Recent research has,
to all intents and purposes, negated the “conquest view.” While there are a few
sties at which evidence of destructions dating to the late Late Bronze or the
early Iron Age can be found (such as Hazor [e.g., A. Ben-Tor, Hazor:
Canaanite Metropolis, Israelite City. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society]),
by and large, at most sites of this period, including several that play a central
role in the biblical narratives of the Israelite conquest (such as Jericho, Ai,
and Arad), there is no evidence of large-scale destructions at the majority of
the sites mentioned in the biblical texts regarding the supposed conquest.
Similarly, while there does seem to be a gradual process of settlement in many
parts of the central hills and Upper Galilee throughout the early Iron Age,
some regions are hardly settled *such as the Judean mountains), and for the
most part, there is much similarity between the material culture of these new
settlements in the central hills and the previous Canaanite culture. So much so
that most scholars nowadays would agree that the early Israelites were
comprised of a substantial amount of local Canaanite elements (mostly rural and
nomadic elements who were already in the central hills region), some people
deriving from the lowlands Canaanite urban matrix, along with some groups that
entered the region in a gradual manner, perhaps from areas to the east and
northweast of Canaan (such as Zertal’s claims regarding the early Iron Age
sites in Samaria; e.g., Zertal, Adam. A People is Born: The Mt. Ebal Alter
and Israel’s Beginnings. Judaism Here and Now. Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot).
In other words, there is only marginal evidence of each of the three major
schools noted above: conquest, slow but steady infiltration from the east, and
dislocation from Canaanite lowland cities. Rather, it appears that aspects of
these three processes, and others, occurred at varying degrees during this time
of change. (Aren M. Maeir, “Archaeology of the Iron Age I,” in Jonathan S.
Greer, John W. Hilbert, and John H. Walton, eds., Behind the Scenes of the Old
Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts [Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Baker Academic, 2018], 55-56)
