5—
The Conquest of the Land of Canaan:
Reality and Ideology

The problem of the conquest of Canaan by the tribes of Israel is made extraordinarily complex by contradictions in the biblical sources. Some of these sources describe the conquest and settlement of the land as taking place without the participation of Joshua (Judg. 1, and see in particular 1:1b), and others, in which Joshua appears, exhibit differences among themselves regarding the methods of his war and conquests. For example, according to Josh. 10:40 ff.; 11:12 ff.; 12; and 21:41–43, Joshua smote all the kings of Canaan, captured their cities, and destroyed their inhabitants in the entire area of the land of Israel, from Baal Gad in the valley of Lebanon to Mt. Halak, which ascends toward Seir: "there was no city that made peace with the Israelites except the Hivites dwelling in Gibeon. They took all in war. For it was from YHWH . . . in order to exterminate them . . . in order to destroy them, just as YHWH commanded Moses" (11:19–20 and cf. 12:7; 21:41–43). In contrast, other sources say that Joshua did not succeed in driving out the Canaanites in Beth-shean and in the Jezreel Valley because of their iron chariotry (17:14–18). Thus, enclaves of the Canaanite peoples remained, and Canaanites continued to live in various cities in the land of Israel, such as Jerusalem, Gezer, Beth-shean, Megiddo, Acco, and other cities on the coast and in the valleys (Josh. 15:63; 16:10; 17:11–13; Judg. 1:21 ff.). We

also learn from Judg. 4–5 that in the days of Deborah, after Joshua's generation, Canaanites still dwelt in the Jezreel Valley.

Factual contradictions are blatant in passages that recount the conquest of Hebron and Debir in Judah. According to Josh. 14:6–15; 15:13–19 (cf. Judg. 1:10–15, 20), Caleb the Kenizzite drove out the Anakim from the hill country of Hebron, and Othniel, the son of Kenaz, captured Debir; according to Josh. 10:36–39; 11:21–22, however, all of Israel conquered, under the leadership of Joshua, both Hebron and Debir, and the Israelites placed the Anakim from the hill country of Hebron under ban. Similarly, scholars have noted, on the one hand, the legendary character of the conquest stories related to Joshua (the stories about Jericho and Ai, Josh. 6–8), and, on the other hand, the artificiality and stereotypical character of the descriptions of the conquest in Josh. 10:28–39 (see below).

All of these difficulties have accounted for scholars' skepticism regarding the nature of Joshua's conquest. Three different schools of thought have emerged.^[1] Although these schools conflict with one another, we will try to show below that one

[1] Y. Kaufmann's approach (see especially his commentary on the book of Judges, 1959) has not found a niche in the scholarship on the subject because of its extremism and one-sidedness. Because of his eagerness to describe a unitary conquest of the land in the time of Joshua, he ignores the difficulties we have enumerated and tries to harmonize contradictions. He claims that the book of Joshua, which he believes was written close to the events, claims that the land was indeed conquered, although the Canaanites remained dwelling in its cities. But here he wholly ignores that layer in Joshua which says explicitly that Joshua took all of the land "from Mount Halak which goes up to Seir to Baal Gad in the Lebanon valley" and captured all of their kings, and that all was taken in war except for Gibeon (Josh. 11:15 ff.; cf. 10:40–42; 12:7–8; 21:41–43). He interprets these verses as an exaggerated formulation, with generalizing and overwrought language (see his commentary to Joshua, p. 36: "as if it had already been completed"; p. 155: "the exaggeration"; "this does not justify the conclusion that the book of Joshua tells of a complete conquest of all the land of Canaan"). Similarly, he ignores the passages that speak explicitly of a destruction of all the Canaanites and putting them under ban (11:20), which are related to the area from Baal Gad in the north to Mount Halak in the south—all this being done in agreement with thecommands of Deuteronomy (Josh. 11:15 ff.). We have in these verses a conception that runs like a red thread throughout the literary stratum (Deuteronomistic), and not simply a generalization found in an isolated verse (see below, pp. 149 ff.). In order to resolve the contradiction regarding the destruction of the Anakim (by Joshua, as opposed to Caleb), Kaufmann has to hypothesize that the Anakim returned to Hebron after Joshua's wars, and Caleb then drove them out. He admits that "the summary in 11:21–22 is really not exact," and thus claims that "there is no real contradiction between the stories" (p. 175).

The central weaknesses in his solution are his hypothesis about the relationship between Pentateuchal sources and the book of Joshua and his view that the book of Joshua came into being near the time of the events described in it. In order to maintain his thesis he needs to postulate that the Deuteronomistic stratum is ancient, which starkly contradicts his approach in his early writings (see M. Haran, "Sugyot miqra'^[*] : Problems in the Composition of the Former Prophets, Tarbiz 37 [1968], pp. 1–14 [ = Likkutei Tarbiz 1, pp. 155–68]; both Hebrew). We cannot go into detail here, but his hypothesis that all the traditions in the book of Joshua, including the lists of inheritances and cities, were already crystalized in the days of Joshua, is impossible from a historical and archaeological point of view. On the issue of the boundaries of inheritances and the lists of cities and their historical background, see Z. Kallai, Historical Geography of the Bible (Jerusalem: Leiden, 1986).

approach does not necessarily preclude another; rather, each approach elaborates well a different aspect of the settlement process.

