exodus, or from the crossing of the Jordan, the Con- quest plays only a small role in Israelite literature outside the book of Joshua. Hosea, Isaiah, and Deutero-Isaiah utilize the Exodus as a conceptual model for Israel's return from exile, but never come to grips with the concrete historical, strategic details of its sequel. Micah (6:1—4) recalls the conffict with Balam and Balak that threatened Israel's initial entry into Cisjordan: the implication is that the transition from the wilderness to the Promised Land was the moment of peril, the Conquest itself a mere corollary; the Conquest, like the seizure of ‘Troy, de- manded the powers of an Apollodorus to describe it, but ‘on it those of a Homer would be sadly squandered. The same attitude suffuses the Pentateuchal account, and in- forms the notion that one should divide off the first five books of the Bible as a Torah, “the five books of Moses.” Only a philistine would demand, after the climactic vision ‘of Moses surveying from a Moabite crag the Promised Land denied to him, an explicit, literal account of Canaan'sV+ 1121 reduction. That there had been a Gonquest was self- evident: Israel possessed the land. Describing the Con- quest after Moses’ death could be nothing more than belaboring the aftermath. Nevertheless, Israel's historians have indeed provided us with a reconstruction of the Conquest. The tale itself they have confected from the ingredients of old traditions, an ‘occasional written source, and surmise; it is mounted a a component of the Deuteronomistic History, the historical work putatively stretching from Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, a work in large measure assembled in the 7th century B.C, In this setting, the tale of the Conquest furnished a crucial link between the prose epic that de- ‘scribed the nation’s birth, in the Torah, and the history of Israel's life in the land until the twin catastrophes of subjection and exile overtook it—for Israel, the north, at Assyria’s hands, and, for Judah, the south, at Babylon's, A. The Biblical Presentation 1. The Transjordanian Conquests 2. The Cisjordanian Conquest 8. After Joshua: The Nations Remaining, B. Scholarly Treatments of the Conquest 1. The Beginnings of Modern Criticism 2. The Sociological View 3. The Internal Gonquest 4. Résumé C. The Emergence of Israel in Canaan . Canaan Before Israel Canaan in the Earliest Israelite Eras Israel on the Ground Israelite Traditions in the Light of Modern Knowl- edge 5. The Israelite Conquest A, The Biblical Presentation ‘The accounts of this fateful epoch in Israel's historical odyssey deserve t0 be read not just singly, but as an organic reconstruction. Discrepancies in the Israelite view of the Conquest, with the possible exception of Ezekiel's (if Eze- Kiel 16 comments on the Conquest), are less significant than scholars have generally claimed. In any event, the treatment of the theme begins in the Pentateuch, Yhwh had promised Canaan to Israel's ancestors, start- ing with Abraham (Gen 15:18-21; 26:3; 28:13; 48:6, 16, 21k; Exod 3:8, 17; 18:5, 11; 29:23, 28-33; 33:13; 34:11; Gen 17:8; 28:4; 85:12; Exod 6:8). Scholars have quibbled over the unanimity of these texts concerning the dimen- sions of the territory vouchsafed—the Priestly source (P), at least, does not reckon Transjordan as part of the land. But the prolusory promise is consistent: Yhwh affirms it in both major Pentateuchal narrative strands (P [Priestly] and J [the Yahwistic source)) to each of the patriarchs and to the generation of the Exodus, ‘The Exodus follows, of course, its goal, ie. the Conquest, and settlement. Yet a lack of faith, when Israel's spies have reconnoitred Canaan's landscape, leads to the abortion of the appointed day (Numbers 13-14). Condemned to delay, the Israelites ultimately invade not from the south, the most natural and quickest route from Fgypt, but from ‘Transjordan. The “wanderings” determine the geographi- ‘eal sequence and the extent of Canaan's vanquishment: SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN the Israelites must brand Transjordan with destruction, under the leadership of Moses, before proceeding to cap- ture the prize Yhwh had promised them. 1. The Transjordanian Conquests. The Mosaic acces- sions in Transjordan are recalled in two somewhat differ- ent recensions in the books of Numbers and Deuteron- omy. In the Deuteronomic resumé, Israel avoids contact with the Transjordanian powers—Edom, Moab, and Am- ‘mon—and purposefully engages the Amorite kingdom of Sihon, centered on Heshbon (Deuteronomy 2). The suc ceeding episode recounts the overthrow of Og. Here, Og is king of the Bashan and a region stretching to the Hermon; the operation, thus, entails a daunting detour from the primary objectives of Israel’s military thrust in Cisjordan (Deut 3:1-11; 29:6). But according to Deuter- ‘onomy, Transjordan is an integral part of the land pledged to the patriarchs (see 2:24f.,31). So like Joshua's, Moses’ conquests must envelop everything up to the Hermon (Deut 3:8). ‘The tradition of Transjordanian confrontations in Num- bers is of a different cast. Sihon’s subjection is incidental, a by-product of his refusal to permit Isracl passage through his territory to its promised land, Cisjordan. It leaves Israc] master of the land from the Arnon, Moab’s border, to Ammon’s border at the Jabbok. Northward expansion embraces the districts of Jaazer, Gilead, and, in the southern Bashan, Kenath (Num 21:21-32; 32:30-42), All these areas were traditionally understood to have been peopled by Amorites—the race whose sin, in the theology of Gen 15:16; Deut 9:4f., laid the moral foundation for its extirpation of Yhwh'’s hands. ‘The Amorites are consistently portrayed (Amos 2:9) as the aborigines of the Cisjordanian interior, particularly its, highlands (Num 13:29; Deut 1:7, 19, Josh 10:6). Their rightful successors, apart from the Philistines on the coast ‘of § Canaan, are the Hebrews. Biblical ethnography links the Hebrews to an eponym, Eber, who is an ancestor of Abraham (Gen 10:21, 25; 11:14). Thus, the Hebrews, Abra- ham’s descendants and collaterals, comprise in Transjor- dan Israel, Edom, Moab, and Ammon, as the delimitations of Num 20:14-21; 21:13-15, 24 (and Deut 2:4f, 9-11, 19-23) make clear. In sum, Israel’s historians identified the kin-based, ter- ritorial kingdoms of the Iron Age as Yhwh’s avengers against an autochthonous population organized politically into individual city-states. Possibly, the identification of Sihon as an Amorite rather than a Hebrew contributed to the Deutcronomic notion that ‘Transjordan was doomed to Israelite conquest from the first. This corollary is absent in Numbers. Num 21:33-85 does recount the digressive expedition against Og in the Bashan, This text stems from a tradition more closely related to that infusing Deuteronomy. But it does not press the claim that Og was an Amorite (as Deut 3:8; cf. v 11), It conflicts with the more modest reports about Israel’s initial penetration only into the southern reaches of the Bashan. And, since Wellhausen observed that Judg 11:22f, Num 22:2, and Josh 24:8 reflect no Knowledge of the Og tradition in Bashan (1963: 109), scholars (e.g., Noth UgS, 35) have widely regarded the notice as an accretion. One sees the tendency for Og to be attached to Sihon secondarily also in 1 Kgs 4:19,SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN where territory $ a the Bashan is associated with him (as against 1 Kes The idesogeal profile of the reports in Numbers is, most distinctive when silhouetted against their attitude toward Transjordan. This substantiates the thesis that the text concerning Og is a late correction of the tradition. As ‘opposed to Deuteronomy, where Transjordan is the first object of Israe!’s ambitions, Numbers regards any territo- rial acquisitions in Transjordan as incidental. The sole value of Transjordan is as a springboard for invading the western bank Indeed, of the generation that had balked at invading, Canaan when the spies returned (Numbers 13-14), only Caleb, in J (Num 14:23f), or Galeb and Joshua, in P (Num 14:35, 38; 26:65; cf. the layered Deut 1:34~39), are ac- corded the privilege of entering that consecrated zone plighted to the patriarchs: Moses’ death, thus, preempted entry into this region (P in Num 27:12-14; Deut 32:48-52). This view even underlies some Deuteronomic pronouncements (e.g., Deut 19:1-10; 31:20-23), despite Deuteronomy’s otherwise consistent insistence that the Conquest of the Promised Land had begun in earnest in ‘Transjordan (esp. 2:24, 30-31; 3:24, 26f,; 34:1-4). Simi- larly, the Mosaic legislation of Deuteronomy is phrased as though itis to come into effect in the future, “when you come to the land that Yhwh your god is giving you” (as Deut 17:14; ef. 6:1, 33 7:1; 11:10-12, 23, 29; 30:18; 31:13; esp. 31:21). Yet the legislation is proclaimed at the brink of the Jordan crossing; the implication is that the Canaan of the patriarchal promises did not include Transjordan. ‘The stratification of this perspective inside Deuteronomy indicates that itis the older view, on which the authors of Deuteronomy’s historical recitations imposed a revisionist mn (contrast Weinfeld 1983), This old view of the Transjordanian occupation comes to most lucid expression in Numbers 32. Here, P portrays the decision by Reuben and Gad to dwell across the Jordan as a betrayal of faith—a refusal to take possession of the allotted inheritance—potentially equivalent to the sin of the spies (32:7-15). These tribes must help master Cisjor- dan before returning to the portions they have selected on their own. The text also has a reflex in Joshua 22. On returning from the Conquest, the Transjordanian tribes erect an altar, purely for symbolic purposes. Again, the idea that Transjordan is not a part of the land of the promise colors the narrative. Transjordan is impure, pro- fane, and its Israelite inhabitants have the option—even the duty—of abandoning it for “the land of Yhwh’s posses- sion, where the Tabernacle of Yhwh abides” (22:19). Much of this material stems from P, and may have no origin earlier than the 6th century ».c.e, The same proba- bly applies to Num 34:1-15, which define “Canaan” as the Cisjordanian entity, though one stretching to Hamath (Hama) in N Syria (cf. Num $5:14). Still, Deuteronomy’ pre-conscious ambivalence on the issue, the occasional reference in J, and the invariable description of Moses’ achievements as “bringing Israel up from Egypt,” but not as enfranchising her in the land, all indicate that P here followed traditional lines of thought: the Mosaic conquests, across the Jordan (and in the far south, at Hormah; Num 21:3) were supererogatory; the terminus of Israel's migra- 1122+ Vv tion was west of the Jordan only. This was the region ‘whose subjugation Joshua ben-Nun engineered. Both the Deuteronomic and the more traditional scenar- ios locate the Cisjordanian conquest in a clearly defined chronological sequence. Moses’ death marks the end of Israel's circuitous migration from Egypt. It rings in a new epoch, in which Yhwh will redeem his second pledge to the Israelites in their Egyptian thrall, and give to them the land of the Amorites, Canaanites, and other residents of Gisjordan (Exod 3:8; 6:8). The transfer of authority from “Moses to Joshua takes place amid intermittent action and, legislation (Num 27:15-23; Deut 3:28; 54:9). It provides the only tangible continuity from the first era to the next. 2. The Cisjordanian Conquest. a. The First Movement: Emblematic Victories. (1) The Crossing. The book of Joshua opens with two cycles of tradition concerning the ‘entry into Canaan, deftly interwoven and partially re- phrased by the (“Deuteronomistic’) historian. The first focuses on the miraculous and ceremonious fording of the Jordan at Gilgal (Joshua 1:3-5), a site whose location is uncertain, but which lay most probably in the vicinity of the Adam{ah] (Damiya) crossing (B. Mazar 1985). As the narrative unfolds, Israel waits encamped by the Jordan near Shittim from the 8th until the 10th day of Nisan. On the 10th day, the Levites bear the ark into the riverbed: the current upstream comes to a halt, and the people pass dryshod. They pitch camp at Gilgal, where Joshua circum- cizes them—responding, apparently, to the P (Genesis 17) and possibly E traditions that circumcision was introduced earlier (Gen $4:13-24; Exod 4:25f,), the narrator explains, that the practice was in hiatus during the wanderings (Josh 5:47), So fortified, in accordance with the specifications of Exod 12:43-48 (P), Israel celebrates her first Passover in the land (5:9-12). Its at this point that Joshua encoun- ters the “commander of Yhwh’s army”, at Jericho (5:13— 15), though this tradition may conceivably belong to the Jericho cycle (Josh 2:6). ‘This impressive foundation legend for the shrine at Gilgal figures the Conquest in a miraculous river-crossing. ‘The marvel deflates “all the kings of the Amorites”, reduc- ing them to that state of fatalism whose tactical reflex is rout (5:1). An identical reconstruction of events surfaces in the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15), one of the earliest extant Hebrew lyrics: awe at Yhwh’s might struck the peoples and leaders of Trans- and Cisjordan dumb, until Yhwh’s people had passed over Jordan, into the land of the inheritance (vy 13-16). In Joshua 5 (vv 13-15), as in Exodus 15 (v 17), there follows the consecration of Yhwh’s sanctuary. This occasion, and the concomitant appearance of the captain of Yhwh's hosts, foreordains, for the second time, the Amorites’ destruction. ‘The tradition that transformed the Jordan crossing into Israel’ proleptic triumph probably negotiated the gap between the time when Exodus 15 was written and that of Joshua 1;3-5's composition in the form of an annual ritual. Such a ritual progress from Shittim to Gilgal is alluded to in Micah 6:5; the prophet associates it with commemoration of the Exodus, and with the story of Balam (Numbers 22-24), Joshua 24 juxtaposes the same events with a sudden and miraculous Conquest (in the Pentateuch, a number of P texts separate Balam from the fording) in a (Deuteronomistic) framework that presentsV+ 1123 Moses’ work in Transjordan as the start of, not the prelude 40, the settlement (vw 8-12): it represents this historical rehearsal as a history of salvation, the reason for Israel at Shechem (not Shiloh) to make fast its commitment to Yhwh. Interestingly, Hos 6:7-9, in the context of 6:1-10, suggests that both Mic 6:5 and Joshua 24 reflect a single ritual: Hosea refers to a ritual movement from Adam in ‘Transjordan (through Gilgal? Hos 9:10, 12, 15; 12:19; B. Mazar 1985) to a climax at Shechem (cf. Deut 11:29-32; 27:1-18; Josh 8:30-35). This unopposed processional march furnishes the basis for later prophetic transforma- tions of the motif (esp. Isa 11:14-16; see Cross CMHE, 99-111), It is no coincidence that the narratives of Abraham's (Gen 12:5~7) and Jacob's (Genesis 32-34) arrival in Ca- naan both recapitulate the pattern—the pattern of Israel’ entry after the Exodus. The processional route is triply ‘enshrined in the nation’s ancestral lore. All these indica- tions concur on the point that the materials reformulated in Joshua 1:3-5 constitute one of Israel's oldest, most carefully preserved traditions concerning the Conquest. They are the fruit of a sanctuary’s foundation legend and 4 ritual hallowing it. In fact, liturgical elements associated with the ritual may survive in Exodus 15, Deuteronomy 33, Psalm 114, and, in embedded form, in Psalm 68 and Hab 3:3-6 (Cross CMHE, 99-105). An association with royal ritual seems also to have taken hold, sometime early in the era of the monarchy. 1 Sam 11:12-14; 2 Sam 19:16, 32, 40-44; and, probably 2 Sam 2:8-9, 12 all situate confirmations of the king's accession at Gilgal after a ‘crossing from Transjordan. (2) Jericho and Ai. The second narrative cycle in Joshua ‘chronicles the overthrow of Jericho and Ai (chaps. 