I recently finished reading The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. Here is part of a review that drew my attention to the book:
The book reaches its conclusions from a huge array of archaeological evidence of different kinds, some quite clever, such as the analysis of camel bones; others representing new trends in field archaeology, such as settlement surveys. The Biblical narrative is always interpreted in the light of this physical evidence, producing the clear conclusion that the Bible was almost entirely written in the seventh century B.C., and revised or added to later, by a new political party, only sporadically in power over a polytheistic society, espousing a novel religious idea of monotheism and a unified kingship based on this. Most of the Bible is found to be legend or propaganda favoring that party or its agenda. The Israelites did not come from somewhere else, neither Ur nor Egypt, but are the same people who had been living there for millenia, not much different from any of their neighbors, like the Canaanites. This is pretty much accepted as fact by most experts.The authors add to this, however, the more controversial position that in fact there was never even a united monarchy: according to their view, this was a deliberate invention serving the interests of some of the kings of Judah (spearheaded by the ambitious Josiah, whom the Bible depicts actually "discovering" the book of Deuteronomy) who dreamed of conquering the northern territory of Israel. Finally, the authors make sense of this theory by advancing their own addition that Judah was an undeveloped rural backwater throughout its history until after the downfall of Israel to the north at the hands of Assyrian conquerers. According to this view, had Israel, which was a far more developed and sophisticated civilization, survived to tell its own version of Jewish history, we would have a very different story.
Among my favorite chapters are "Searching for the Patriarchs" and "Did the Exodus Happen?" The authors present evidence that supports the Biblical accounts and evidence that raises some difficult questions. For example, an Egyptian historian named Manetho writes of a people he calls Hyksos who established themselves in the Nile delta and lived there for about 500 years. He says they were driven from Egypt to the frontiers of Syria and that this people went on to found Jerusalem and build a temple there. The problem is that the Bible dates the Exodus at around 1440 BCE, and the Hyksos were expelled around 1570 BCE. Also complicating matters is the Biblical reference to the Israelites' enforced labor in the construction of the city of Raamses. The first pharaoh named Ramesses came to the throne only in 1320 BCE.
If the authors are correct, their theory helps make sense of many Bible stories, particularly why repeatedly a younger son usually triumphs over an elder. When one realizes that these characters represented tribes and political struggles, the stories make much more sense.
Below is an excerpt for anyone who would like to sample this book. Information in [ ] has been added by me.
Ginny
The relationships of Israel [by Israel, the authors mean the northern 10-tribe kingdom] and Judah with their eastern neighbors are also clearly reflected in the patriarchal narratives. Through the eighth and seventh centuries BCE their contacts with the kingdoms of Ammon and Moab had often been hostile; Israel, in fact, dominated Moab in the early ninth century BCE. It is therefore highly significant--and amusing--how the neighbors to the east are disparaged in the patriarchal genealogies. Genesis 19:30-38 (significantly, a J text ["J" meaning the Jahvist thread, believed to have been influenced by southern priests from Judah]) informs us that those nations were born from an incestuous union. After God overthrew the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his two daughters sought shelter in a cave in the hills. The daughters, unable to find proper husbands in their isolated situation--and desperate to have children--served wine to their father until he became drunk. They then lay with him and eventually gave birth to two sons: Moab and Ammon. No seventh century Judahite looking across the Dead Sea toward the rival kingdoms would have been able to suppress a smile of contempt at a story of such a disreputable ancestry.The biblical stories of the two brothers Jacob and Esau provide an even clearer case of seventh century perceptions presented in ancient costume. Genesis 25 and 27 (southern, J texts) tell us about the twins--Esau and Jacob--who are about to be born to Isaac and Rebecca. God says to the pregnant Rebecca: "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger" (25:23). As events unfold, we learn that Esau is the elder and Jacob the younger. Hence the description of the two brothers, the fathers of Edom and Israel, serves as a divine legitimation for the political relationship between the two nations in late monarchic times. Jacob-Israel is sensitive and cultured, while Esau-Edom is a more primitive hunter and man of the outdoors. But Edom did not exist as a distinct political entity until a relatively late period. From the Assyrian sources we know that there were no real kings and no state in Edom before the late eighth century BCE. Edom appears in ancient records as a distinct entity only after the conquest of the region by Assyria. And it became a serious rival to Judah only with the beginning of the lucrative Arabian trade. The archaeological evidence is also clear: the first large-scale wave of settlement in Edom accompanied by the establishment of large settlements and fortresses may have started in the late eighth century BCE but reached a peak only in the seventh and early sixth century BCE. Before then, the area was sparsely populated. And excavations at Bozrah--the capital of Late Iron II Edom--revealed that it grew to become a large city only in the Assyrian period.
Thus here too, the stories of Jacob and Esau--of the delicate son and the mighty hunter--are skillfully fashioned as archaizing legends to reflect the rivalries of late monarchic times.