Letters/Discussion Forums
Evidence does not tally with genocide story
The debate (in Jewish Report’s letters page) between Rabbi Pesach Fishman and Martin Frack over the morality and Divine directive of the extermination of the Canaanites, is missing a very important element: The preponderance of historical and archaeological evidence points to the conclusion that the conquest and its accompanying genocide never happened.
Jared Joel
Archaeological and historical conferences and symposia featuring luminaries in the field such as Israel Finkelstein, William Dever, Mark S Smith, and others have found, among other things, the following elements:
A continuity of settlement between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, wherein the conquest was supposed to have taken place and the inhabitants expelled.
Pottery and architectural styles exhibiting continuity, indicating the same cultural grouping through the centuries.
The fact that Hebrew is merely a dialect of the Canaanite language.
Similarities between the architecture of the Tabernacle, the Jerusalem Temple, and numerous Canaanite temples.
The names of Canaanite gods within the Tanach, even in people’s own personal names, and attributes and deeds ascribed to such gods in texts such as the Ugaritic tablets, being ascribed to the G-d of Israel using similar or identical language.
Israelite traditions and festivals being derivative of Canaanite ones.
The lack of evidence of destruction dating to the supposed time of Joshua, and certain destructions that did take place, such as Taanach and Hazor, it’s difficult to determine who was responsible for those destructions. Add to this contradictions between the account of the book of Joshua and that of the book of Judges.
A substantially different picture seems to emerge. The early Israelites are now seen as a subset of the wider Canaanite people. They were not foreigners but indigenous and aboriginal inhabitants of the Land of Israel, particularly in the highland regions.
Population increases were due mainly to Canaanite peasants and freeholders fleeing the increasingly oppressive lowland city-states for freedom in the hill country, and this population found the ideal of the Covenant compelling.
Also compelling was the Exodus narrative, for which there is lots of evidence that some form of it actually took place (There may have been more than one Exodus), even if it was on a much smaller scale than that described in the Biblical narrative. It became the epic story for all the Israelite clans and tribes, even those who never experienced it.
As for the conquest and extermination narrative, it was likely the work of scribes who sought to create a national identity based on the monotheistic ideal, and used tales of ancient conquests that may have existed in an oral state within the population, to unite the Israelite tribes against the oppressive social structure of the lowland city states and the pantheon of gods that justified it. Thus was the national identity caused to coalesce around the Covenant ideal.
Sydenham, Johannesburg