9; 6-8). It begins with a reconnaissance of the former town, an act, that is set (in the present edition) during the three days Israel encamped by the river in Transjordan (2:22f): Is- rael’s spies in Jericho find themselves in the home of Rahab, a prostitute, who barters their abetment for im- ‘munity from the Holy War. Rahab recounts how Israel's experience at the Reed Sea and victories over Sihon and (Og in Transjordan had demoralized “all the inhabitants of the land” (2:9-11). This information the spies carry back to Joshua; it leads, as the opening cycles are edited, to the fording of the river (2:24), ‘The narrator resumes this strand after Joshua's encoun- ter with Yhwh's divine commander (5:13-15). Jericho is invested. The ark and the army circle the city over the course of a full week; on the seventh day, down fall the walls. Joshua annihilates the population, Rahab and her family excepted, and the livestock. Captured metal is ded- icated to Yhwh, in accordance with the precepts of the Holy War (ch, 6). Joshua 24 portrays this event as the decisive confronta-~ tion, as an emblematic victory over all those groups with which later generations understood pre-Israclite Canaan to have been peopled (24:11f; correspondingly, the Clem- entine liturgy breaks off at just this point). Conceivably, the reference in Josh 24:12 to “the two kings of the ‘Amorites”, an expression elsewhere applied to Sihon and Og (Deut’ 3:8; 4:47; 31:4; Josh 2:10; 9:10), twins the + account with that of the siege of Ai. This is uncertain, however. The LXX of Josh 24:12 refers to twelve Amorite SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN kings instead of two, And v 12 may in fact allude to a rout of the Amorites derivative from and not identical with the battle at Jericho (v 11). But even if Joshua 24 did once preserve a tradition focused on Jericho alone, the narrative in chaps. 6-8 will now allow no dismemberment: the spectacular dismantling of Jericho leads without disconti- nuity to Ais storming by subterfuge. ‘The direct link between events at Ai and Jericho is Achan, ben-Karmi of the tribe of Judah (Josh 7:18). His pecula- tion from the consecrated booty of Jericho forestalls the first attempt on Ai. Only his stoning permits the successful renewal of the assault (7:18:29). Hos 2:16f. (in the Valley ‘of Achor, as Josh 7:25f; cf. I Chr 2:7; and note Hosea’s play on Karmi) plainly associate the Achan incident with the first check encountered in Israel's advance from the wilderness into Canaan. This part of the Conquest cycle, like that surrounding Gilgal, had already been con- structed, thus, in the oral or written sources that antedated the Deuteronomist's work, ‘At this juncture, the historian lowers the curtain on the first movement of the Conquest. He does so by taking the Israelites to Mt. Ebal, in fulfilment of the command of Deut 11:29f; 27:1-14 that they write the law mediated by ‘Moses on stones there, and recite the blessing and curse associated with that law. Deut 27:2, 4 assign this duty to “the day when you cross the Jordan.” One might suspect that the delays at Jericho and Ai were not envisioned by the authors of the Deuteronomic texts, But “the day when” in Hebrew can mean, “the time when.” Too, the narrative as it stands brings Israel past Jericho and directly into the central hills, in a path that intersects the road from Ai or Bethel to Shechem: from Jericho, no other debouch would be more swift. It is to Shechem, in any event, that the historian draws his subjects for the climactic confirmation. of their loyalty to Yhwh, in preparation for the practical part of their penetration of the land. That is, significantly, the last point in Joshua at which the ark, a regular element in the narrative from chap. | on, plays a role. b. The Second Movement: The Big Battalions. A dif- ferent sort of history begins in chap. 9. Instead of being dispirited, or magically expelled by hornets, the Amorites fashion formidable coalitions and engage Israel in pitched battles. 9:1, originally placed before 8:30-35 (with G), introduces this shift as a consequence of the foregoing action. It describes an assembly of “all the kings that were across the Jordan” (cf. 5:1), “in the highlands and in the lowlands and in all the shore of the Great Sea opposite the Lebanon—the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hiv- ite, and Jebusite—. . “to war with Joshua and with Israel, ‘with one accord” (for the resemblance to EA 366, see C.5.¢ below). Through the succeeding three chapters, the details of this extraordinary engagement, differing somewhat from the expectations this exordium evokes, unfurl com- pellingly. = The first palpable step in the plot takes place at Gilgal. Edified by the fate of Jericho and Ai, the Hivites of Gibeon and three other tovens, located N and NW of Jerusalem, persuade Israel that they dwell in a “distant” land. By this use, they lure Israel into a treaty guaranteeing their lives. Only later, when they have already been rendered power- less to act by their leaders’ sworn oath, do the Israelites learn where Gibeon really lies (chap. 9).SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN On the heels of Jericho's and Ai’s devastation, the alli ance with the Gibeonite tetrapolis creates a cordon in the central hills separating Jerusalem from the north. This strategic situation impels the king of Jerusalem into action. He forms an alliance with the other Amorite city-states of the southern hills and Shephelah (with Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon), whose joint field force then belea~ guers Gibeon., Joshua relieves the town after a night march from Gilgal and scores a resounding rout down the Ajjalon Pass. During a two-day period when “the sun was still, and the moon stayed” for illumination, he pursues his antago- nists, already enfiladed by hailstones, past Azekah to Mak- kedah (10:1-14). There, Joshua hangs his royal adversaries (10:16-27; v 15 is to be omitted, with G). ‘The next segment portrays Joshua as reducing system- atically six strongholds in the Shephelah and hills—Mak- kedah, Libnab, Lachish (where he eradicates as well a field force led by the king of Gezer), Eglon, Hebron, and Debir—all according to the precepts of the Holy War (10:28-39). The historian summarizes: Joshua had taken the mountain, the S, the Shephelah and the “declivities” (?azedét), establishing an ascendancy from Kadesh-barnea to Gaza in the S to Gibeon in the N. The rather extreme claim that Joshua had eliminated all life within these bor- ders (except on the plain) also appears (10:40—42), The inheritance of Judah had been gutted, The logical sequel to the southern clash is, of course, a northern one. The king of Hazor organizes a coalition similar to that in the 8, but embracing his royal colleagues from the Hermon to the Jordan Valley, from the coast to the Chinnereth. They risk battle at “the waters of Merom,” where Joshua annihilates them in a rout stretching to Sidon. Joshua again sets about reducing fortresses, but the only one named or burned is Hazor. Of the rest, Joshua desiroys the population, but spares the architecture. The summary discloses that Joshua captured all the territory from the Negeb to the Hermon (the coasts and Jezreel Valley are not explicitly named), ridding the country of all its former inhabitants (Anakim) except in the Philistine litoral. “And the land was tranquil from war” (11:1-23), This observation marks the juncture of the Conquest with the implementation of Yhwh's plans for the Israelite settlement. The historian provides two reviews, one of the ‘areas conquered (chap. 12), the other of those unsubdued (Philistia, the southern Lebanon, the coast, and the region from the Hermon to Lebo Hamath: 13:1-6). Joshua as- signs the tribes’ territories (13-19), designates cities of refuge (20; responding to Num 35:9—34; cf. Deut 4:41— 43; 19:1-13; Exod 21:12f,) and Levitical cities (21; re- sponding to Num 35:18), and dismisses the Transjordan- ian contingent (22; following Num 32). Thus, the Con- ‘quest effectively closes with the confrontation at Merom. At the end of the book of Joshua, two final orations (chaps. 28; 24) punctuate it definitively. 3. After Joshua: the Nations Remaining. Joshua's tary activity winds down over the course of “many year with the consolidation of his gains at Merom (11:18). Israel's borders are extended to Lebo Hamath and the Euphrates much later: itis under David (2 Samuel 8) that Israel first fulfils its ultimate territorial destiny. More ‘germane to earlier times are local traditions, which emerge in something of tangle in Joshua and Judges. 1124+ V ‘One encounters the first of these traditions in the tribal allotments in Joshua. Manasseh cannot displace the inhab- itants of the Jezreel fortresses; Ephraim docs not take Gezer. More confusing, Josh 15:13—19 impute the con- quest and settlement of Hebron and Debir to Caleb and Othniel, respectively; yet, the towns are already reduced in Josh 10:36~39 (Joshua deeds Hebron to Caleb five years after crossing the Jordan in 14:6-15). Judges 1 seems to place Caleb's conquest after Joshua’s death (1:1, 10-15, 20). This text may in fact be drawn from Josh 15:13-19. In it, Hebron is taken by Judah, but Debir by Othnicl; Debir is handled similarly in Josh 15:15-17. Yet even Hebron, it is implied in 14:11f., may have succumbed specifically to Caleb’s arms (see further C.4). The border lists assert that Judah (15:63), Ephraim (16:10), and Manasseh (17:11-13) failed to “supplant” (horé3) some inhabitants of their territories (cf. also 13:13). ‘A comparable note in 19:47 about Dan's taking Laish glosses over the action’s roots in Dan’s failure to supplant the population of its allotment (Judg 1:35; 18:1, 27). But the primary repository of such recollections is Judges 1, an old text adapted for its present use by the Deuteron- omistic Historian (Halpern 1983: 179-182; Soggin Judges OTL, 26-27). This Cisjordanian compendium is peculiar in two respects: first it claims that Israel's task after Josh- 1ua’s demise was not the extension of the collective borders, as Joshua 10-13 might suggest, but making exclusive their ‘grasp on the territories already theoretically in their pos- session; and, secondly, the chapter presumes that in this stage of the Conquest, the tribes fought singly for mastery ‘within their allotments. idges 1 reports victories only for Judah (1:2-16, 20), ‘Simeon (1:17), and Joseph (1:22-26), precisely the tribes concerning whom the Joshua border lists present notices of failure, For Ephraim and Manasseh (Joseph), Judges 1 preserves these notices (1:27 = Josh 17:11-13, Manasseh; 1:29 = Josh 16:10, Ephraim). Judah's failure notice, con- cerning Jerusalem, is transferred to Benjamin in Judges 1 (Josh 15:68; Judg 1:21). A Judahite sack of Jerusalem is supplied (Judg 1:8). The only mitigation of Judah's success is the remark in 1:19 that the Judahites were unable, because of the “iron chariotry” there (see Sawyer 1983: 130-32), to supplant the inhabitants of the coastal low- lands. Some scholars discover inconsistencies in Judges 1. These are chimerical: one produces them only by equating capture with “supplanting,” between which the chapter distinguishes carefully, Joshua had taken the country; Israel must settle it. Judah had burnt Jerusalem (1:8); its inhabitants were not supplanted (1:21). Judah conquered. (lid) Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron (1:18; read MT), but could not supplant (yr) the denizens of the lowlands (1:19, read with G); in this instance, only the distinction between conquest and supplanting dissolves an outright contradic- tion between two adjoining verses, ‘The logic of the chapter, like that of Joshua 13-19, is that military domination does not translate mechanically into supplanting Amorites. Victory at war, however sweet, is merely a preface to the work of rooting out the existing population and colonizing the land. As in Joshua, in short, de- and repopulating the country are two separate steps. ‘This distinction permits the historian to explain how IsraelV+ 1125 ‘came into political control of parts of Canaan (or, under David, of all of it) without discharging Yhwh’s injunction to blot out the memory of the indigenous peoples (Deut 20:16-18; Num 33:52-56; Deut 7:24-26; 12:20) Between Judges 1 and Joshua there may seem to be a certain tension, which in some respects cannot be denied. ‘Thus, the summary in Josh 10:40-42 maximizes the achievements recorded earlier in the same chapter, where no activity outside the hills region is described. It inter- prets the detailed campaign reports to imply Joshua's thorough execution of Yhwh’s plans. Nevertheless, it dif- ferentiates between highlands and lowlands, just as the segment on Judah in Judges 1 is so careful to do. Joshua smote both (v 42), but destroyed all life only inland (wv 40£). The summary reflects a desire to inflate Joshua’s achievements without violating the limits of historical pos- sibility as the historian perceived it. It is the urge, not the formulation, that creates a sense of tension or contradic- tion, More problematic is the relationship between Judges 1 and Joshua 11, Josh 11:16-20 mentions Joshua's “taking” the land from the Negev to Baal Gad, as though without exception. Judges | lists the exceptions. But ifthe historian in Judges I relates Josh 11:16-20 (whether or not he wrote them) only to the cities whose forces Joshua met at the battle at Merom (11:1-9), there is no necessary conflict. Alternatively, the historian in Joshua may have distin- guished between eradication and Israelite colonization. This would explain the exaggeration of 10:40-42 as well, though it would not altogether relieve the tension occa- sioned by Joshua 12 (below). Josh 11:21f. confirms that the text demands such a nuanced reading. These verses must be consistent with Josh 10:40ff. That they rehearse 10:40—43 suggests that they take 11:16-20 not to describe Joshua's ousting the populations of the southern hills. Indeed, this represents a sharp reading: 11:16-20 speak of “taking” territory, of capturing the cities of specific kings (those of vv 1-15), but not of “supplanting” the indigenous populations either in whole or in part. It does not, in the reading of 11:21f. or of Judges 1, present the Conquest as fully accomplished. ‘The final segment of the Joshua narrative, the list of kings in Joshua 12, corresponds to Josh 11:10-15 in the sense that it enumerates which towns Israel depopulated. The list includes Taanach, Megiddo, and Dor, whose popu- lations were not supplanted, according to Judges 1. Ieis to be remembered that Judges 1 is placed deliberately after Joshua's death. The chapter presumes that Joshua's cam- paigns established a generalized control of the country- side; it remained for the several tribes to carry through the settlement thereafter, each in its own territory. This is the meaning of the sequence in Joshua as a whole: one proceeds from Israel's irruption from Transjordan to the ‘overcoming of indigenous resistance (chaps. 10-12) to the distribution of tribal territories (chaps. 