The Emergence of Israel and Theories of Ethnogenesis

One of the hottest debates in biblical archaeology today concerns Israel's first appearance on the historical scene as a group. Before developing the question of Israel's emergence in Canaan, this chapter focuses on the archaeology of ethnicity. It identifies ethnic traits during Iron Age II, a period in which practically all archaeologists agree that there were Israelites, and also identifies the historical context in which those traits could have become ethnically meaningful. All those traits could have resulted from interaction of the highland settlers with the highly hierarchical (Egyptian-ruled) Canaanite society in the closing years of the Late Bronze Age, namely, the Canaanite society and the Egypto-Canaanite political system. A factor that makes it difficult to attribute Israel's ethnogenesis only to the interaction with the Philistines in the eleventh century is the mention of Israel already in the late thirteenth century BCE in the Merenptah Stele.