1—
Albright's Archaeological School

The approach initiated by W. F. Albright attempts to discover in archaeological excavations confirmation of evidence in the Bible regarding the conquest of the land of Israel in the thirteenth century B.C.E. According to this approach, great Canaanite centers, such as Lachish, Debir, Eglon (Tell el-Hesi), and Bethel, were destroyed then.^[2] In the 1950s, an important piece of evidence was added from Y. Yadin's excavations at Hazor,^[3] which show that this city was destroyed at the end of the thirteenth century. The hypothesis prevalent among scholars of the Albright

[2] W. F. Albright, "The Israelite Conquest of Canaan in the Light of Archaeology," BASOR 74 (1939), pp. 11–23.

[3] Y. Yadin, Hazor (Schweich Lectures: London, 1970).

school is that these cities were destroyed by the Israelite tribes at the time of their conquest. It must be noted, however, that these archaeological proofs are not unambiguous and that some of them have actually been revealed to be unreliable.^[4]

It has become clear, for example, that Debir is identified not with Tell Beit Mirsim, as Albright suggested, but rather with Khirbet Rabud.^[5] This adjustment weakens the archaeological line of explanation, because unlike Tell Beit Mirsim, which exhibits clear signs of destruction from the thirteenth century, Khirbet Rabud displays no sign of destruction in that century. Also, there is currently no proof that Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir) was destroyed in the thirteenth century;^[6] in fact, evidence has been found of Egyptian rule at the site dating to the beginning of the twelfth century (the time of Rameses III).^[7] Regarding Jericho and Ai, there are no signs that their walls were destroyed in the Late Bronze Age. As we will see, the stories of the conquest of these cities are etiological, a fact that lessens their historical validity.

Despite these difficulties, we cannot ignore the fact that a large number of Canaanite cities were destroyed in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C.E. Even if we cannot relate this destruction to Joshua himself, it does testify to a war and conquest at the same time that the tribes of Israel began to take

[4] It is to be noted here, that even if it were proven that a particular city was destroyed in the thirteenth century B.C.E. , there would be no certainty that the destruction was the act of Israelites. The destruction might have come about by the Egyptian kingdom, by the Sea Peoples, or by Canaanites fighting among themselves.

[5] M. Kochavi, "'Khirbet Rabûd' = Debir," Tel-Aviv: Journal of the Tel-Aviv University Institute of Archaeology 1 (1974), pp. 2–33.

[6] See R. de Vaux, The Early History of Israel to the Period of the Judges , trans. D. Smith (London, orig. Paris, 1971), p. 506.

[7] See O. Tufnell, Lachish, The Bronze Age 4 (London, 1958), pp. 37, 98; R. Giveon, "An Inscription of Rameses III from Lachish," Tel-Aviv 10 (1983), pp. 176–77; and also the discussion of D. Ussishkin, "Excavations at Tel Lachish, 1978–1983: Second Preliminary Report," Tel-Aviv 10 (1983), pp. 169–70.

possession of the land. Scholars have rightly noted that the methods of war that the tribes employed—ambushes (Josh. 7–8) and surprise attacks (Josh. 10:9; 11:7), i.e., various types of military strategies—accord with a tribal military response to the organized army of a fortified city. Only by stratagem could a tribal army avoid a head-on collision with a stronger enemy and rout it.^[8] Hence, the conquest stories must be viewed as reflecting the reality of the period of Israelite tribal settlement, even though the stories were put in writing only at a later period. Moreover, we find in the descriptions of the settlement that the "camp" (mahane^[*] ) served as a point of deployment for a tribe's military onslaughts: the warriors would go forth to battle from it and afterwards return to it (see Chapter 2). Gilgal is described as one such military base in the stories of Joshua (Josh. 5:10; 9:6; 10:6–9, 15, 46); it served as a bridgehead for invading the land of Canaan.^[9] According to Josh. 10:21, there was also a "camp" in Makkedah in the lowland. As we will see, the story about Makkedah in Josh. 10:16 ff. belongs, from a literary point of view, to a separate unit, and it is tied, from a geographical point of view, to the lowland of Judah and not to the area of Benjamin to which the stories in Josh. 2:1–10:15 are tied. The geographical range of these stories is from Gilgal to Aijalon (we 'ad maqqeda^[*] "and to Makkedah" in 10:10 is a later addition), whereas Makkedah belongs to Judah (see Josh. 15:41) and is far from the Aijalon Valley. The camp of Makkedah in Josh. 10:21 belongs, then, to the network of conquests in the south, along with Libnah, Lachish, and Eglon, and should thus be seen as a base distinct from Gilgal, though significant stories about military excursions from it have not been preserved.

In any case, the tradition about the "camp of Israel" in the period of wandering in the wilderness and in the period of

[8] See, recently, A. Malamat, Israel in Biblical Times (Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 51 ff. (Hebrew).

[9] See Malamat, Israel (n. 8), p. 62.

settlement (Josh. 6:18, 23) reflects a historical situation with tribes organized in camps prepared to go forth and fight. But while the different tribes, or groups of tribes, had separate camps in the actual period of settlement, in the later period when the conquest stories were written, only one camp of Israel was envisioned, such as Gilgal, from which all Israel launched their attacks and to which they returned, or the camp of Shiloh with its Tent of Meeting, where the conquered land was parceled out and from which men were dispatched to chart the land so it could be apportioned by lot to the tribes. Sending out people to chart the land is a practice paralleled in the descriptions of settlement in Greece (see Chapter 1).