13-22). That indi- vidual areas were left unmastered or unsettled may be a tradition alien to some of the sources subsumed in the account. In the presentation as a whole, however, it is a cortsistent element, one with which the account of the tribal allotments in fact begins (Josh 13:1-6). In all, the qualification of [srael’s success at colonizing Canaan may represent the historian’s overlay on traditions (like that of SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN the Amorite giants) that were more schematic, and more sclfaggrandizing. AL issue in Judges 1 are the nations remaining. Unlike Joshua 13, Judges | focuses on interstitial regions, areas Within the confines of Israelite control, It denies Israelite dominance in the Jezreel and the Aijalon Pass as well as on the coast, and points to Canaanite enclaves in areas under Israel's heel. Further, where those earlier texts, in which Yhwh's “hornet” is the medium of expulsion, speak of the “remaining peoples” as Yhwh's deliberate provision against the countryside's collapse into uncontrolled wilder- ness (Exod 23:29f,; cf, Deut 7:22; Josh 24:18), Judges 1 furnishes grounds for the verdict that Israel had willfully failed to execute the command to expunge the former population (2:15). Consistent with this view, where Josh 15:68; 17:11-13, 18 spotlight the invaders’ inability to expel their foes ("they could not supplant”), Judges I reserves this excuse for Judah (v 19, the formulation taken from Josh 17:18). Otherwise, it reports only that individual tribes “did not supplant” certain antagonists. And what appears as a Dan- ite success in Josh 19:47, Judges 1 translates into a conso- lation prize, unworthy of mention, for the tribe's failure (wy 34f,), Other than Judah, thus, Israel has turned its back on Yhwh’s command: Yhwh ceases, in the remarka- ble theology of the chapter, to subjugate Israel's (periph- eral) foes for them, because Israel had failed, after subju- gating them, to eradicate them (2:1-5) ‘The materials after Judges 1 develop this view. Judg, 2:6-10 present an epanaleptic account of Joshua's death (after Josh 24:28-31), This synchronizes the events re- ported in 2:11ff. with those of Judges 1 (and especially 2:2-4), developing in parallel with Judges 1 an account of Israels infidelity during what amouints to an interregnum. Thus, there remain (Judges 1) Ganaanites whose presence the Israelites suffered after Joshua's death. After the de- mise of Joshua's generation, who “knew” Yhwh and his acts, Israelites unfamiliar with the wondrous Exodus and entry begin to worship the gods of the peoples around them—the influence of and Israel's fraternization with the Canaanite remnant here asserts itself, as predicted in Josh 23:13; Num 33:55. In retaliation for Israel's infidelity, Yhwh repeatedly subjects them to the power of aliens. But when they repent, he relents, raising up “judges” (S6péti) to save them. Yet, at the “judge's” death, the Israelites revert to cultivating gods of “the peoples who were around them.” Yhwh therefore resolves against “supplanting” those nations Joshua has left (2:11-21). By this expedient, Yhwh exploits the “nations remain- ing” to “test” Israel’ fidelity—to wage war on Israel when it is necessary to reprove Israel for its waywardness, to instruct those who “did not know the wars of Canaan” (with G), who could not draw on first-hand experience of Yhwh's intervention for Israel, in wars over Canaan of their own (2:29F,; $:1£4). The nations in question are the peripheral powers enumerated among the unconquered in Josh 13:2-6 (cf. Judg 3:3). This presentation, then, links an interpretation of the book of Judges—in which the cycle of apostasy, oppression, and salvation plays itself out (Judg 3:7-11; 3:12-15, 30; 4:1-3, 231, + 5:31c; 6:1-6, 11-17 + 8:28; 10:6-18 + 11:1-11, $3)-to the majorSETTLEMENT OF CANAAN historiographic framework in Joshua, specifically that re- ‘counting Joshua's complete subjugation of the interior (as chap. 23; contrast Weinfeld 1967; Kaufmann 1966; 632- 44). Both Judg 1:1-2:5 and Judg 2:6-3:6 ascribe Israel's, failure to capture and depopulate all the appointed lands to infidelity to Yhwh after Joshua’s death. How Judg 1:1— 2:5 defines this territory is uncertain (Cisjordan to the Hermon?). Judg 2:6-3:6 defines Canaan after the manner of Joshua 12-13; 23, as embracing all of Syria up to Lebo Hamath (roughly congruent with the dimensions of Egypt's Ramesside empire, and of David's). Both concede that Joshua's death left the Conquest incomplete, effec- tively confined to the central highlands. Even when David repaired this defect, an indigenous population remained (Judg 1:21, 28, 30, $3), the process of their extirpation having been irrevocably suspended (2:1-5; 2:20-3:6; 1 Sam 7:14). Itis to their presence that Joshua 23—Judges 3 traces Israels failure to fulfill her divinely appointed des- tiny. B, Scholarly Treatments of the Conquest 1, The Beginnings of Modern Criticism. Even in the 19th century, by which time source-criticism and the in- roads of Enlightenment historical method had compelled most scholars to abandon the Pentateuch as a historical record, the book of Joshua continued to command a healthy respect. As late as 1909 a scholar as eminent as Paul Haupt was speculating in print as to the seismic character of the events at Jericho (Haupt 1909: 361f) Moreover, historians of Israel uniformly reconstructed the Conquest as a concerted Israelite entry from Transjordan, limaxing a migration aimed from the first at the over- throw and colonization of the country. Often, they thought ‘of this migration as ending a period of nomadic wander- ings, on the model of Numbers 13ff. Judges 1, taken, it must be said, out of context, fur- nished the first focus of skepticism about this view. E. Meyer ushered in the new era by arguing (1881) that this chapter recorded a series of triumphs by individual tribes rather than a united invasion, as in Joshua 10-12. The former type of Conquest he assigned to the J source of the Pentateuch, the latter to the Elohist (E). Meyer stressed. that the two traditions were not to be harmonized by being placed sequentially (as in the present recension), that they represented contradictory historical variants touching dif ferent tribal groups. Meyer's tour de force bore the encumbrance of all the 19th-century biases about the patriarchal narratives. Es- pecially from the time of Ewald’s Geschichte des Volkes Israel 1 (1843), students of Genesis looked to these narratives as ‘roves of information concerning mass population move- ments and other early, national history. Thus, the patriar- chal life-style reflected Israelite nomadism in the pre- Conquest period, Genesis 34, relating Dinah’s ravishment and the curse of Simeon and Levi, memorialized an early Israelite settlement at Shechem and the expulsion of the tribes (not individuals) accursed. The Rachel tribes could be linked to the stories of Conquest in the central hills; the Leah tribes were southern, tied to a penetration from Kadesh (below). Scholars mined the eponymic lore as though it were a mathematical notation of pre-Occupation 1126 + V history. Assuming that the tribes had existed discretely and in perpetuity, they sought to explain their coalescence outside Canaan. Most assumed it had taken place in Trans- Jordan. : ‘Not unnaturally, this posture among the pundits threw. the relative chronology of the Exodus and Conquest out ‘of whack. Which tribes belonged to what stages of each? Many scholars chose to harmonize, as they thought, the cacophony of Judges 1 and Joshua. Wellhausen (1804) and Guthe (1900) resolved it into two invasions from the east in the post-Mosaic era. Kittel (1888) and Procksch (1906) read the relative sequence of the patriarchs and Exodus to imply one invasion was pre-Mosaic. Still others (Paton 1900, Steuernagel 1901, Gressmann 1913) posited an early onslaught from the § by the Leah tribes: they unearthed traces of it, now buried beneath the literary structure of a unified incursion from Transjordan, in Israel’s reconnais- sance from Kadesh (Numbers 13-14; tellingly, J takes the spies only as far as Hebron), and in Num 20:14-21 (con- frontation with Edom); 21:13 (the defeat of Arad). They also appealed to the fact that in Judges 1, Judah and Simeon proceed first of all the tribes. These scholars associated the later intrusion of the Rachel tribes with a movement of the Exodus-community from Transjordan after Moses’ death (Joshua 9-11; judg 1:21-27). The Leah invasion had been piecemeal (associated with Judges 1 and Dj.the Rachel invasion (Joshua, E) was unified. ‘The appearance of the ha-bi-ru (Eg “apira) in the archive from the L4th-century court of Akhenaten at El Amarna undergirded these speculations. The Habiru were identi- fied with the Hebrews (rim), and the latter, even more speculatively, with the Israelites. The Amarna letters from. ‘Egyptian vassals in Canaan were taken to reflect the first stage of Israelite occupation (some in fact exploited them to date the Conquest as a whole to the 15th or 14th century, citing also the problematic 1 Kgs 6:1). A number of scholars identified the Habiru of Amarna with the Leah tribes. A 13th-century allusion to a “chief of Asher” being treed by a bear somewhere in the neighborhood of Me- giddo ratified the hypothesis: Israel, or elements of it, had been in the land from the 14th century on. These were the Hebrews who had destroyed Jericho, the fall of which before Late Bronze IIB (ca. 1300-1200 8.c.e.) had embar- rassed the dominant school of thought, which placed the Exodus in the 13th century. The Exodus, by contrast, involved only Rachel. ‘These analyses all coordinated three dichotomies: be- tween Judah (the south) and Israel (the north), between Leah and Rachel, and between Judges | and Joshua. None of these was indissoluble, and that between Judges 1 and Joshua was forced. The theories further attached great weight to the peregrinations of the patriarchs, and to traditions of Istael’s wilderness wanderings, even though these were now viewed as a literary device to connect the southern to the northern thrusts. They relied, ironically, on the details of these sources, including their insinuations of the tribes’ discrete existence, all the while they rejected the sources’ overall historiographic framework; no real inquiry into the interrelationship between the details and the framework was essayed. To anchor all this surmise, though, the traditions of “nomadism” had to mirror au- thentic conditions in the era before Israel's invasions: howve u27 else could diverse groups of Israelites keep sweeping in off the desert? Testimony as to these nomadic origins thus emerged as a nodal point for inquiry. At the same time, these reconstructions affirmed in essence the value of the reports in Joshua 1=11 2. The Sociological View. This consensus was first re- structured by Albrecht Alt in 1925. Alt observed that the sources in Joshua portrayed the events from a considerable chronological remove, and that they were insufficiently extensive to permit on this basis alone a detailed recon- struction. He saw that the translation of patriarchal legend from eponymic folklore into national history was arbitrary, and the use of its results solipsistic. He also understood that the reconstruction of pre-Conquest Israel as a medley ‘of marginal nomads had implications for the history of the settlement incompatible with the conclusions at which his colleagues had arrived. Heavily under the influence of Max Weber, he therefore reframed the problem as one of historical geography and political structures: instead of concentrating on the airy problem of the intentions of a people, Israel, immune from historical scrutiny in a sort ‘of wilderness limbo—instead of asking what “tribes” were where in the twilight of Israel's prehistory—Alt asked what it was that the Conquest had meant on the ground. His answer: in the coastlands and Jezreel, where in the LB Age Egypt's empire had flourished, the old city-states continued to dictate the shape of Canaan's political dix sions. Even those city-states vanquished by the Philistines and other Sea Peoples retained their traditional territories; the territories continued to be named after the towns. Conversely, the interior initially occupied by the Israelites lay outside the lowlands system—in the Amarna texts, Shechem, and Jerusalem were the only city-states of the central and southern hills. These Israelite zones, defined by Judges 1 and roughly coincidental with the shape of Saul’s kingdom (2 Sam 2:9), took the name not of a town, but of a nation. Their political culture was national, ethnic rather than local and territorial. Indeed, Israel achieved geographical continuum only when David took the Jezree! ‘Valley: this was the first era in which the lowland city-state ‘was broken down and subordinated to a national structure, that of a territorial state ‘Alt concluded that Israelites had first entered and occu- pied those hinterlands least fitted to withstand their pene- tration. Their movement into Canaan resembled that of semicnomads fixed on a course of sedentarization, a model contoured to the paradigm of Israel's wandering in the wilderness. Yet Alt’s scenario incorporated the healthy qualification, based on the model of Bedouin sedentariza- tion, that such a people could have entered the land only by infiltration: they could have mastered territory only outside close political and military control, which is to say, in regions not systematically tesselated with city-states; even here, they must at first have cooperated with the city- state system. The destruction of the city-states was a second stage in the process, Even the coalescence of Israclite ‘ethnicity into articulated peoplehood (which Alt identified with statehood) took place in the land itself. Alt's emphasis on bedouin infiltration capped the trend, focusing on Israelite nomadism as a formative historical and cultural element. Fresh was the element of sociological theory applied almost formally in picturing the nature of SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN sedentarization and the complex interdependence be- tween the pastoral and urban populations, and in empha- sizing the development of the state as a measure of mean- ingful transition in political history. Alt further diverted scholarly attention from Joshua's exploits in storied battles to Israel's and David's achievements across historical Ca- naan. The issue was not what Joshua had done so much as what measurable benefits had accrued from his and from any other hypothetical carly efforts. Correspondingly, the question of the character and composition of the original incursion into Canaan paled into virtual invisibility beside the issue of what territories Israel in her early years secured: the consciousness of the incoming Israelites ceased to be material, inline with Alt’s conviction that they grew together as a political unit only on Canaanite soil. ‘The notion of “conquering” Canaan evolved only slowly out of the gradual consolidation of Israel's ethnopolitical condition there Alt’ position entailed evaluating Israel’s conquest liter- ature as a telescoped compendium of subsequent honors, devoid of direct or literal value. He himself stressed its ctiological character, and drew strength from the fact that excavations at Ai showed the site to have been vacant during the LB Age (ca. 1570-1200 n.c.z.), when the Isra- elites should have been destroying it. Subsequent explora- tion at Jericho disclosed, too, that the walls did not “come actumblin’ down” because there were no walls to have tumbled in LB II (though Garstang’s “city wall” section has never been relocated and reinterpreted). Stressing that Judges 1 and the record of Hazor’s undoing in Judges 4— 5 contradicted Joshua's personal association with the strug ‘ele against the northern city-states, Alt and his followers dissociated Joshua from any action other than that in the Aijalon Pass (Josh 10:1~15). The more conservative scholarly positions that ante- dated Alt did not altogether wither under Al's attack. In the 1930's, William Foxwell Albright and his disciples emerged as the staunchest advocates of the older construc- tions, with Israel howling in off the desert and sweeping Canaan before it (Albright ARI). The wrinkle of the dou- ble-entry (once from the south) was retained from the 19th century. And the concession was made, against the most extreme claims of the text, that the Conquest con- fined itself to the hills, and even there was only partially successful. Alt’s crucial distinction, thus, between the low- lands in the hands of the Canaanites and the hills con- trolled by Israel, prevailed, though no clear correlation of this point to the distinction between conquest and sup- planting in Joshua and Judges was essayed. But Albright pointed to destructions at LB II Lachish and ‘Tell Beit Mirsim, and, later, at LB II Hazor as evidence of a violent entry. He proposed, somewhat more fecbly, that the story of Ai’s destruction had been displaced from Bethel. Fi- nally, Albright’ partisans observed that Judges 1's tribe- by-tribe reportage could not be used to buttress Al's scenario, as the latter claimed in 1939, Judges 1 was alist, not a narrative, and therefore necessarily presented a fragmented view: further, “tribe-by-tribe” was not a nor- mal process of sedentarization, which takes place at the individual or expanded family (hamula) level (Wright 1946), “This whole vantage-point must be seen today as some-SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN thing of a rearguard action. Proponents of Alt’s “Land- nahme"—“occupation,” a term that embraces the process through to David's time—retorted that destructions did not imply Israelite action: Egyptians and earthquake, fire and Philistines all had to be reckoned as possible causes. Even where Israelite settlement succeeded the destruction (Bethel, Hazor, and in the Albrightian brief, Lachish, Tell Beit Mirsim), one had evidence only of occupation, not of the identity of the attacker. Further, they contended, biblical historiography con- cerning the Conquest took its shape from various con- cerns—etiological, ideological, political—not all historical, that worked in cumulative synergy from the era of the ‘events to that, much later, of the writing. One could not match textual claims to archaeological results from LB sites without analyzing the claims diachronicall ature, like the sites, needed to be approached as a strati graphic cipher. Thus, Jericho (Bienkowski 1986) and Ai (Callaway 1968) were unpopulated in the Late Bronze, so that those elements of the Conquest account were incor- tect. At Gibeon, the only signs of a “great” LB city were a few rather inconsequential tombs—so the tradition of ali ance had to be called into question or dated later. Debir, probably to be identified with Khirbet Rabud, not with Tell Beit Mirsim, apparently experienced no interruption in occupation (Kochavi 1974). And there are no signs, to date, of LB IIB settlements either at Hebron or at Tell Yarmut, Indeed, epigraphic data from Lachish places the end of the Canaanite city there around 1150 (Ussishkin 1985), some half century after the Israelites are known— from the Merneptah stele—to have established themselves, in Canaan, Archaeology does as much to disprove the Joshua narratives as to support them: those who use it to buttress a theory of a unified Conquest must use it, and. the texts, very selectively. As to the issue whether the Israelites entered united, bent on war, or in smaller groups, Alt’s disciples observed that one had only to note how exiguous their early impact had been on the city-states. Indeed, the logistics and coor- dination of the venture imagined by Albright defied ra- tional reconstruction (as Weippert 1979: 1-82); and, why the supposedly centralized Israelites dispersed after vast victories into the undesirable hinterlands and the plight of ponerlessness seemed puzzling. 