Inside, Outside: Where Did the Early Israelites Come From?

Biblical Archaeology Review [34:06] ^ | Nov/Dec 2008 | Anson Rainey

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On one thing all scholars agree: In the period archaeologists call Iron Age I, from about 1200 to 1000 B.C.E., approximately 300 new settlements sprang up in the central hill country of Canaan that runs through the land like a spine from north to south. Almost everyone also agrees that these were the early Israelites settling down. The famous hieroglyphic text known as the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1205 B.C.E., refers to "Israel" at this time as a people (not a country or nation) probably located in Transjordan...

In 1962 George E. Mendenhall... introduced a new theory of Israelite origins, however. According to him, the Israelites who settled in the hill country came not from outside, east of the Jordan, but from inside, from the Canaanite cities of the coastal plain. This massive influx of new settlers into the hill country was the result of an "internal revolt" by beleaguered peasants against the Canaanite city-states. To support his thesis, Mendenhall grossly distorted a number of passages from the Amarna Letters that mention the 'apiru, a term often mistakenly associated with the early Israelites (see article)...

The new hill-country settlers acquired their pottery traditions from their life on the Transjordanian plateau and the Jordan Valley.

...there is also a general dissimilarity in domestic house construction between the hill-country Israelites and the earlier Canaanite cities of the plain.

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