2—
The School of Alt and Noth

Scholars of this school claim that the settlement of the tribes of Israel in the land of Israel occurred largely without battle, in uninhabited areas of the hill country of the Galilee, Ephraim, and Judah.^[10] Only after the Israelite tribes had become rooted in their settlements and were beginning to expand did they confront the inhabitants of Canaanite cities and become drawn into battle, as in the war with Sisera (Judg. 4–5). The stories of the conquest of Jericho and Ai, from this perspective, are simply legendary etiological stories that seek to explain, ex eventu , the existence of ruins of ancient cities in the area as evidence of a war with the Canaanites waged upon the entrance of the Israelite tribes into Canaan (see below, p. 149 ff.).

Many criticisms have been leveled against this type of explanation. Challengers have rightly claimed that the etiological nature of the story does not imply that the basic fact of conquering the cities is a fabrication. Yes, the storyteller was attracted to prominent and attention-commanding land-

[10] In particular, see A. Alt, "Die Landnahme der Israeliten in Palästina," Kleine Schriften 1 (Munich, 1953), pp. 89–125; M. Noth, Das Buch Josua , HAT ; (Tübingen, 1953). And see the discussion of this approach in M. Weippert, Die Landnahme der israelitischen Stämme in der neuren wissenschaftlichen Diskussion (Göttingen, 1961), pp. 14–51.

marks, such as piles of stones or the ruined walls of a large tell, in order to embellish the Israelite wars of conquest, but this embellishment does not invalidate the fundamental existence of battles and conquest.^[11]

Nevertheless, one must admit that the basic argument of this school—that settlement began quietly and peacefully—has some grounds. In Josh. 17:14–18 we find a report of a conversation that the descendants of Joseph (bny ywsp ), or the house of Joseph (byt ywsp ), had with Joshua.^[12] Joshua admits here that the area of settlement must be expanded by cutting down forests, because the Canaanites living in the valley are strong and possess iron chariots that make them unassailable (see also Judg. 1:19). Archaeological evidence also lends support to this school's basic argument: abundant remains of dense Israelite (not Canaanite) residence from the period of the settlement have been discovered in the hill country of the Galilee, Ephraim and Manasseh, and Judah. Archaeological surveys have shown that during the twelfth century B.C.E. a great number of settlements suddenly appeared in the hill country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and of Judah, during an era when Canaanite settlements were flourishing in the land.^[13] Similarly, archaeological surveys have revealed a system of fortified settlements on mountaintops in a strip of land between the Phoenician coast and the high mountains in east Galilee,^[14] which strengthens de Vaux's hypothesis that what brought about the destruction of Hazor was the expansion of the tribes in the Galilee.^[15]

[11] Cf. below, p. 149 ff. See also de Vaux, History (n. 6), pp. 523 ff.

[12] According to scholars, two traditions have been integrated in this passage, one about the bene^[*] yosep^[*] and the other about the bêt yosep .

[13] See Moshe Kochavi, "The Israelite Settlement in Canaan in the Light of Archaeological Survey," Proceedings of the International Congress on Biblical Archaeology , 1–10 April 1984 (Jerusalem, 1985), pp. 54–60, and the recent work of I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem, 1988).

[14] Kochavi, "Israelite Settlement" (n. 13), p. 57.

[15] R. de Vaux, History (n. 6), pp. 655 ff.

Moreover, as indicated in Chapter 2, the image of Joshua conquering the land by storm does not stand up to historical-critical scrutiny. Joshua succeeded in repelling the Amorites in the Aijalon Valley at the edge of the hill country of Ephraim, which made him a national hero, to whom in a later period all the acts of conquest were attributed (see Chapter 2). Judah and Simeon, furthermore, settled peacefully; as we will see, the stories about the conquests of Judah in Judg. 1 are not reliable. The conquest of Jerusalem by the Judahites, as described in Judg. 1:8, has no historical foundation, and neither do the rest of the conquests described later in that chapter. These conquest stories seek to glorify Judah's reputation and to attribute to the tribe heroic acts it did not perform: Hebron and Debir were conquered by the Calebites and Kenizzites; the city of Arad was not destroyed in the period of settlement and its ruins were actually settled by the Kenites; and the story about the conquest of Hormah has an etiological bent (horma = herem^{[ *]} ) the historical basis of which is too distant to be clear (cf. Num. 21:1–3). The capture of Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron by Judah (Judg. 1:18) is bereft of historical foundation (on all this, see Chapter 6).

In contrast, the story in Gen. 38 indicates that Judah entered into marriage relationships with the Canaanites in the lowland of Judah, and in this way spread out across Timnah, Chezib, and Adullam in the lowland. As we will see, the greatness of the tribe of Judah lay in its ability to unite with various nomadic elements in the area of the Negev.

As we saw earlier in this chapter, the Israelite tribes operated in camps that were indeed set up to repel an attack in war, but which from the beginning were designed for a settlement campaign. It is necessary, therefore, to accept in principle the supposition that settlement was quiet, without war, at the beginning of this period. But we must also accept that there were military conflicts with the inhabitants of the area as the settlement progressed.