3. The Internal Conquest. These strictures had great force, and for 40 years the “infiltration” hypothesis fur- nished the dominant paradigm for reconstructing the ‘Occupation. “Conquest” advocates more or less accommo- dated to it by debating, as they had since the 19th century, which tribes came to Canaan when, But upon this asymp- totic movement, a new model supervened, In 1962, G. E. Mendenhall turned the flank of Alt’s position by calling its strongest, yet least defended bulwark into issue. ‘Mendenhall denied that the Israelites had been desert, nomads at all, or underwent any collective transformation from wanderers in the steppe to farmers in the Canaanite interior; he found Alt’s supporters at a disadvantage, for the biblical text affords evidence of migration, even of pastoral pursuits inside Canaan, but none of nomadism. Moreover, the model of nomadism with which Alt’s sup- porters most often worked was not that of transhumant communities or transhumant pastoral specialists inside 1128 + V agricultural communities, but one of the groups of wan- derers with no special territorial affiliation. It agreed with no known ANE reality, but leaned heavily on the model of Arabian camel-nomads, only superficially understood. This defect, of course, was one inherited from the bedouin ideal of the 19th and 20th centuries (Budde 1895; Flight 1923), an ideal concretized in the popular imagination by the exploits of Colonel Lawrence. Mendenhall proposed instead that Israel conquered Ca- naan through a “peasants’ revolt.” Stressing the impor- tance of the Habiru as an element in Amarna Canaan, Mendenhall defined the term to denote those disenfran- chised from a role in the city-state system. He regarded, this as a phenomenon more widespread than the case of Israel alone, just as the “gentilic” (his social class) “Hebrew” comprised a group of people of which Israel was only one part. In the Amarna era, he claimed, such alienation was progressing apace: the peasants of the villages yearned for relief from the oppressive cities; they made common cause with the Habiru to this end. Ulimately, he suggested, these peasants must have withdrawn from the city-state structures, drifting off to a refuge in the highlands. Gal- vanized by a radical new religion, Yahwism, carried across Jordan by a few survivors of the Exodus, these “Hebrews” carved out for themselves a community, ecumenical (Got- twald 1979 adds “egalitarian”; cf. Mendenhall 1983) in character—as reflected in Israelite covenant law—and rad- ically opposed to the feudal despotisms of Canaan. The list of kings killed in Josh 12:9-24 testified powerfully to the zeal with which the Habiru prosecuted their mission to liberate all the prisoners of pagan autocracy.. Mendenhall's “ideal model” stood off against earlier efforts in two respects. Against the Conquest model, it posited no sizable invasion from Transjordan. Against the Occupation model, it restored the element of an early, collective Conquest, repudiating the unteleological notion, of nomadism Ales followers had fostered. It represented a sort of Internal Conquest hypothesis (see further esp. Gottwald 1979; Chaney 1983). Scholars were not wanting (esp. Weippert 1967) who applied their ingenuity to confute the arguments toward the Internal Conquest. The arguments have been various. ‘The most important of the contentions may be reduced to First, Mendenhall’s characterization of the situation at ‘Amarna is misleading. It is true, there are cases in which Canaanite townsmen kill their kings. But uniformly, where the evidence permits us to say anything at all, the old king is replaced with a new one. There is, in short, no evidence of a reaction against the institution of monarchy itself Indeed, most of the evidence on which Mendenhall, and, his defenders, Gottwald and Chaney, draw comes from the Byblos correspondence, Here, the Habiru are allegedly present in greatest number, and the party that deposes the king of Byblos, Rib-Addi, is the Habiru party. Yet these supposedly disaffected ruffians immediately set Rib-Addi’s brother on the throne—a development no doubt more reassuring than disconcerting to the pillars of the social order. Similarly, the letters furnish no evidence whatever of peasant flight from the city-states. The only population withdrawal at Byblos occurs when siege conditions result in a shortage of grain; and the deserters take refuge notV+ 1129 among a community of disenfranchised fugitives, but at the next city-state, not under siege, down the coast. The disaffection of which Mendenhall speaks is nowhere in evidence (Halpern 1983: 56-88). Unattested in Canaan either before or after the era of Israel's entry, it was, if it ever existed, a cutflover phenomenon without textual If the peasantry does not exhibit the restiveness on which Mendenhall bases his case, the Habiru are positively discouraging. There are a few unequivocal references to real—ethnic or sociological—Habiru in the archive (EA 195; Edzard etal 1970: 1,2; possibly EA 71:20-22, 28-31; 76:17-20; 288;25~33, etc.). And scholars frequently stress the fact that Amarna vassal kings complain loudly that their lands, towns, or people are controlled by or have linked hands with the Habiru (Helck 1968: 473; Chaney 1983: 72-81). But when one asks, what does this mean concretely, the answer is, the lands, towns, or people have fallen into the hands of royal political opponents. Rib-Addi complains loudest and longest about the Habiru: but by “Habiru,” he usually means the king of Amurru—another vassal king of the pharaoh—and its allies, i., the party that enthroned Rib-Addi’s brother. This isthe situation in the letters from other vassals as well. Whatever Habiru were, there is absolutely no textual evidence of a large number of them in Amarna Canaan. Almost always, Ha- biru is a term of opprobrium, denoting rebels against the pharaoh’s authority (Halpern 1983: 55-56; Na’aman 1986: 276-278). One “joins the Habiru” but does not become one (Moran 1988): They are “the brigands,” peo- ple accused of subversion against Egyptian overlordship; hot coincidentally, the same nomenclature is used by the Romans for restive elements (including, retrospectively, Brutus and Cassius). This understanding of the Amarna evidence finds stark corroboration in the archaeological and historical record. If the Canaanite peasantry in the 14th century was seeth- ing with anti-monarchic activism, as Mendenhall supposes, ‘one would expect that large numbers of the disaffected took refuge in the hill country, out of reach of the plains city-states with their Egyptian-supported armies. Likewise, if there was a significant, powerful, and militarily active population of Habiru, locked in an unceasing struggle with the kings of the city-states, they must have settled off the plains. Yet the hill country of Ephraim in LB II was all but devoid of settlements outside the city-states (Finkel- stein 1983; A/S). The more fertile hills of Manasseh have revealed only exiguous levels of occupation (Zertal 1986b). That is, there is no sign of organized or settled Habiru even in the land of Shechem, notorious for being the stretch of Canaan whose king ‘gave it to the Habiru® (EA 289; 23-24). The Galilean uplands, too, seem to have been bare (Gal 1990; Amir 1980). The simplest explanation for this situation is that there was no significant Habiru popu- lation, and no significant flight from the city-states. Gottwald (1979: 296-97, 655-58) has attempted to shore up this soft spot in Mendenhall’s armor. He suggests that the peasantry shunned the hills because without lime- slaked cisterns and iron tools for terracing, the hills could not be settled. But the uplands were heavily settled in the ~ MB I—the cisterns must have been lined effectively wher- ever the bedrock was permeable, though the bedrock did SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN uire this in all places (as Callaway 1976: $0). And there is litle evidence of iron in the hills in Iron I (Wald- baum 1978; Stager 1985a). Moreover, in LB [l-Iron I, Assyrian kings still preferred bronze pickaxes for cutting roads through mountain country (Grayson 1987: 272, 40— 46; ARI 2: 7.13). This preference actually lasts into the late 8th century (Thureau-Dangin 1912: 3:24): iron imple- ‘ments from this era suggest that quality control remained a serious problem (Pleiner 1979). In light of this difficulty, Chaney has suggested that the kings of LB Canaan de- prived their cultivators of all metal (1983: 6465). This, however, is sheer conjecture; the widespread representa- tion of bronze in LB sites, including even relatively simple burials (note Khalil 1984), speaks compellingly against it. The weight of the evidence is that the peasants of the ‘Amarna-era had the means to domesticate the hills. What they lacked was the motive. ‘One further consideration should be added. The desig- nation, Habiru, may originally have had an ethnic conno- tation. This interpretation is difficult to disprove if one identifies, as Mendenhall did, the Habiru with the He- brews: early biblical texts see the latter as an ethnological designation, embracing in one tradition the Israelites and their Transjordanian, south Arabian and south Syrian neighbors (J in Gen 10:25-30; 16:10-14; 19:30-38; 22:20-24; 25:25). Ifso, early Israel was not, as Mendenhall supposes, ecumenical (see below), but rather an ethnic entity. In sum, conditions in Canaan in the LB Age do not, resemble Mendenball’s characterization: the peasants are not on the verge of withdrawal; the Habiru are not present in any great number; and, there is no evidence of a population of disaffected anti-royalists. Mendenhall’s view of the Amarna era is a conjecture whose accuracy is an aleatory matter, not a case argued on the basis of firm ‘evidence and probability Mendenhall position on early Israel is no more apt. Mendenhall’s supporters are quick to point out that there are lines of continuity between Canaanite and Israelite material culture. The “collared-rim” style for ceramic ware so characteristic of Israelite settlements is found also in Canaanite strata, stretching back into the 14th century at Beth-shan, Megiddo, Tell Abu Hawam, and ‘Tell Beit Mir- sim. Collared-rim storage jars, which are particularly typi cal of Israelite pottery repertoires, appear in some number. at Megiddo VI, an Iron-Age layer the identity of whose inhabitants is disputed (but see Fritz 1987: 97). However, only one appears in a LB context, at Canaanite Aphek, and this one occurs at the very end of the period, and in a site with Israelite neighbors close nearby (Beck and Ko- chavi 1983). Further, there is a change in Iron I from pottery “thrown” on a fast wheel to pottery coil-built and hand-made. There is also discontinuity between Israel and Canaan in the relative frequency of collared-rim ware in the pottery finds of Iron I, and especially in housing stock, where the dominant architectural types and the village plans are entirely divorced (below, C.3). “Too, the settlement pattern in Iron I contradicts Men- denhall’s model. The manpower of urban LB Canaan was depleted (Gonen 1984), Yet, the hills population burgeons in Iron I, at a rate far excceding that of natural increase. Nor were the settlers fugitive peasants: they first home-SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN steaded regions suited to an economy based on pastoral- ism; only later did settlement extend to regions suited to ‘an autarkic or cash-crop economy (Finkelstein 1983: 110— 77), So the settlers were not refugees, but migrants, who had converted their assets into livestock, and entered the hills with established herds: this is why 65-80% of the hills villages’ area consisted of enclosure space (Finkelstein 1986b: 116-21). They were of recent agrarian background (Callaway 1976: 29; Stager 1985b: 60*), but they certainly had not withdrawn from local city-states, which did not have the spare manpower to sustain such an extensive population movement, and whose rulers would not have tolerated the nomadization of their agrarian population. This point, too, has confirmation. Merneptah’s “Israel stele” contains a portrait of “the people, Israel” (Stager 1985b: 59*-60*), However, this portrait actually stems from the artists of Ramesses II, when it functioned as a depiction of Shasu (Redford 1986: 192-200). Shasu is the Egyptian term for the pastoralists of Transjordan (Weip- pert 1974: 270-71), In short, the Merneptah stele identi- fies Israel with pastoral elements from outside Cisjordan. Its record, thus, conforms to that of Israel’s own ethn raphy, for it is with Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Aram, in ‘Tansjordan, that Israel claimed the closest affinities— claims that in turn reflect the authentic relations of the Israelite language (see below). All this is what the pattern of settlement leads us to expect, and both contradict the Internal Conquest model. ‘Mendenhall’s cultural arguments are equally unconvinc- ing. The case for Israelite king-killing boils down to the list in Josh 12:9-24—a text that is composite and late, and integrally bound up with the presentation in chaps. I-11 {above A.3), Even if the text were early, it would constitute evidence of activity not against kings, but against enemy kings, a distinction lost on Mendenhall. The distinction is important from all viewpoints: Israel identified the inter- cst of the king with that of the people (Judg 3:15-30; 4; 6-8; Josh 10:1-39). The role of the list in Joshua 12 in the Conquest narratives bears witness only to this prejudice: how does one separate the commemoration of kings killed in Joshua 12 from that of populations extirpated in Joshua 10-11? Further, early Israel was precisely xenophobic, as Judges 5 (esp. v 19) and Exodus 15 (esp. vw 13-17) testify, land as Saulide policy confirms (2 Sam 21:1-14; 4:5), Maintenance of the ethnic distinction between allied Hiv- ites (Joshua 9; 2 Sam 21:1-14), or other local groups within the compass of Israclite territorial ambitions (Judg. 27-36), and Israelites, reflects a long consciousness and. defense of ethnic or national distinction. If early Israel Killed kings, it did so not because kings defended the privilege and social stratification of an ancien regime, but because the kings were Canaanites. This is a major blow to Mendenhall’s thesis. That Israel was not egalitarian isa state of affairs Mendenhall acknowl- edges (1983). But his whole theoretical structure comes crashing down if Israel was not ecumenical. Nevertheless, not only is the early poetry characterized by extreme xenophobia, but the Israelites actually practiced mutilation (male circumcision), the function (although not necessarily the origins) of which is to inhibit connubium with neigh- bors, such as