The Religion of Israel IV: Historical Overview of Ancient Israel

In the previous section we went over William Dever's synthesis regarding the origins of Israel. Dever portrays Israelite origins as largely, although not entirely, an indigenous development of a certain segment of Canaanite culture, while at the same time being a reaction or protest against the same Canaanite culture from which it developed. Dever, in common with virtually all archaeologists, is willing to flatly assert that a violent conquest of Canaan simply never happened. We also reviewed some of the data that argue in favor of the view that certain non-Canaanite elements were, nevertheless, an important part of the "proto-Israelite" mix. In particular, historical and cultural elements associated with Midian and other Semitic tribes to the southeast of Canaan played an important role in the formation of Israelite identity--crucially, perhaps, in the introduction of Yahweh as Israel's tutelary deity. We will now proceed to a brief overview of Israelite history, with special emphasis on the role that rivalry among priestly families played in the development of both the Israelite scriptures as well as in the development of Israelite religion generally. In what follows we will rely heavily on Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible (WWB) and to a lesser extent on Israel Finkelstein's David and Solomon (DS).