3—
The Mendenhall-Gottwald School

G. Mendenhall, and following him, N. Gottwald, have suggested that a feudal rebellion occurred in the land of Canaan in the period of settlement.^[16] They believe that this was not a massive invasion of nomadic tribes into the land of Canaan but rather a radical social change in the land. The inhabitants of Canaan in the period of settlement were prone to social agitation, and under the influence of a handful of Israelites who arrived from the desert, they rebelled against the kings of Canaan who were oppressing the farmers with heavy taxes. This rebellion found support in the religious ideology of Israel, which was founded on the covenant between God and his people, a covenant that precluded any possibility of entering into a vassal relationship with a mortal king.^[17] The Mendenhall-Gottwald school has been criticized for disregarding the biblical evidence concerning the penetration of the Israelite tribes into Canaan. As we observed above, it is likely that, like the Sea Peoples, the Israelite tribes traveled in camps as they were spying out places for settlement and that there is no justification for denying the basic testimony about the migration of the population and its penetration into the land of Canaan.

Nonetheless, we are obliged to admit that the fundamental idea of the Mendenhall-Gottwald school—that an association between the Israelite and the old inhabitants of Canaan was formed at a particular historical stage—is reasonable and undoubtedly has constructive ramifications. We can learn about

[16] G. Mendenhall, "The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine," BA 25 (1962), pp. 66–87; N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh (New York, 1979).

[17] See G. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation: The Origins of Biblical Tradition (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 1–31, 174 ff. M. Buber, Kingship of God (trans. from German; London, 1964) anticipated him in this matter, seeing in Gideon's utterance in Judg. 8:23 the principle that guided the tribes of Israel in the period of the judges. To our surprise, Mendenhall does not mention this.

the nature of the ferment and the insurgent spirit that prevailed in the area in the fourteenth century B.C.E. from the activity of the Habiru/'Apiru^[*] in the area as discussed in the El-Amarna letters. According to these documents 'Abdi-Ashirta^[*] , the governor of the land of Amurru, apparently sent a message to the men of the city Ammiya with these words:^[18]

'Abdi-Ashirta has written to the host in the temple of Ninurta: "Muster yourselves, and let us attack Byblos—behold, th[ere is no] man who can rescue [i]t from ou[r] power—and let us drive the mayors from the midst of the lands, and let all the lands turn themselves over to the 'Ap[i]ru^[*] , and let an [al]liance^[19] [be formed] for all the lands so that the sons and daughters may have peace forever. And even if the king comes out, as for all the lands there will be hostility toward him, so what can he do to us?"

A defiant action similar to this on the northern coast of Lebanon is found at Shechem, in the hill country of Ephraim. This city, which Joshua entered without battle and in which he made a treaty with the people (Josh. 24), aided rebel troops in the vicinity in the El-Amarna period, as did the land of Amurru under the leadership of 'Abdi-Ashirta. Lab 'ayu^[*] from

[18] Letter 74. Cf. R. F. Youngblood, "The Amarna Correspondence of Rib-Haddi, Prince of Byblos" (diss., Dropsie College, 1961). On the importance of this letter for understanding the relations between the population of the area and their rulers, see M. C. Astour, "The Amarna Age Forerunners of Biblical Anti-Royalism," in For Max Weinreich on His Seventieth Birthday: Studies in Jewish Languages, Literature, and Society (New York, 1964), Leksikon fur der Nayer Yidisher Literatur 3 (1960), pp. 6–17; P. Artzi, "'Vox Populi' in the El-Amarna Tablets," Revue d'Assyriologie 58 (1964), pp. 159–66; A. Altman, "The Revolutions in Byblos and Amurru during the Amarna Period and their Social Background," Bar-Ilan Studies in History (Ramat Gan, 1978), pp. 3–24.

[19] The word "alliance" in line 36 here in the letter is kittu "truth." For "truth" in the sense of treaty or covenant in the Bible, see my article, "Bond and Grace: Covenantal Expression in the Bible and the Ancient Near East," Leshonenu 36 (1972), p. 87, n. 20.

Shechem and 'Abdi-Ashirta^[*] of Amurru conspired together with the Habiru^[*] (SA. GAZ), who were considered robbers and thus aroused the wrath of the leaders of Egypt and of the kings loyal to the pharaoh, such as Rib-Addi, king of Byblos, and 'Abdi-Heba^[*] , king of Jerusalem.^[20] Like 'Abdi-Ashirta, who made a treaty with the Habiru against the king of Byblos, Lab 'ayu^[*] , king of Shechem, made a treaty with the nomads (the Habiru ) in the area,^[21] in order to reduce the domain of the king of Jerusalem who was loyal to Egypt. It seems that in these circumstances the people of Shechem attempted to make a treaty with the sons of Jacob (Gen. 34), and under similar circumstances the Israelites entered Shechem and made a covenant there (Josh. 24). The associations of Abimelech with the people of Shechem (Judg. 9) must be viewed against a similar background.

Josh. 24 evidently deals with a treaty or covenant made by the inhabitants of a city who have encountered Israelite faith for the first time. Joshua's demand that the people put away the foreign gods they are serving (vv. 14, 23) is similar to the demands found in several stages of Israelite history (Gen. 35:4; after leaving Shechem; 1 Sam. 7:3–4; Judg. 10:16), but more decisive here is the fact that the relationship of the people of Shechem to the God of Israel is explicitly described as incipient : those entering into the covenant are placed in a position of choosing God, something that has no parallel in the rest of the Bible. In contrast to other passages, in which God is the one who chooses Israel, the people gathered in Josh. 24 are asked to

[20] On these two kings and their complete loyalty to Egyptian rule, in contrast to 'Abdi-Ashirta and Lab 'ayu, see P. Artzi, "'Amaran: te'udot 'el'amarna^[*] ,". EncyclopediaMiqra'it^[*] 6, pp. 250–51.