the Philistines, and perhaps non-Hivite (Gen- esis 34) Amorites (see Goody 1969). Statistical evidence is 1130 + Vv also accumulating (Wapnish and Hesse fe.; Hellwing and ‘Adjeman 1986: 145-46, 151) for a distinctive Israelite dietary profile, which included the avoidance of pig even in zones bordering on Canaanite and Philistine centers, where pig-consumption was regular (Hesse 1986, forty percent of the meat diet in a Philistine site, eight percent in a Canaanite). In the dietary evidence, Israclite xenopho- bia leaves a firm archaeological reflex. Here, again, Alt enjoys a firm purchase on the high ‘ground. Israel was first a consanguinary and only second- arily a territorial entity, It afforded no refuge for out- ‘groups. Early Israel may have been, as Mendenhall’s ad- herents claim, egalitarian. Its egalitarianism, however, em- braced Canaanite elements roughly under the conditions and in the proportions in which Spartan egalitarianism extended to the Helots. That is a lesson that the reduction of Ganaanites to forced labor under Solomon firmly teaches. This xenophobic posture is incommensurable with the view that Israel was ecumenical in origin and disposition. Correspondingly, there exist records of local accommodation to the invaders (Joshua 9; Judges 1), but none of active connivance with them. The implication is not necessarily that no such cases occurred; but the cir- cumstance reflects the hostile attitudes toward such allies, that governed the course of Israelite memory. Menden- hall's scenario, again, consists of more imagination than inference Had its exponents to labor under none of these consid- rable disabilities, the Internal Conquest would neverthe- less suffer froma fundamental flaw. Unlike either the ‘Conquest or the Occupation hypothesis, it draws no direct, support from Israelite sources: Mendenhall (1962) cites such texts as Joshua 12; the Song of Heshbon (supposi- tiously preserved by defectors to Israel); and links between Reubenites and Gileadites and places in Judah and Ephraim (uninhabited in LB) respectively. All these hints are based on the decontextualization of particular claims. ‘The literature not only contains no recollections of Israel- ites swarming out of Canaanite villages, but explicitly af- firms the opposite. Israel's distinction from Canaan, blem- ished only by the pact with Gibeon, persisted until the era of the entry had ended. In Mendenhall’s case, “the ascent ‘of reason was aided by the wings of imagination.” The model can never therefore amount to anything but one ‘among innumerable possible scenarios. Its inherent prob- ability is low. 4. Résumé, Each of the reconstructions reviewed above is coherent within the context of the facts. The Conquest scenario responds both to the claims of Joshua 9-11 and to the archaeological data especially from Hazor and Tell Beit Mirsim, The Internal Conquest model focuses on conditions in_pre-Israclite lowlands Canaan. One should note that neither model dispenses with the element of invasion from abroad: The Yahwistic invader is reduced, at best, from an agent of radical change, or, in Alt’s case, of gradual change, to a catalyst of reactionism; even in this, case it remains the fulerum of historical development. ‘The Occupation model, however, is methodologically ‘most mature. By asking first what change Israel's entry effected, it sets out from facts immediate to Israel's early life in Canaan. It involves no necessary recourse to the history of Israel before the Occupation. The InternalVe 1st Conquest presupposes that Israel existed latently among disaffected lowland peasants; the Conquest model pre- sumes that Israel arrived on the brink of Canaan ready- formed, and intent on broad conquests (it effectively pre- supposes the Exodus). The Occupation model's explana- ‘tory power consists in its narrow adhesion to palpable fact: arly Israel peopled the hills and backwaters of Canaan, This very strength proved in the end the theory's Achil- les’ heel. Alt’s view presumed that there was outside Ca- naan’s confines a fund of potential settlers, who fitfully drifted in to homestead the empty hills. Left to him was the 19th-century model of the Bedouin as a means to construe the pre-community community; no doubt the texts in Genesis and Numbers that portray Israel and its progenitors as migrants encouraged him to exploit the legacy. Here, Alt, too, left the firm ground of historical geography and political structures on the wings of socio- logical typology. Although his recourse avoided the histor~ ically sterile issue of the connection of Israel's Hebrews to the Habiru, and relegated to abeyance the destruction and repopulation by Israelites of Bethel, Hazor, and Tell Beit Mirsim, its implications for Israelite history in an eking, existence on the steppe, strike discordantly on the register of verisimilitude: pastoralism is an activity intimately con- nected with settled culture, with markets for meat, with ‘material plenty. Pastoralists in Canaan belong not to the untamed wilds of the land, but to the fringes of the most heavily cultivated districts. Even a neo-Altian scenario, like that offered by I. Finkelstein, must acknowledge that the failure of archaeological surveys to locate any significant Israelite presence in the hills prior to 1200 contradicts the thesis that a large population could have been engaged in pastoralism there. G. The Emergence of Israel in Canaan ‘The variables whose isolation is an assault on the Con- quest demands are daunting in their diversity. One must mate evidence biblical and extra-biblical, textual and ar- ‘chaeological, intrinsic and ideal. One must distinguish pre- Israclite Canaan from that of subsequent eras. One must distinguish pre-Canaanite Israel from Israel in the land. Finally, one must justify in historical terms the attested condition of pre-monarchic Israel, holding parts of Ca- naan, on the basis of the process of occupation. In all these enterprises, Alt is to be emulated. The unknown should be approached through the medium of the concrete. Otherwise, guided by “ideal models” and prejudices, the quest after the Conquest is merely a blind groping toward origins—lent a superstitious significance—that lie beyond the glimmer of measurable historical circumstance. 1. Canaan Before Israel. Israel's emergence as a people in Canaan coincides with the end of the LB Age (LB I, ca. 1400-1200 n.c.x.) and the beginning of the Iron Age (Iron I, ca. 1200-1000). Various textual sources illuminate the former time: Egyptian monuments deposited at Me- giddo and Beth-shan document the pharaoh’s domination, and periodic internal and external challenges to it. Hittite archives corroborate them in regard to Canaan's periph- ery. The diplomatic correspondence from E] Amarna (and « letters found in a few Canaanite tells) elucidates brilliantly the petty “politicking” of the mid-14th century, during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten. To the N, the SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN Ugaritic tablets afford a glimpse of a great kingdom ap- proaching the end of its days in the 13th/12th century. And, starting at about this time, Assyrian texts commem- ‘orate campaigns to the West and to the Sea. The archaeo- logical record mirrors the textual record closely, a circum- stance rather different from those surrounding Israel's origins, though whether this means that the Sea Peoples or Achaeans caused the collapse of Asian civilization is a difficult question (see Tadmor 1975; Millard 1981, on the age asa whole). Relatively, the era basks in a liberal light. Late Bronze II Canaan was fashioned from the rich block of the Middle Bronze LIC by the chisel of the Egyp- tian pharaohs. From the mid-16th to the mid-15th centu- ries, monarchs from Ahmose to Thutmosis IV, perhaps in common with their local competitors, cut a swath of de- struction across SW Asia, reducing the hollow shell of Hyksos Canaan to ash. What Israel later inherited these forces denuded of its numerous, prosperous settlements; they left behind an empire of ruins. In all the Late Bronze ‘Age, Canaan never recovered the density of settlement it enjoyed in the Middle Bronze TI In the 14th century, a renewed city-state system repre- sented the means of administering the empire, which Amenhotep III's armies consolidated against threats from Hatti and Mitanni. The empire consisted of a series of peity kingdoms, governed by local dynasts whose positions were dependent on the pharaoh's confirmation; it em- braced all the land from Gaza to the doorstep of Uga The disruptive clement in this conglomerate were the mountain states, territorially extensive entities inland from the coast. Controlling them was difficult at the best of times—logistics and communications considered—and uneconomical at all. Sparsely populated, they remained rugged and refractory. In the plains and valleys, at the same time, a drama of dubious allegiances, alliances with foreign powers (Hatti, Mitanni), and reliance on pharaonic support played itself Out. Distance vaccinated the southern lands against the ambitions of Hittite overlords. In the S, the region of later Israel, purely local ambitions dictated the course of the political maneuvers. In the N, however, in collusion now with this, now with that restive Egyptian vassal, Hatti gradually wrested dominion from the decline of the 18th dynasty. ‘The landmark development in the relationship between the twin contestants was the battle of Qadesh. Fought early in the reign of Ramesses Il, it arrested the erosion of Egyptian control in northern and central Syria, and on the coast south of Hatti. It led to a formal Egypto-Hittte condominium in Canaan, Yet this ratification of the status ‘quo by coequal partners was not fated to endure. By the end of the 13th century, the Peoples of the Sea were a third force crashing onto the shores of Egypt and Canaan, and associated developments engulfed hapless Hatti, which beneath their tide sank helplessly from view, afford- ing scope to Assyrian vigor west of the Euphrates, from the mid-18th century onward. 2. Canaan in the Earliest Israelite Eras. At the close of the LB Age, a series of new nations crystallized in Syri ‘Transjordan, and Canaan. For the first time, Egyptian sources during the interminable reign of Ramesses 11 surely speak of Moab and Edom. The celebrated reference to Israel in the Merneptah stela occurs only slightly later,SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN around 1220-1207. Ammon’s development cannot have lagged far behind. These are the nations that J in Genesis classifies as Hebrew (“bri}—descendants of the eponym Eber (*ilabr), a group that includes proto-Arameans in $ Syria—which emerged in the Cisjordanian interior and along the line of the King’s Highway in Transjordan at the end of LB II. While Egyptian reports of Shasu in ‘Transjor- dan antedate this era (see Helck 1968), the names later adopted by Iron-Age Hebrew kingdoms appear only in the 13th century. Egypt in adversity maintained a grip on Canaan. This, land weathered the Sea-People onslaught and mastered or possibly even installed their colonies on the Canaanite coast (see Singer 1988), Ramesses III, in particular, in the first half of the 12th century consolidated this domination. Locked in a martial struggle with the Sea-Peoples, he memorialized his campaigns against them in Canaan from Megiddo to Medinet Habu. Ramesses III left his mark on Ganaan’s architectural ‘complexion with public works at Beth Shean, Megiddo, and Lachish. Yet Egyptian control, like Egyptian interest, centered on the lowlands and trade-routes; even there, it ‘was insouciant and sporadic (cf. Weinstein 1981: 22). Just before Ramesses III's reign, the Philistines in the south and the Tjekker at Dor thus began to dislodge earlier Egyptian vassals or were settled in their place (as by Mer- neptah at Ashkelon?) on the coast. They were unceremo- niously absorbed as new vassals into the old empire by the pharaoh (see Ussishkin 1985: 222 on the date). Off the trade routes, the Hebrew nations appeared. Egypt could tolerate or adapt to considerable flux in its Asiatic posses- sions. It is ironic that Israel retained no recollection of Egyp- tian domination in the land. Egyptian armies went calling in Canaan's valleys through the middle of the 12th century (Gssishkin 1985; 218-19, 221, 224-26; Oren 1985: 188), ata time when Israel was certainly at home in the hills (the ‘Mernepiah stela). We see the indirect influence of Egyptian dominion in Israel's adopting as its national myth an account of liberation from Egyptian bondage: slaves were one of LB Canaan’s major exports to Egypt, and. this practice probably continued into the 12th century. Fam- ine, occasioned either by political turmoil or by drought, inevitably intensified the level of traffic. Thus, the Joseph story was based on conditions with which all inhabitants of Canaan were conversant. Servitude in Canaan and slavery in Egypt were the Canaanite lot: a story of a slaves’ revolt and the overlords overthrow at the Reed Sea was calcu- lated to comfort all those still under the pharaoh’s iron heel in Canaan, All the more, though, should the Canaan- ite subjects recall an era of Ramesses’ revenge. This conundrum has its key in the nature of Egyptian administration, Israel encountered it as exercised through the medium of local chieftains. Even when the Egyptian army itself appeared, it most often operated under the command of local commissioners (Sisera?) and in close cooperation with the vassals. An Israel subsumed within the territories of the city-states, not itself an administrative unit of the empire, would have hiad no reason to remember: an Egyptian oppression, along the lines of those described in Judges; stil less would an Israel in the hills have cause to recall participating in the Egyptians’ expulsion, In other: 1132 + V words, an ethnic Israel not recognized as a political unit by the pharaoh—because its demography violated the admin- istrative lines of the Asiatic empire—and an Israel whose communal political influence was confined to the topo- graphic backwaters of Canaan could have encountered and. remembered only the demands of local suzerains. The aggregate of these figures Israel claimed to have bested in a melee by the waters of Megiddo (Judges 5). ‘The Canaan that Israel settled at the start of the 12th century was a land in intermittent turmoil. On the chaos, Egyptian arms imposed a superficial order. It was an order against which Israel could not prevail. Indeed, during Israel's earliest years in Canaan, it was positioned neither politically nor geographically to offer a challenge to the pharaoh's forces. The Merneptah stela portrays Israel as an ethnos, not as a geographical entity. Its representation matches the bulk of the textual evidence as Alt construed it. It also fits precisely the contours of the archaeological data. 3. Israel on the Ground. Archaeological data adduced in defense of the Conquest model proved in the end a “recoiling bow.” Results were mixed or negative at Jericho, and wholly falsified the claims of Joshua concerning Ai. ‘But these setbacks affect only the symbolic portion of the Conquest, and it is natural to withdraw, as the Albright school did, to the more defensible line of Joshua 9-11. Here, after all, one could take cover behind the bulwark of an Israelite occupation succeeding that of the Canaanites at Hazor and, theoretically, Lachish (contrast Ussishkin 1985) and Tell Bet Mirsim (contrast Greenberg 1987), the two occupation levels divided by a violent destruction. The same was true at Bethel, whose defeat is recorded in Judg, 1:22-26. Similar claims have been lodged regarding Beth ‘Shemesh, Tell Zeror, Beth-shan, and, in Transjordan, Tel Deir Alla ‘The pungency of this corroboration, however, is neu- tralized by two factors. Most of the destructions are not at, sites to whose conquest Joshua 9-11 lay claim (Gezer, another case, is re-occupied by Philistines). And, at La- chish (V) and Hazor, Israel occupies the post-destruction site only after a gap in occupation. This is a quibble, since Joshua presumes, as noted, only destruction, not necessar- ily resettlement. But the gaps, even more than the late destruction of Lachish, are embarrassing, Further, if Khir- bet Rabud is indeed ancient Debir, there is a flat contradic- tion: Rabud suffered no discontinuity in the period in question. Second, as noted above (B.3), several