From what population did early Israel emerge?

Where the debate comes up

• 1400–1300 BCECanaan in the Amarna age
• 1207 BCEIsrael on the Merneptah Stele
• 1300–1100 BCELate Bronze Age collapse
• 1200–1000 BCEVillages in Canaan's highlands
• c. 1175 BCEPhilistine settlement

Statements tied to the debate

1. Egyptian texts from 1500 to 1100 BCE also mention the Shasu, seminomads from the Palestine area, another candidate for 'proto-Israelites', as were the Habiru. The evidence is lacking to decide; it is even possible that the Bible absorbs memories of several such groups: Amorites, Hyksos and Shasu. 1
2. A relief in the Egyptian temple at Karnak, from the fourteenth century BCE, shows the Shasu after their defeat by the Egyptians; some scholars identify them as the early Israelites or as the people from whom the Israelites descended. The book also notes that if it is an image of the early Israelites, they would be indistinguishable from other Canaanites. 2
3. Unable to verify the biblical account, many recent scholars favor another explanation, at odds with the Bible: the Israelites did not come from outside, neither from Mesopotamia nor from Egypt, but Israelite culture arose within Canaan as an offshoot of the local indigenous culture. On this hypothesis, the Bible's effort to set Israel apart from the Canaanites is historically misleading. 3
4. Nothing clearly identifies these settlers as immigrants from Sinai or Egypt: their houses and pottery scarcely differ from local forms. The claim that they had been nomads also fails. Without using the biblical Exodus and conquest as a premise, the evidence instead permits seeing them as Canaanites driven by social or economic pressures into rugged country beyond city-state control. 4
5. The Philistines can be shown to be outsiders because their distinct culture appears in the archaeological and linguistic record and traces back to another part of the world. Not so with the Israelites: their language, religion and material culture tie them to earlier Canaanite culture, as if they were an outgrowth of it. 5
6. If the Israelites came from Canaan's native population, how did they come to see themselves as different, as outsiders who had displaced the land's earlier inhabitants? The authors say this is a question still under investigation and that they do not know the answer. 6
7. The Habiru intrigue scholars because the name resembles 'Hebrew', a word that in the Bible always refers to Israel. There are problems: Habiru seems to be a social class, not an ethnic group, and appears outside Canaan too. Even so, some suppose the Israelites came from Habiru refugees in the mountains, who asserted themselves as Egyptian control and the city-states declined. No evidence confirms this. 7
8. Taken together, the evidence raises the possibility that the Israelites originated in a manner completely different from what the Bible asserts. This should not be viewed as established fact: it rests on debatable hypotheses, and the consensus, if there is one, is open to revision. What is certain is that one cannot assume the origins of the ancient Israelites are known; the Bible tells only part of the story. 8
9. Some scholars propose that Philistine domination prompted the first Israelite state. Beth Shemesh, on the boundary between Philistine and Israelite territory and excavated since the 1990s, has yielded elaborate fortifications. Building them would have required centralized authority, perhaps an Israelite government protecting its frontier. 9
10. At Beth Shemesh and other sites, archaeologists found practices that set the population, presumably proto-Israelite, apart from nearby Philistines: pig bones are almost absent there, whereas frequent at Philistine sites. Archaeologists theorize that the taboo on pork may have arisen in this period as a marker of difference and allegiance, and a similar explanation has been proposed for circumcision, which the Bible itself stresses as a mark of difference between Israelites and Philistines. 10
11. According to this theory, until the Philistines arrived the Israelites did not actively distinguish themselves from their neighbors; only afterward, starting in the region of closest contact, did they develop a collective self-awareness through practices of their own. The authors warn it is only a theory and does not explain why Israelites also set themselves apart from other Canaanites; Israelite identity, like that of many peoples, may have crystallized as a reaction to the real or perceived threat of another people. 11