[21] On Shechem's dependence on treaties with foreign powers that migrated through its locale, see H. Reviv, "Governmental Authority in Shechem in the Period of El Amarna and the Time of Abimelech," Bulletin of the Israel Exploration Society (Yediot ) 27 (1963–64), pp. 270–75 (Hebrew). Also, 'el berit^[*] and ba'al berit^[*] in Shechem (Judg. 8:33; 9:4, 46) can tell us about the importance of treaties for this city.

decide which god(s) they will choose—the gods of their fathers or the God of Joshua: "But if it is bad to you to serve YHWH, choose today whom you will serve, whether it will be the gods whom your fathers served on the other side of the River, or whether it will be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. As for me and my household, we will serve YHWH" (v. 15). Furthermore, in contrast to Exod. 32:10, in which God wants to destroy the people of Israel and make a great nation of Moses, here, instead of God choosing Joshua, Joshua offers himself and his family for the service of YHWH.

Remarkably, it is no accident that the covenant that was made with the people of Israel at Sinai is not mentioned at all in Josh. 24; on the contrary, as M. J. Bin-Gorion has noted, the chapter here ignores the Sinai covenant.^[22] The fact of the matter is, all the components found in the event at Sinai are found in the events at Shechem, to the extent that the covenant in Josh. 24 seems to substitute for the Sinai covenant. Note the following correspondences: (1) at Sinai, Moses and the people agree to express allegiance to the God of Israel (Exod. 19:7–8; 24:3), and in Shechem Joshua argues with the people and the people agree to serve YHWH (see below); (2) the declaration "We will do and will obey" in the Sinai covenant (Exod. 24:7) parallels the declaration "We will serve YHWH our God and we will obey his voice" in Josh. 24:24; (3) in the Sinai covenant, Moses sets up stone pillars as a sign of the covenant, and at Shechem, Joshua sets up a large stone as a witness of the covenant (Josh. 24:26–27); (4) with respect to the "statute and ordinance" (hoq umispat^[*] ), Moses prescribed for Israel the words of YHWH and his statutes (mispatim^[*] ) and wrote them in a book (Exod. 24:3–8), and Joshua laid down a statute and ordinance for Israel in Shechem and wrote the words "in a book of the instruction of God" (Josh. 24:25–26).

Though one cannot speak of a "conversion" of the residents

[22] M. J. Bin Gorion (Berdichewski), Sinai und Garizim (Berlin, 1926).

of Canaan in the circumstances presented in Josh. 24,^[23] the episode does bring to mind the procedures of proselytization found in later sources. Even after the people at Shechem express their readiness to serve YHWH (v. 19), Joshua tries to deter them from forming a covenant relationship: "You will not be able to serve YHWH because God is holy. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellious acts and your sins. When you abandon YHWH and serve foreign gods, he will again bring calamity on you and destroy you though he had done good to you" (vv. 19–20).

Only after the people remained firm without yielding ("No! We will certainly serve YHWH"; v. 21) did Joshua call them to witness that they had chosen to serve YHWH, and even with this call he stipulated that they remove the foreign gods that were among them (vv. 22–23). The people then responded: "We will serve YHWH our God and will obey his voice" (v. 24), and only then did Joshua enact the covenant for them.

These warnings and statements of deterrence bring to mind the halakhic rules by which converts were accepted in a much later period. Whoever sought conversion would be questioned to determine if his motive was fear (cf. the "converts [converting for fear] of lions" [gere'arayot^[*] ] in 2 Kings 17:24 ff.). Then, if no motive such as fear was evident, the person seeking to convert would be told how burdensome the yoke of the Torah would be and how much trouble he would have in observing it, advice intended to lead the prospective convert to withdraw. He would be discouraged in this way up to three times.^[24] Although these halakhic rules were crystalized in a

[23] See J. Milgrom, "Religious Conversion and the Revolt Model for the Formation of Israel," JBL 101 (1982), pp. 169–76.

[24] See the entry "gerut^[*] " in the Encyclopedia Talmudit 6, pp. 426 ff., with references to rabbinic sources. In relation to receiving converts to Israel, there were certainly fluctuations in accord with the circumstances of a particular period (see E. E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs [Jerusalem, 1975]), but it seems that regarding the issue we are speaking of here there was always agreement. A true convert was a ger^[*]sedeq^[*] "right and proper convert," who converted out of belief and not because of ulterior motives. This tendency already appears in the description of the Samaritans in 2 Kings 17:24 ff.

later period, the basic test put to anyone who wanted to join the religion of Israel had existed from ancient times. Josh. 24 is the first example of this.

Gen. 34 tells us about attempts to develop an association between the Israelites and the people of Shechem. The establishment of an alliance with the sons of Jacob, through the council, by Hamor and his son Shechem reflects the two basic elements of a compact between different ethnic groups: marriage, and mutual business and trade (connubium et commercium ). Note these verses: "These men are friendly to us (i.e., they have peaceful relations with us). Let them dwell in the land and let them travel around in it. . . . We will take their daughters as wives in marriage and we will give our daughters in marriage to them" (v. 21). But the sons of Jacob added another condition: the circumcision of every male (v. 22), which was a "sign" of a covenant ('ot berit^[*] ) in Israel (Gen. 17:10–11).