towns named in Joshua 9-12 were either completely or virtually unoccu- pied at the end of LB IIB; others exhibit no sign of Israelite takeover in this era. The most embarrassing in- stance is that of Gibeon, hardly "a great city” (Josh 10:2). Jerusalem's ally in the same chapter, Jarmuth (10:3; no destruction is reported), was wholly or partly deserted. Taanach seems to have been devoid of LB IIB remains, despite Josh 12:21. And Arad (Josh 12:14, after Num 21:1-3) was abandoned from EB II until [ron 1. Con- versely, Lachish, whose destruction Josh 10:31f, describes, survived intact into the mid-12th century under Egyptian control (Ussishkin 1985). Tell Beit Mirsim was not occupied by Israclites until the 11th century (Greenberg 1987). The case of Bethel may be similar. All this poses more seriousV+ 1133 a difficulty, insofar as the testimony of the book of Joshua is concerned, than the paucity of early Israelite settlement. The prize cases of exaggeration in Joshua 9-12 come in summaries claiming that Canaanites were uniformly anni- hilated (10:40-43; 11:12-23), This has precipitated the inclusion of such kings as those of Taanach, Aphek, and Megiddo in Josh 12:18, 21. If one takes this to imply the envelopment and capture of these towns, as scholars have usually felt Josh 11:12, 14 licensed them to do (but see above, A.3.), the archacological record is damning: LB Aphek fell into non-Israelite hands, thence to the Philis- tines (note Beck and Kochavi 1983); Megiddo VIIA re- ‘mained Canaanite into the second half of the 12th century, and it is unclear that Megiddo VI was held by Israel. Yet, discounting for slight exaggeration in the telling, the only specific town whose sack Joshua 11 asserts is Hazor (for whose fall ca. 1200 sce the argument of Yadin 1972: 108 [Yadin holds for 1230)). Nor can archaeological investiga- tion falsify claims that Joshua met and routed enemy kings, in the field, As noted, the main danger in applying excavation results against the text is identical with that in applying them for it: the textual problems are in the process apt to be oversimplified. The case of Lachish has been cited. One might take the gap in occupation after Lachish VI to contradict the claim of Josh 10:31 that Israel took the town. But the text explicitly distinguishes Conquest from colonization as chronologically separate phases—a distinc tion presupposed by and indispensable to a sensible read- ing of Judges 1. Israel did ultimately gain control of the town. Like that of Jerusalem in Judg 1:8, Lachish’s role in Josh 10:31f, probably reflects only the natural telescoping, of gradual achievements and their attribution to the em- blematic Conqueror, Joshua Individual archaeological results are more likely to cast doubt on the biblical testimony than to confirm it. Where destruction and resettlement occur at times and places that coincide with those for which we might expect Israel- ite activity, the conqueror’s identity and the timing of reoccupation can be called into question. Where excava- tions contradict biblical evidence—at Heshbon, for exam- ple, no remains antedating the Iron Age except a tomb (Harding et al. 1953: 27-41) have been found (cf. Num 21:21-32)—the evidence can be devastating (though the ‘ongoing settlement at Rabud or Lachish is perhaps more damning). The passage in point must be abandoned as an accurate record, and attempts to explain its origins elabo- rated without prejudice to surrounding records. Here, however, there is a lesson to be learned: in reconstructing the history, the issue is neither solely what is in the ground nor solely what is in the text; the object of rescarch is the genetic relationship between them, their common, collat- eral antecedents. In this connection, the most important archaeological data are not those directly related to textual claims. In a defense of a neo-Altian view, Finkelstein (1983; A/S) has adduced the data concerning Israelite population distri- bution in Iron I; he draws particularly on surveys con- ducted by Israeli archaeologists of settlement in the fringe _ areas (including especially mountain ridges and the inter- montane valleys). The picture is instructive: the earliest Tron Age saw the muldplication of small villages especially SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN in the central hills, with minor development in the moun- tains of Judah and the Galilee (on the Galilee, see Aharoni 1970: 264; Gal 1990). The picture in the hills of Manasseh is similar (22 sites in toto), and cult sites are among the remains (Mazar 1982; Zertal 1986a; 43-53), By the 1]th century, this trend toward cultivation and squatting in the central hills had grown feverish. For example, where the hills of Ephraim sustained 4—5 settlements in LB II, they hosted something like 125 in Iron I (Finkelstein 1983: 110-77). Barren areas, earlier abandoned, such as the Beersheba basin (Cohen 1985; note Finkelstein 1984) and. the lower Galilee, began somewhat later to attract pioneers as well, and the countryside swelled with extensive and intensive agriculture and pastoralism. _ Transjordan yields up a picture that is, generally speak- ing, comparable, Surveys tend to confirm that the Wadi Hasa region (to et-Tafileh) and the territory north of it to the Yarmuk experienced significant increases in settlement carly in Iron I (Mittmann 1970; Weippert 1979: 28-80; MacDonald 1983). Here, it may be added, evidence may be accruing that the process of settlement began effectively in LB, continuing into and snowballing in Iron I (see Miller 1982: 172; Ibrahim, Sauer, and Yassine 1976: 55-56; Sauer 1986: 4-14). Finkelstein has linked this process hypothetically to the expulsion of the settled population from their various domiciles in MB IIB, which propelled them into pastoral nomadism in the fringes of Canaan. ‘The process of resettlement reflects, then, their sedentari- zation some centuries later. Archaeologically, however, the settlement increase Iron I (or Late Bronze and Iron 1) does not suffice to distinguish a sudden, massive influx from a slower stream of immigration from abroad, ot the stream of outsiders from peasant flight to the hills, Still, when excavated, the Iron [ sites in the hills and in Transjordan yield character- istic early Israelite pottery, particularly the “collared rim” ‘ware ubiquitous in Israel's Iron I settlements. Like the rest of the Iron I pottery repertoire (esp. Kempinsky 1985; Albright 1932: 53-54; Albright and Kelso 1968: 63-65), this has been shown to have clear antecedents in LB IT (Ibrahim 1978: 121-22; above, B.3). Nor is it necessarily limited in Iron I to Israelites alone: it is heartily repre- sented in Transjordan, for example (Ibrahim 1978). That is, it is a feature of early Israelite culture (the relative proportions of the pottery being particularly diagnostic, with roughly a third of rim fragments at Israclite sites composed of collared-rim store jars, and, at Giloh, another thirty percent of cooking pots—Mazar 1981b: 31). Insofar as this resembled that of the Transordanian “Hebrews” (esp. Ammon, Moab, Edom; see Sauer 1986: 10-14), and of elements inside Canaanite society, it also characterizes the cultures of other, associated peoples—whose settle- ‘ments and states developed in parallel with Israel’. The settlements also disclose either the prototypes or the realized form of a characteristic house-plan, that of the “four-room house,” in which three rooved rectangles form a U about a courtyard; the parallel rooms (the sides ‘of the U) are separated from the courtyard sometimes ‘only by pillars; the entrance, normally, is through the ‘courtyard. Again, there is a possible prototype of the plan in LB I1A—an elegant building whose first floor was dedicated to industry was recently unearthed at ‘Tell Ba-SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN tashi (Mazar 1981b: 91). Possibly, therefore, the housing. stock is no more discontinuous with that of LB Canaan than is the pottery. Again, however, the common Canaan- ite house is not identical with the common Israelite: the Canaanite house is a square with a courtyard at its center. Speaking broadly, collared-rim ware and the four-room house characterize Israelite settlements of the Iron Age in Cisjordan, and some Transjordanian “Hebrew” sites (Sauer 1979). They are not characteristic of LB Canaanite cen- ters There has been a controversy whether the four-room house was Israelite, and whether it developed from the pastoralist’s tent (Fritz 1981: 65; Fritz and Kempinski 1983: 31-34); this, by definition, reaches beyond our historical grasp. But Israelite settlements also manifesta tendency to ‘erect their housing in a ring, kept hollow in the Negeb, an arrangement convenient for pastoralists, Finkelstein linked the pattern of village planning to the exigencies of hills architecture (1983: 192-94); but both factors proba- bly played a role (see Finkelstein 1984: 193-95; 1986b: 116-21). The four-room house itself is designed to accom- modate small-scale family animal husbandry: the stock sleep under the areas parallel to the courtyard (the sides, of the U, which can also serve as storage areas); the cross- room (the bottom of the U) stores feed and provisions for or sleeps the family. See HOUSE, ISRAELITE. Indeed, troughs are often found between the pillars separating the side-rooms from the courtyard (Holladay fe.). And the storage jars and other items of the houschold economy appear regularly in the cross-room. This design must have disseminated because of its functional advantages. Like the shape of the village, it implies a specific socioeconomic dynamic inside—what the common shape of the pottery shows is a shared economic microcosm, The predomi: nance of this dynamic in its context weighs heavily against a theory that the Israelites originated as peasants in the plains. The Iron I hills pioneers were pastoralists, not ‘Peasants, first—a point corroborated by Merneptah’s equa- tion of Israelites with Shasu. Finkelstein’s survey (1983; AIS) stressed other impinging, factors as well. Most of the Iron TA Israelite villages appear in the northern and central reaches of the central hills, clustering alongside the five established Canaanite centers in that region: the earliest settlers did not choose to estab- lish themselves in the least populous and most isolated regions, such as Judaea. It does seem to be the case that the earlier settlements concentrate primarily on the east- ern (wilderness) side of the mountain ridges, which afford adequate pasturage for their established herds of sheep. Still, the inhabitants of Izbet Sartab, possibly along with those of several nearby villages, set up shop on land suited to a mixed farming-pasturing strategy within shouting range of Aphek, which they no doubt supplied with meat in exchange for processed goods (see Finkelstein 1986), ‘The earliest Israelite pioneers thus brought their herds to regions suited to pastoralism, As they expanded their encampments, and erected permanent, agricultural dwell- ings, they deliberately exploited less densely forested patches in the uplands (thus near towns). This would have helped them avoid some of the intensive capital investment reclaiming the land involved; by the same token, the earli- est settlements in the central hills were located in inland 1134+-V valleys (though no excavation results are yet available to determine how these compare to the hilltop villages), where terracing could be kept to a minimum (Finkelstein, 1983: 161-62; 1986: 179). ‘All this is only to be expected. The new elements seem to have thought their settlements relatively secure—inade- quately defended and often unwalled (Callaway 1976: 29) as they were—whether because they were negligible or because prevailing conditions were relatively peaceful—as in the case of Izbet Sartah III-II. And, although they depended to some extent on the market for meat in the hills and plains towns of Canaan, many of them, especially, the later ones, invested long years of hard labor clearing the farms of trees and rocks, terracing them, planting olive trees and vine, and cutting cisterns and grain silos into the hillsides. These pioneers also built enclosures to pro- tect their property from their neighbors’; they planed the wood of their houses, built pillars and troughs, and partic- ipated in public works. ‘The nature of these projects was such that the families inyolved required labor for clearing, for improvements, and for harvesting. They needed labor exchange for the herds and fields, which involved a certain critical mass of population involvement. Allowing that half of the Iron I population was present in Iron IA, the minimum influx into the region of the central hills, (the net Israelite popu- lation of which can be estimated at 40,000-80,000; Finkel- stein A/S, 330-35), must have been something on the order of 15,000 people. That is, the total immigration into the hills of Gisjordan will, minimally, have reached the vicinity of 25,000: the influx simply must have continued over the course of the whole 12th century (and note the two waves of settlement at Ai—Callaway 1976: 29-30 and the altera- tions from unstructured pastoral to a hierarchical, proba- bly patriarchal, agricultural village at Izbet Sartah—Fin- kelstein 1986: 5-23). The immigrants elected to clear, to cut, and to work the rock and the forest. These are not in the end choices one would expect of peasants fleeing to an uncertain refuge from the plains, Indeed, as noted above, the historical behavior of such peasants had been to seek haven in other plains commu- nities, not in a strange environment. It is difficult to imagine that the massive gamble of labor and materials involved in settling the hills would have come naturally to a plains population, or that marketing meat in the low- lands—and failing to fortify themselves against military constabularies sent to repatriate them (Finkelstein AIS, 313)—was a natural course for lowlands fugitives. Whether this movement reflects the sedentarization of peoples up- rooted at the end of MB, or simply the influx of migrants from outside Cisjordan (and outside Transjordan), it sug- gests less the flight of urban peasantry than the home- steading of pastoral elements already integrated in eco- nomic interdependence with the plains. The continuity in pottery forms coupled with the distinction in the fre- quency of pottery types and in the dominant form of domestic (and public) architecture, and the settlement history of Transjordan, are consistent with this reconstruc- tion (see Kempinski 1985). The clearing of trees and the clearing of stones, the building of terraces and the cutting of cisterns, the cutting of silos and the building of enclo- sures all stand in this tradition.V+ 1135 Still, it must be observed that neither the architectural evidence, which answers to function rather than style, nor the pattern of settlement, decisively contradicts the peas- ants’ revolt. It is rather the textual evidence (above) that disqualifies that theory. One may add, in contrast to the Hivites, Kenites, and others who were absorbed as cohesive ethnic communities distinct from Israel—the list of Judges 1 furnishes numerous examples—whatever fugitive peas- ants took (o the hills could have assimilated to Israel only singly. These would have had the characteristics of clients, at best, among the Israelite kin-groups (see, for example, Khazanov 1983: 152-64). That they made 2 material con- tribution either to the culture or to the manpower of the hills communities seems unlikely. 4, Israelite Traditions in the Light of Modern Knowl- edge. Attention to archaeology and the history of the tradition has made it plain that the key to interpreting the Joshua traditions as history lies in critical distance and {felicitous judgment. The narratives concerning the Jordan crossing, Jericho and Ai must be altogether discarded. The first reflects an annual ritual crossing, whose survival both attested to and re-shaped the traditions of earliest times {A-2.a.