#patternsofevidence

This is what one of Israel’s leading archaeologists has to say:

"The process we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan - they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people - the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were - irony of ironies - themselves originally Canaanites!"

Israel Finkelstein - Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, from his book “The Bible Unearthed” Free Press 2001 - Page 118