As many scholars have observed, at the foundation of Josh. 24 lies an ancient tradition,^[25] to which a stereotypical tradition known from the Pentateuch was added later. According to the ancient tradition, Joshua put under covenant the inhabitants of Shechem, who did not belong to those leaving Egypt. Additionally, a tradition preserved in 1 Chron. 7:20 ff. indicates that Ephraim had resided in the land, and that Joshua, of the tenth generation from Ephraim, was never in Egypt and was a descendant of the original Hebrews (in contrast to the stories in the Pentateuch in to which Ephraim was born in Egypt and died there, and was only four generations distant from Joshua). In view of the older tradition, we can suppose that Joshua was originally an autochthonous figure^[26] who, because of his vic-

[25] See, for example, Noth, Josua (ch. 4, n. 39).

[26] S. Japhet sees in the tradition of Chronicles the fruit of a particular tendency. See her article "Conquest and Settlement in Chronicles," JBL98 (1979), pp. 205–18. It appears to me, however, that the tendency to see the settlement in the land of Israel as a continuous process from the period of the patriarchs—without the Exodus in between—is not solely ideological, but based on historical reality. Pentateuchal stories which contrast with this tendency were created on an ideological basis, with a blurring of reliable ethnic reality (and see above, Chapter 1).

tories over the Amorites, was transformed into a national hero alleged to have come from Egypt with Moses, just as Caleb the Kenizzite was made into a Judean leader who came from Egypt with the Israelites. Joshua apparently represents the nomadic Hebrews, who were similar in character to the Habiru^[*] in Shechem during the period of Labaya'^[*] . The religion of these Hebrews was founded not on the Sinai covenant, but rather on the "faith of the fathers," which was associated with trees of sacral significance, the terebinth, oak, and tamarisk. It may be that the "place of Shechem," the "oak of Shechem" (see Gen. 12:6), "the terebinth which is by Shechem" (Gen. 35:4), the "portion of the field" that Jacob acquired next to Shechem, and the altar he set up there (33:18–20) are places that were revered by these first Hebrews, who attempted to impart this form of worship to the Shechemites. In this way, the people of Shechem were brought into a covenant with the God of Israel, whom they served in the aforementioned places, and Joshua was not initially linked to Moses but to these first Hebrews in the land of Canaan. Joshua was made the successor of Moses only after the entire tradition was nationalized; he actually belonged to the generation before Moses, which recognized only the God of the patriarchs, and his name was Hoshea, without the element reflecting God's name that is incorporated into his name after Moses. The tradition connecting Joshua to Moses is that which ascribes to Moses the changing of the name Hoshea (bin Nun) to Joshua (Heb. Yehosua'^[*] ; Num. 13:8–16). Notably, there is no element of the divine name in the names of other tribal leaders (see Num. 13:4–15; 34:19–29).

Dissociating Joshua from the exodus from Egypt solves many difficulties with the chronology of the settlement of the

Israelite tribes in the land of Israel. It means that we do not need to compress all the events into a period after the middle of the thirteenth century B.C.E. , as has been the custom. Possibly, the Israelite tribes settled in the Galilee before the fall of Hazor in the last quarter of the thirteenth century B.C.E. ,^[27] and Shechem may have been in the hands of the Hebrews long before the end of the thirteenth century. This last possibility may be reflected in the tradition that Jacob took Shechem from the Amorites by sword and bow (Gen. 48:22). Recently, it has been revealed that the city Laish (= Dan) in the north was destroyed at the end of the thirteenth century B.C.E. ,^[28] which would suggest that the tribe of Dan settled in the coastal lowland before the twelfth century, the time generally acknowledged for this settlement.

The idea that the conquest of the land occurred after the tribes of Israel came from Egypt emerged in a later period. It appears that this perspective was born in a circle of some of those who had left Egypt, out of whom came the family of the house of Eli (1 Sam. 2:27). This priestly family, which based the cult of the tribes of Israel in the sanctuary at Shiloh, connected Joshua, the famous Ephraimite conqueror, to Shiloh and created the tradition about the division of the land at Shiloh under the supervision of Eleazar the priest and Joshua bin Nun (see Chapter 2).^[29] Over the course of generations the received view that Joshua was the successor of Moses and served him in the wilderness of Sinai became established.

[27] But see recently I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem, 1988), who adduces evidence that in the Late Bronze Age the settlement in the upper Galilee was less dense than what Y. Aharoni determined in his archaeological survey, The Settlement of the Israelite Tribes in the Upper Galilee (Jerusalem, 1957) (Hebrew).

[28] A. Biran, "Notes and News, Tel-Dan, 1984," IEJ 35 (1985), p. 187.

[29] According to the original tradition, Joshua was associated with the cultic center at Shiloh and with the priest from Shiloh who directed him in dividing inheritances in the area (see above, pp. 50–51). This connection, however, predated the consolidation of the family of Eli there.

In any event, the view that settlement in the land of Canaan occurred only after the exodus from Egypt in the thirteenth century B.C.E. has no support. The families arriving from Egypt influenced unification of the Israelite tribes through their monotheistic faith, and as time passed, the coalition of the tribes of Israel adopted the tradition about a general exodus of all the tribes. But this tradition does not reflect the way events really materialized. The book of Chronicles preserves, paradoxically, amidst its dry lists, the original tradition that many tribes of Israel dwelt autochthonously in the land of Canaan without ever descending to Egypt (see note 26).