(I)); the latter attest the process whereby the sight of an Israelite settlement, or of no settlement at all, atop a noble tell inspired Israelite storytellers and historians to deduce that Joshua had taken the place. The participation of Yarmuth in the coalition of southern kings (10:3) re- flects this sort of thinking, as does the confrontation with Arad in Num 21:1-3; 33:40; Josh 12:14. If Tell Hesi proves to be Israelite Fglon (10:34f), it would represent another instance: the massive EB tells became the objects of Isracl- ite romance. Al this damages the testimony of Joshua 9-11, for this cycle is intimately connected in the historian's presentation with that of Jericho and Ai (esp. 9:3, central to the nuance of w 10, 24; 10:28, 30; 12:9). Nor does the historian distinguish the “symbolic” Conquest from that in Joshua 9-11 in terms of genre—the two are equally historical. Possibly, diverse sources underlie the account: the narra: tive in Josh 9:3-10:15 understands itself to focus on a battle against the kings of the southern hill country (esp. 10:6); even the continuation, in 10:16~39, does not exceed the confines of the Shephelah. One might go so the distinction between “smiting” and “supplanting” cor- responds to that between lowlands and hills, as to claim that the summary in 10:40-43 goes no further itself (so above, A.3.). q Conversely, 11:1-23 depict Israel as conquering every- thing Canaanite that moved, except on the coastal plain and in Syria N of the Hermon. This latter material stands in close continuity with chaps. 12-13; 23; Judg 2:6ff., where it is the peripheral nations who remain unsubdued. Again, it should be noted that Josh 11:16-20 reports the “taking” of the land, not the supplanting of all indigenous populations. “Taking” in 11:28 is a prelude to tribal allot- ments, which (as Judges 1) precede the “supplanting” of the Canaanites; 11:23 can claim that the whole land was “taken” even though ¥ 22 cites an ongoing Amorite pres- ‘ence in the Philistine region. Still, even the more modest interpretation of the chapter's assertions entails the con- “clusion that it exaggerates, telescopes, distorts the histori- cal process beyond recognition. SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN Nor does detaching the southern campaign of chap. 10 from the northern of chap. 11 produce a separate, reliable account, The Albright school appealed to the destruction of Hazor XIII as support for Joshua 11. But the identifi- cation of Deborah's opponent in Judg 4:18 as the same Yabin, king of Hazor (Josh 11:1) illustrates that later Israel believed pre-Israelite Hazor to be the leading power in northern Canaan (Josh 11:10), the key to the Galilee. This tradition is probably founded in a hazy combina tion of historical recollection and geopolitical reality; whether it was in fact Israel that overthrew Hazor remains ‘obscure. Certainly, the more exaggerated claims that the historian suspends from this peg (11:1~4, 12) reflect only his hardened conviction that Joshua's victory was total, his prosecution thorough (11:18-20, 23). Even the locus of Joshua's supposed northern decisive battle, “by the waters ‘of Meronvthe height (‘al mé mérdm)” (11:5, 7) reads as though it hatched from a conflation of Judg. 5:18-19: these yerses locate the other big battle joined by Sisera, identified in Judges 4 as the general of Jabin, king of Hazor, “by the waters of Megiddo” (‘al mé mégidda)” and “on the heights of the field” (‘al mérdmé Sadeh)”. ‘The story of the southern confrontation has been incor- porated into the framework of 9:1f,; 11-13. No doubt, the historian received this tradition already partly shaped. Yet it is the one in which deserted LB Gibeon, the abiding LB settlement (to 1150) at Lachish, and probably unoccupied Jarmuth play prominent roles. The key to understanding the historian’s reconstruction may lie in his use of a quo- tation from “the book of the Jashar”: “Sun, be still in Gibeon, and, Moon, in the Aijalon Valley!” And the sun ‘was still, and the moon stood, so that the nation acquitted itself of its foes” (10-12-13). This old couplet had been attributed to Joshua before the historian of chaps. 9-10 laid his hands on it, 10:12 ith a superscription closely resembling those of some psalms, “when (lit. on the day when) Yhwh delivered. up the Amorites before the children of Israel” (cf. Ps 3; 7; 9; 18; $4; 51f.; 54; 56f.; 59f, 63; 142). This is redundant in context, and must have been drawn from a written source, It sufficed to place the apostrophe to the luminar- ies in Joshua's mouth. Moreover, Isaiah cites the incident in connection with an oracle against Jerusalem, as.a case of Yhwh's wrath consuming his foes (28:21). His allusion presumes that his hearers recognized the historical refer~ cence in all its bearings. It is around this notion of a decisive confrontation at Gibeon that Joshua 9-10 were built. 2 Sam 21:1-14, in which David decimates the Saulide establishment in expia- tion of that king's attacks on the Gibeonites, appeals ex- plicitly to old traditions of a hoary alliance between Gibeon and Israel. It was not unnatural for those who wove the narratives of Israelite antiquities, then, to relate the battle at Gibeon to the ratification of Israel's treaty there. That any early Israelite community really contracted such a formal pact with the Hivite tetrapolis is unlikely, and there could have been no such pact at the start of Iron IA, with Gibeon yet to be reoccupied. What seems probable is that Gibeon’s role in the literary formulation of the confeder- ates’ common history grew as the fortunes of the site waxed during Iron 1. After Shechem’s destruction in the mid-12th century (Judg 9:45~49), Gibeon seems to haveSETTLEMENT OF CANAAN blossomed into one of the larger and more strategically placed towns in Israel (2 Sam 2:12-16 after 2:8-11), and one of the most prestigious (1 Kgs 8:4~14; 2 Sam 21:1ff.). Its eminence among the Hivites by David's time led tradi- tionists thereafter to regard Gibeon’s residents as having been the leading element in all earlier Hivite transactions. Against an Istaelite-Hivite axis in the Aijalon Pass, the Amorite opponents mentioned in the Book of the Jashar had to be sought in the § hills. Isa 28:21 may already reflect the view that Jerusalem was the head of the anti- front: as noted above, it threatens a repetition of range deed” in the context of an oracle against. the Jerusalem establishment. Certainly, the geopolitical logic of the reconstructed league with Gibeon (above, A.2.b) demanded such a deduction. The old poetic snatch in Josh 10:12-13 also defined tolerably the extent of the hostile community: “Amorite” is a term deployed primar- ily to designate denizens of the hills. The enemy thus consisted of city-states in the Judean uplands and in the Shephelah. The knowledge that Israelite settlement did not overflow such areas until the time of David must have informed the tradition and corroborated the reconstruc- tion, Originally, the song in Josh 10:12 comprised an appeal for the bestowal of a favorable omen—that the sun should be visible in the east and the moon in the west. The omen and its.significance are known from Babylonian sources. The granting of the omen and the confirmation of its efficacy are the subject of v 13 (Holladay 1968). But the historian (or his sources) interpreted the text literally to mean that the sun and moon stood still, extending, the time in which Joshua could pursue the broken foe. This defined the course and length of the rout—down the defiles of the Aijalon Pass, spilling out into the Shephelah. For the purposes of integrating this reconstruction with that of Joshua's sweeping triumph, the logical sequel was a ‘campaign in the Shephelah and an incursion from the S Shephelah into the hills (10:28-39), Extensive portions of this concept of the Conquest must have been antique. The association of the old song with “the day in which Yhwh delivered up the Amorites’—and references to the climactic battle in Isa 28:21, and to the confrontation with towering Amorites in Amos 2:9—al- ready contain the skeleton of the treatment in Joshua, even if none mentions Joshua himself by name. The idea that the Amorites were giants implies that they were obliter~ ated—at least in the popular imagination—since the titans did not survive to be examined by later Israel. Similarly, the Gilgal and Jericho cycles derive from old traditions, here reinterpreted in line with the ‘Deuteronomist’s” the- ology of history. The tradition of a treaty with Gibeon also stems from antecedents in the time of David (2 Sam 21:1f). Though David's treatment of the Hivites merely. implies the prior existence of a traditional modus vivendi, it was natural enough for folklorists to concretize the rela- tionship by reconstructing a formal pact (cf. also 1 Sam 7:14; Genesis 34). For the most part itis impossible to date the growth of the traditions on which the historian de- pends (though Judges 1 probably stems from the time of Solomon, as Halpern 1983: 179-82). Still, a good deal of the treatment originates in traditional perspectives on Is rael's entry into the land. 1136 + V Nevertheless, nothing in the literary evidence suggests that the details of the reconstruction antedate the Deuter- ‘onomistic History. The Shephelah campaign of 10:28-39 probably represents the historian’s systematization of dif ferent claims concerning local victories in that region, or his extrapolation, based on a strategic reconstruction, from such claims in the tradition elsewhere (Hazor?). This is the campaign that establishes Joshua's control over the borders he is said to have secured. One might say that he had “conquered” the country from the 5 up to Gibeon (10:41£). The appropriation of credit for the conquest of Hebron and Debir (10:36-39; 11:21f. vs. Josh 14:6-15; 15:13-19; Judg 1:10-15, 20; cf. A.3.) may represent either ‘a normal accretion to Joshua of victories dated later else- ‘where (cf. Hazor) or an adumbration of his consolidation of the Conquest within the territory whose perimeters he hhad seized. (The contrast between Joshua’s and Judah's or Judah's and Caleb's taking Hebron is a matter of emphasis, partly on conquest or supplanting, and partly on the identity of the groups named.) Conversely, the actual choice of specific Shephelah forts has no plain motivation. Significant towns are excluded. However, since three of the four sites are not yet positively identified, no hypothesis should be advanced on this point. In light of all this, and with the exception of the con- frontation of Gibeon, the most fruitful approach to Isra- lite traditions may be to note what they do not claim, rather than what they do. For example, even the author of Joshua 11-12 does not assert an Israelite colonization of Megiddo and the Jezreel: traditions such as those encap- sulated in Josh 17:11-13; Judg 1:27 inhibited the historian from such overweening hyperbole. Thus, Josh 12:21-93 can reflect a success in the field, or at most a raid (born of braggadocio), not the supplanting of lowlands popula- tions, Monarchic Israel generally understood that its fore- bears in Canaan stuck to the hills. (On this basis, the geographic extent of Joshua's victories could be identified with that of Canaan S of the Hermon. He could be said to have bested opponents from all regions of the land (11:2; 12). And attributing to him some later regional successes, he could be said to have left Israel ascendant in a Canaan it claimed, but alone, as Israel aspired to be, only in parts of it. The territorial framework and nationhood of a later Israel is thus retrojected to the first moment of Israel's intrusion into the land. The pro- cess by which this occurred was no doubt entirely innocent, ‘one of historical reconstruction, based in part on reifica- tions of embellished cultic confessions, in later times, not willful or wholesale invention. ‘The texts’ reluctance to claim that Joshua made perma- nent gains in the lowlands matches the archaeological and cextra-biblical materials from the LB-lron I transition. ‘There is, beside it, another rather loud silence in the text, the one surrounding Israel’s movement into the central hills. Ibis true that Judg 1:22-26 record a sack of Bethel— typically, for carly Israel, by strategem rather than direct, assault; the death of Bethel’s king is toted up in Josh 12:16. In the Ephraimite hills between Gibeon and Shechem, this is the only conflict any record of which survives (of a town, it should be noted, that was indeed ‘occupied in LB I), And the record itself places the acces-V+ 1187 sion after Joshua's time, in the era of internal consolida- tion, Outside of Bethel, Josh 12:17 (Tappuah, Hepher), 24 (Tirzah) contain the only assertions that Joshua killed Kings of towns in the Manassite hills. In the scheme of Joshua 11-12, the kings in question would have fallen “by the waters of Merom/the height” (11:8). The same scheme dictates that Joshua should have depopulated their towns, though, in accordance with a suspicious proviso (11:13), ‘without doing injury to the buildings. Yet the presentation, posits that Joshua fought a battle in the Aijalon Pass that ‘enabled him to encircle the southern hills, then fought another in the north, giving Israel control of the Galilee. The idea of a battle for the central hills, or of extensive operations to gain a foothold there, is alien even to the latest strata of the history. It is unclear whether any tradi- tion ever envisioned these areas as subject to conquest in the same sense that Judea and the Galilee were. This argument is susceptible to the objection that the historian responsible for the Conquest accounts concerned himself with Israel's mastery only over a large territory, from the far south to the Hermon; he did not imply systematic eradication of the Amorites in Joshua's lifetime (or thereafter). This, after all, is the view presupposed in Judges 1. In accordance with it, one may imagine the ‘central hills, as the history now runs, asa region encircled, awaiting the detailed attention reserved for the period after Israel had stilled the sound of opposing armies, marching in concert against Israel in the field. The objec- tion, however, is vulnerable to the counterstroke that the historian claims that Joshua cleared Israels hills territory ‘of foreign elements (11:16-23). It also ignores the most piercing hush of all: there is no conquest of Shechem. In LB IIA, Shechem was the dominant town of the central hills: its king, Lablaya, had reduced all the region from Jerusalem in the south to Megiddo in the N to his sway. Shechem was the central hill country in that era. Yet confrontation with the power fails Isracl’s memory. Gene- sis $4 assigns a treaty with the town and Israel's violation of it to the patriarchal era. Judges 9 conversely sets Shech- em’s sowing with salt in the time after Gideon, in the middle of the era of the “judges.” Between the two, Josh 8:30-35; 24 locate ceremonies of covenant confirmation at Shechem, responding in part to Deut 11:29f3 27. There is a broad tradition of activity at Shechem, but none of siege and capture (cf. Toombs 1979). ‘The Joshua narratives contain other lacunae, in the northern hills and even in Judah. But in the context of an account of securing perimeters, the omissions are no sur- prise. The extent to which exaggeration might accrue to accounts of Joshua’s time is clarified in Judg 1:8, assigned to the years after his death: in the face of pre-Davidic reality, the verse affirms a Judahite destruction of Jerusa- Jem (but no occupation), No comparable claims concerning Shechem appear. The silence is loud indeed. Overall, it scems legitimate to spcak of a Conquest tradition that stems at least from the 10th century B.C:£.