An important tribe whose consolidation occurred in the land of Canaan was the tribe of Judah, which began and grew by continually mixing with the indigenous inhabitants in the southern area. According to Gen. 38, Judah's sons were born of a Canaanite woman, a reflection of the assimilation of Judahite families with the local population, the inhabitants of Canaanite cities in the lowland of Judah: Timnah, Adullam, and Achzib. According to 1 Chron. 4:21–23, the family of Shelah, the son of Judah, includes Lecah (i.e., Lachish) and Mareshah, who both live in the lowland area. Other clans of Judah are also based in the local population. Caleb, who according to the tradition of Judah led the Israelites as they made their conquests (Judg. 1, and see above), is a Kenizzite (Num. 32:12; Josh. 14:6–7). In fact, the Kenizzites are numbered among the foreign peoples that Israel was to dispossess according to the covenant of Gen. 15 (see v. 19), and Kenaz was genealogically related to the Seirites (Gen. 36:9–11, 15, 42).

The major clans of Judah, according to the genealogical list in Chronicles,^[30] Jerahmeel, Ram, and Caleb (1 Chron. 2:1, 8, 25, 27, 43), are foreign and were created by assimilation with

[30] See recently G. Galil, "The Genealogies of the Tribe of Judah" (diss.; The Hebrew University, 1983). On the sparseness of the Israelite settlement in the area of Judah in the period of the settlement, see Finkelstein, Archaeology (n. 27).

various peoples in the south and in the Negeb: Edomites, Midianites, Horites, Ishmaelites, and others.

We learn about Judah's family ties with the Kenites in 1 Chron. 2:55, whereas we learn about their blood ties with the Midianites from Midianite names: Rekem (1 Chron. 2:43, 47; cf. Num. 31:8; Josh. 13:21), Jether and Epher (1 Chron. 2:17; cf. Gen. 25:4), and Ephah, Caleb's concubine (1 Chron. 2:46; cf. Gen. 25:4).

Furthermore, Horite elements are found in the genealogical list of Judah: for example: Onam and Oren (1 Chron. 2:25–26; cf. Gen. 36:23, 28), and Shobal and Menuhoth (1 Chron. 2:52; 4:1; cf. Gen. 36:20–23). Zerah from a family of Judah (Gen. 38:30; 1 Chron. 2:4, 6) is a recognized Edomite clan (Gen. 36:13), as is Korah (1 Chron. 2:43; cf. Gen. 36:16, 18).

In the territory of Simeon, which was incorporated into the middle of Judah's inheritance (see Josh. 19:1; 1 Chron. 4:24–33), we find the families of Mibsam and Mishma (1 Chron. 4:25), which are known from Gen. 25:13–14 as Ishmaelite families. Furthermore, in the Calebite and Jerahmeelite clans, which are listed as the main branches of the tribe of Judah, we find marriage ties with Egypt: Mared from the Calebites took Bithiah, the daughter of Pharaoh, as a wife (1 Chron. 4:18), and Sheshan of the Jerahmeelites gave his daughter to Jarha, an Egyptian servant (1 Chron. 2:34–35).

In northwest Judah, assimilation occurred with Horite and Hivite elements. Shobal, father of Kiriath-jearim, is known as belonging to a Horite family (cf. Gen. 36:20, 23) as well as to Menuhoth-Manahath, mentioned in 1 Chron. 2:52 (cf. Gen. 36:23). Kiriath-jearim itself is known as a Gibeonite town of the Hivites (Josh. 9:7, 17:11:19). It appears that Judah began to settle in Bethlehem and Giloh,^[31] and only after some time did the tribe start to expand, while assimilating with the local

[31] See Finkelstein, Archaeology (n. 27). On the excavations of Giloh, see A. Mazar, "Giloh, An Early Israelite Settlement Site near Jerusalem," IEJ 31 (1981), pp. 1–36.

population: the Canaanites and Hivites in the lowland of Judah, the Calebites in the mountain country of Hebron, the Kenites in the east Negeb, the Jerahmeelites in the west Negeb, Seir in the south, and Ishmael in the southwest.

In summary, it can be said that the settlement of the Israelite tribes in the land of Canaan resulted from a complex process covering a long period that began before the end of the thirteenth century B.C.E. It seems that the Hebrews (who came from the trans-Euphrates) who began to settle in the land belonged to a larger movement of landless Habiru^[*] , who searched for land to acquire in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C.E. The name Asher is mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions of this period.^[32] In a fourteenth-century letter from El-Amarna we read about "people put to forced labor" who were working in the area of Shunem (which belonged to the inheritance of Issachar). As A. Alt has observed, this document sheds light on the tribe of Issachar who became a "slave laborer" (wyhy lms 'bd^{[ *]} ); Gen. 49:15).^[33] Similarly, we learn from Gen. 34 that Simeon and Levi fought in Shechem, an event certainly belonging to the earliest period, before these tribes moved south; thus, the attempt of Simeon and Levi to settle in Shechem most likely fits in the period under discussion here. As noted above, because Ephraim and Joshua were native to the land of Canaan and did not come out of Egypt, Joshua's wars at Beth-Horon and the Aijalon Valley, which appear trustworthy, possibly occurred before the period of the Exodus in the middle of the thirteenth century.^[34] We have also

[32] See A. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica 1 (Oxford, 1947), pp. 192–93; cf. R. de Vaux, History (n. 6), pp. 664–65.

[33] A. Alt, "Neues über Palästina aus dem Archiv Amenophis' IV," KS 3 (Munich, 1959), pp. 158–75.