— the time when the ritual crossing of the Jordan to Gilgal is first clearly attested, when the earliest compilation of Judges 1 was made, and when a violation of a “treaty” with Gibeon was remedied. The story of Abimelech (Judges 9) attests incidentally that ambivalence as between local and SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN national or ethnic administration rent the early Israelite community: would the city-state or the nation become the articulated political musculature of Canaan? A central government, like that of the United Monarchy, would have seized on and fostered national traditions—the J source of the Pentateuch may have originated in this concern (its final form is, however, later). The later historian responsi ble for the Gonquest accounts that survive today overlaid and reinterpreted the sources such elements had mediated to him, 5, The Israelite Conquest. a. The Earliest Phases. The absence of traditions of violent entry into the central hills so dovetails with the archaeological evidence of Israelite coexistence in that region with the scattered Canaanite remnants of LB II (and Toombs 1979) that it affords one of the few footholds in the morass of the Conquest. It complements the tradition of Israclite coexistence with the Hivites of the Gibeonite tetrapolis. It resonates harmoni- ously with the tradition of early (and originally pacific) relations with Hivite Shechem. One may justifiably infer a peaceful Israelite presence among the Hivites of the cen- ‘ral hills in general, whose expansion into the region N of Jerusalem was coeval with the Israelite influx. Israel's early cultic community at Shechem may have centered on the ratification of this relationship (Judg 8:33; 9:4, 46). In any event, the “covenants” in Josh 8:30-35; 24 and Genesis $4 presumably reflect ongoing cultic activity at Shechem during the monarchic era. This would have been inherited and reinterpreted from the time before Abimelek; afier his destruction of Shechem, the focus of the action there would have shifted, perhaps from the town to the surrounding hill (as in Deuteronomy 27). It is not impossible that the Iron I installation unearthed in 1983 on the N slope of Mt. Ebal was associated with this displacement, and with pilgrimage coming from the Jor- dan up the Wadi Farah, then down from the N, But this is a matter of speculation; the excavator places the Ebal pottery at the outset of Iron I (Zertal 1986a), which would rule it out, ‘The character of the earliest Israclite hills villages is consonant with this general understanding, Though the Negev sites, starting in the Ith century (such as Tell Esdar, Arad, Beer-sheba, and, earlier, arguably, Tell Ma- sos) exhibit a stronger predilection for pastoralism and more architectural variety, they differ more in the propor- tion than in the identity of their constitutive elements. The pioneer study in the socioeconomics of uplands settle ments is that of L. E. Stager (1985a), which focuses partic- ularly on the close-knit structure of the sites, uniformly modest in scope. The tendency in them is for houses to cluster together in a few small groups, representing no doubt two or three generations in the life of a nuclear family. The whole of a site might thus consist of only a few families, probably all related within the context of an “expanded” family (see Cohen 1965: 56), along the lines of the Arabic hamula (so Izbet Sartah III and II); working, breeding, and relating to the outside world in common. In the courtyard of the four-room house stood the oven and industrial installations for agricultural and animal produce. In the carly settlements this included small, inefficient grain pits, often lined with stone, or storage jars sunk into the earth. The stables underneath the roovedSETTLEMENT OF CANAAN areas parallel to the courtyard (the verticals of the U; see Holladay fc.) indicate that most nuclear families had herds. If the stable space is a guide, the locks were rarely exten- sive. Sec STABLES. Indeed, some of this physical plant may have been given over to draught animals (Gen 49:14?) and fatlings (1 Sam 28:24; 2 Sam 12:3; Amos 6:4). The family, that is, kept a small flock (Judg 6:4, 11; 1 Sam 17:28) while cultivating the soil; no doubt this provided an occupation for young boys (as 1 Sam 16:11) and other unemployables (Amos 7:15). However, occasional large flocks were probably bred by some families, who would have exploited the village commons and supplementary, ‘makeshift enclosures, as well as more distant pastures (e.g, 1 Sam 9:3-5; 25:2-8; 2 Sam 13:23f,). The Negeb settle- ments, where pastoralism (and, at Tell Masos, as at Izbet Sartah, large cattle) loomed larger, reflect this fact unmis- takably. The reference in the Song of Deborah to (large?) Reubenite flocks bedded at home (Judg 5:16; cf. Gen 49:14; Ps 68:14, both with verbs meaning “to lie down") ‘may refer to a similar situation early on in Transjordan. Overall, the flocks were a significant component of the village economy; but the Israelite family as a whole did ‘not specialize in pastoralism. The elements of their exten- sive cultivation have been touched on above (C.3). The olive and the vine—their exploitation solidly attested later, in the Samaria ostraca—and cereals required some clear- ing, planting, terracing, provision for processing, storage arrangements that would minimize spoilage, and other capital investments (including defense against freeboot- ers). The suggestion, corroborated by the location of the carliest settlements in the vicinity of Canaanite towns, and by the integration of Shechem into the Israelite economy as witnessed by its Iron I pottery repertoire (Toombs 1979: no conquest need be posited), is that the first Israelite homesteaders dwelled in peaceful symbiosis with their local Canaanite neighbors. The pastoral component of Israelite industry demanded such markets for meat and ‘wool, and one presumes that this produce was welcome ‘enough among the hills’ few tenants, who offered pro- cessed goods in exchange (see Rosen 1986: 180-81). For the herders in particular, open communications were vital, razzias a catastrophe ( Judg 5:6; 1 Sam 25:2-8). Except for royal caravans, hill country commerce may have depended ‘wholly on their wanderings. Al indications thus point toward cooperation between, the Israelites and the earlier population from Shechem to (newly-settled) Gibeon (with similar patches in the upper Galilee and along the virgate ridge of the Judaean high- lands; in the Negev, assuming Tell Masos was an Israelite settlement, there were no nearby Canaanite towns [as Gen 21:22-34; 26:16-33)), but the inhabitants of Tell Masos, and, later, those of Beer-sheba VII, were no doubt sup- pliers of meat to the Philistine coast and mediators of the Egypto-Philistine caravan trade with Arabia. This sort of symbiosis is precisely what the earliest Israelite traditions concerning relations with the Hivites N of Jerusalem have led us to expect. Nor would it come as a surprise if, in line with the old song in Josh 10:12f, an Israel so distributed fought one of its earliest memorable battles—one of its earliest battles as “Israel,” instead of as a collection of highlands families—in the Aijalon Pass, against a bloc led by Jerusalem. 1138 + V b. Where They Came From. The archaeological situa- tion does not unequivocally demand that the Israelites should have entered Canaan from Transjordan. However, the textual situation does. In no way is Israelite insistence on Israel's ethnic distinctiveness—from the earliest times on (Judg 5:11-19, 31; Exod 15:14)—compatible with the hypothesis of an Internal Conquest. As noted above (B.3), despite long coexistence and ongoing life with the Israel- ites, the Hivites remained ethnicly distinct into the mon- archy (2 Sam 21:1-14), as did other indigenese (Judges 1). ‘The monarchy itself arose in part as a result of this xenophobia (Halpern 1983: 12-16). From at least the 12th century, Israel understood itself as a people allochthonous and apart in Canaan, Merneptah’s equation of Israel with Shasu—otherwise unattested in Cisjordan north of the desert—corroborates the Israelite view. ‘No precise point of origin outside Canaan can be stipu- lated with any confidence. Some indications are, however, present. The emergence of the Iron I nations of Ganaan— the Philistines and other Sea-Peoples in Cisjordan and the “Hebrew” kingdoms across the river—was an event never lost to Israel’s memory. Later historians wrote that the ‘Transjordanian “Hebrew” nations had dispossessed inhab- itants there who were “Amorite,” that the Philistines had done the same in their territory, just as Israel had done in Cisjordan and in the region from the Arnon to the Jabbok (Deut 2:9-12, 19-23; Judg 11:16-26; Num 21:24-26). All these Iron I peoples Israel regarded as rightful successors to the Amorites (A.1): Amos 9:8 memorializes their mig- rations in Yhwh’s work, bringing “Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and Aram from Kir” (Amos 1:5 threatens Aram with a return to Kir). tis to the “Hebrews” of Transjordan that the Israelites felt themselves most closely related, and, in terms of lan- ‘guage (Halpern 1987), forms of social organization, mate- rial culture, and religion (each people its own god—Mic 4:5), rightly so, The narratives of Genesis extend both this sense of kinship and the term “Hebrew” also to the peoples of the neo-Hittite kingdoms in Syria (Aram), whose crys- tallization dates to the same general time (Genesis 24, J; 298, JE). These Aramean elements fell heir to the rem nants of the Hittite empire. Their languages, in this era, were not discontinuous with those of the southern He- brews; though certain differences, largely phonological, already obtained, they were inconsiderable compared with those that afterward developed. Nor should the tradition ‘of Israel's ultimate origins among these groups be neg- lected (Gen 11:28-31; 12:1), especially as it embraces (patrilateral parallel cousin) connubium (Genesis 24; 29). Altogether, the evidence suggests that Iron I “Hebrew” elements were in the ascendant in areas peripheral to the great empires during the last decades of the LB Age. In the Iron I period settlement in Transjordan, as in Canaan, snowballed, Some of these “Hebrews’—a term whose basic meaning is best explained as an ethno-linguistic one (cf. Eber, their eponym, in Gen 10:21, 24; 11:14}—had long been in contact with Canaanite civilization (as Kempinski 1985; from a slightly different perspective, Finkelstein Als). Scholars misled by exorbitant rhetoric and the use of the term, habiry, in an extended sense (“traitor,” “outlaw”) have significantly overestimated the role “Hebrews” as-ve 139 sumed in Amarna Canaan; in reality, the only “Hebrews” attested are bit players, working for minor figures in the political landscape (Halpern 1983: 55 & nn. 24). But there is no denying that small “Hebrew” bands were present (EA, 195). Seti I commemorates a campaign against some ‘PR.w (abira?) in the Beth-shan region at the end of the 14th century; most likely, he uses the term in its basic, not its extended sense. In any event, the Iron Age newcomers were Habiru, “Hebrews,” crystallizing from band: into re- sional organization wherever the parallel administrative structures of the empire and the city-states weakened. Israel is most plausibly viewed as an instance of this con- temporary phenomenon. Some of the “Hebrews” may have been propelled into ‘Transjordan by the stick of Assyrian expansion at the end of the 13th century, then again in the 12th. Under Adad- \Nirari I, Shalmaneser I and Tukulti-Ninurta, Asshur ex- tended its control over the western bank of the Euphrates and the Habur basin, The initial deportations, followed by ‘a routinization of Assyrian taxation and the imposition of harsh bureaucratic commercial control (see Machinist 1982), will have created migrants; these elements can have transported their property only in the form of livestock. ‘The relatively effete rule of Egypt might represent a carrot, drawing the migrants on. By the end of the 13th ‘century, these had congealed into ethnic communities. The route by which the Cisjordanian elements came is thus recorded both in the patterns of “Hebrew” national development and in the patriarchal narratives (Genesis 12; 24; 31-35; Halpern 1983: 91-92; B. Mazar 1985). Some time after the process halted, it was ritualized skeletally in the pilgrimage linking Succoth, Penuel, Gilgal (?), Shechem, and Bethel (see A.2.a). Like their Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite counterparts across the Jordan River, such migrants would have developed a close set of kinship ties and a sense of communal identity, reinforced both by their habitation in a limited territory and by the characteristics (religion and a shared historical identity among them) that divided them from the administrative units and populations near which they settled: “a fugitive ‘Aramean was my father” (Deut 26:5; Millard 1980) Even on this scenario, one must posit that an early, important constituent of later Israel came from the direc tion of Egypt. This component furnished the national myth, and conceivably the god, of the Cisjordanian “He- brews.” This group cannot be identified as the ancestor of an individual tribe or set of tribes, for the “tribes” took their shape in the land. We may justifiably suppose never- theless that its members occupied some of the earliest Israelite villages in Transjordan, and in the hills of Judah, Ephraim, and the Galilee. The possibility that this group originated with “Hebrews” engaged in commerce with Edom in ‘Transjordan and the Negeb, and ended in bond- age to Egypt, is an attractive one. The appeal of their historical identity to other “Hebrews” has been canvassed briefly above (C.2). It can be added that the persistence, ‘until the time of the United Monarchy, of a dichotomy between the Israelites of the hills (whose god was thought 10 be a god of the hills—1 Kgs 20:23) and the Canaanites of the valleys (and some in the hills) illustrates that the > appeal of the new identity did not extend to much of the local population. SETTLEMENT OF CANAAN ¢. How They Came, A problem that has persistently plagued proponents of a gradual- or multiple-entry hy- pothesis is that of Israelite solidarity, of common subscrip- tion to the Yahwistic-Israelite syndicate. Authors reasoning to northern and southern or to southern and eastern entries repeatedly wrestled with the question, how did their groups come together. Israelite texts furnish an explanation. The homesteaders maintained an ethnic and pethaps even @ religious identity distinct from that of their previously-setied neighbors. They maintained, too, a cul- ture, a style of life, alien to that of LB Canaan. Not that intermarriage and commerce played no part in their lives, nor yet that in the pre-Saulide era fraternization was forbidden; only, the setilements and economy and cus- toms of the Israelites were distinctively Israelite ("He- brew”), those of their neighbors Amorite, For one thing, Israelites ate no pork (though no pig was found at Lachish VI, either). For another, they practiced the mutilation of circumcision. No doubt conservative and endogamous marriage patterns directed against property-alienation helped to perpetuate the distinction (except, probably, at Shechem). Highlands Canaan—such as it was—was a mo- saic, not a melting-pot. Other data sustain this view. The scattered villages in the highlands and in the hitherto empty Negeb, with their heavy capital investment but without fortification, betoken, an atmosphere of toleration, not of strife. This is inconsis- tent with a mass, unified migration. Even to the S of LB Jerusalem, isolated Israelite communities took root (Giloh, just outside Jerusalem, Beth Zur, probably Hebron, the ‘Negeb sites), contradicting the notion that a threat froma whole body of newcomers was perceived. Most likely, the “invaders” came not in waves, but in tiny bands, as Alt divined, intent on taming intractable lands beyond the grasp, if not beyond the reach (Judg 5:6), of the plains city-states, in the relative freedom of the backwaters. The lords of Shechem may finally have “given [their land] to the Habiru,” as the king of Jerusalem precociously accuses them of doing in the Amarna letters (EA 289: 23f.); inviting “Hebrew” settlement enhanced capital accumula tion and manpower. Local authorities had less of an inter~ cst in resisting the migrants than in subjecting or coopting and regulating them. ‘Again, Judges 9 implies that much the same concerns applied shortly afterward in Iron 1: this chapter reflects local nervousness about fealty to a king located outside one’s own town in an Israelite community that must ante- date the 10th century. Though kingship is desirable over against oligarchy (9:2), an absentee kingship is intolerable (9:28). The local competition of the Israelite era is nothing ‘more than an extension of the lie of the land in LB. Under the circumstances, contests for the loyalty of incoming populations, and especially of pastoral elements and ban- dits, may have raised the stakes in the bidding to very attractive levels It is appropriate, in short, to speak of the stick (the advance of hostile or predatory powers in Syria) and the carrot in connection with Israel's emergence. The pattern of early Israelite settlement, in thinly populated regions, but in the vicinity of LB setdlements there, is suggestive. The dwindling of settlements in LB Canaan left land available for pasturing, and, ultimately, farming, that was