[34] See A. Alt, "Landnahme" (n. 10), pp. 176–92. The research of Z. Kallai and H. Tadmor on the state of Jerusalem in the El-Amarna period ("Bit^[*] Ninurta = Beth Horon: On the History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Amarna Period," Eretz-Israel 9 [W. F. Albright Volume , 1969–70], pp. 138–47 [Hebrew]) indicates that the hegemony of Jerusa-lem in the area, as reflected in Josh. 10, is close to the historical reality of the fourteenth century B.C.E.

seen that the tribe of Judah was consolidated mostly from native clans (the Calebites, Kenizzites, and Jerahmeelites) that were not associated with those who left Egypt. Thus, it is probable that the data in Chronicles about Israelites' settlement in the land continuously from the period of the patriarchs may have a basis in fact, as evidenced by detailed genealogical lists.

The faith of these tribes was that of the patriarchs: they believed in the "God of the fathers," a God not tied to a particular place, and in tutelary ancestral gods, i.e., the terapîm^[*] mentioned in Gen. 31:19, 34 (see above, pp. 11–13). More specifically, they believed in "El Shaddai," and also in 'elim^[*] of various types linked to holy places near Canaanite cities, such as the Terebinth of Moreh, near Shechem, and the Terebinths of Mamre, near Hebron. The foundation of the tradition about Joshua's covenant with God for the people of Israel in Shechem (Josh. 24), which is independent of the Sinai covenant, may reflect this earlier stage of religious belief.

Another wave of Hebrews was active on the east side of the Jordan. These tribes also observed the religion of the patriarchs, associated with places such as Mahanaim, Sukkoth, and Penuel.

The concept of settlement accepted in the Bible was born when a group of Hebrews arrived in the land of Canaan from Egypt, a group connected with the Kenites and Midianites and with the tradition of a mountain of God at Sinai.^[35] This group, or a significant part of it, apparently arrived in the heart of the mountain country of Ephraim and established its settlement at Shiloh, where the ark of the covenant that had wandered with the Israelites in the wilderness resided and where the Tent of Meeting was set up, which itself had been brought in from the

[35] See my articles, "The Tradition about Moses and Jethro at the Mountain of God," Tarbiz 56 (1987), pp. 449–60 (Hebrew); "The Tribal League at Sinai," in P. D. Miller and S. D. McBride, eds., Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (Philadelphia, 1987), pp. 303–14.

wilderness. We find evidence of this in 1 Sam. 2:27: "Did I not reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt?" From this verse we learn that the family of Eli, which officiated before the ark of YHWH in Shiloh, traced its ancestry to an older priestly family in Egypt, which was tied in one form or another to Moses and Aaron. The names of Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are Egyptian, and another Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, served at Shiloh (Josh. 22:12–13) and at Bethel (Judg. 20:27–28), whereas Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Moses, served at Dan (Judg. 18:30). This priestly family at Shiloh created the association of Joshua with Moses (just as with Caleb and Moses in Judah) and represented Joshua as subservient to the instructions of Eleazar the priest, father of Phinehas (see Chapter 2).^[36] Similarly, this priestly family connected Joshua with the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness and made him a servant of Moses (Exod. 33:7–11; Num. 11:28–29; Deut. 31:14–15).

One must suppose that this respected priestly family, which placed its settlement at Shiloh in the center of the hill country of Ephraim, is that which succeeded in imposing the religion of YHWH on all the tribes of Israel, and that the Tent of Meeting in Shiloh eventually came to be considered the place where the land of Canaan was parceled out to the tribes by lot before YHWH (see Chapter 2).

In this form, the tradition developed about an association of the tribes of Israel acting as a unified body. There was no longer a distinction between the tribes that dwelt in the land from the time of the patriarchs and those that arrived from the south, from the wilderness; all of them now shared in the heritage of the descent into Egypt, where they became a great people; all of them left Egypt under the direction of Moses and conquered the land of Canaan under the direction of Joshua. The truth, however, is that Hebrew tribes began to settle sporadically in the land in the middle of the second millennium

[36] See n. 29.

B.C.E. and contended with the Canaanite cities in a few battles even before the arrival of those who had left Egypt. In the middle of the twelfth century, when the Sea Peoples came into the territories of Israel, the Hebrew tribes on both sides of the Jordan began to organize in preparation for settling in Canaan. We know of a camp at Shittim in the Plains of Moab (Num. 33:49; Josh. 3:1; Mic. 6:5), the camp of Gilgal (Josh. 3–4; Mic. 6:5; and see Chapter 2), the camp of Makkedah (Josh. 10:21), the camp of Shiloh (Josh. 18:9; Judg. 21:12), and the camp of Dan (Judg. 18:12). The camp of Shiloh, which was designated as the place of the ark in the Tent of Meeting, became a religious center of the tribes of Israel which preserved traditions of the exodus from Egypt. Shechem, which was also a religious center of the Israelite tribes, cultivated the ancient tradition of the Hebrews without any reference to the exodus from Egypt or the Sinai covenant. Only in a later period was this tradition amalgamated with the exodus tradition.

Joshua bin Nun, who was an Ephraimitic leader who did battle with Amorite kings in the Aijalon Valley (see Chapter 2), was transformed over time into a national hero to whom was ascribed the conquest of the land of Canaan when he went out to battle from Gilgal. He was seen as the leader who divided up the land by lot before YHWH in Shiloh. The summoning of the tribes of Israel to be gathered at Shechem was attributed to him. The reality, however, was that different local settlement traditions, initially independent of one another, each underwent separate development until, in a later period, they were united into one general national tradition.