While I wish I could apologize to all who have been exposed to the idea that what you find in the Tanakh is literal history, the problem lies with the Christians and groups like the JWs who keep insisting that a book of truths requires that the book also be filled with facts. In reality humankind doesn't pass on its cherished truths through news reports and encyclopedic articles but through art, drama, and song. The same is true for the history of the Jews.
Though Jews recognize their religious texts as inspired of G-d, they also acknowledge the fact that the record is the product of human hands with human frailties and limitations. To illustrate, both archeology and Jewish history admit that the Jews were largely polytheistic until the reign of King David. Up until then the worship of Abraham and Sarah's G-d YHWH had to compete with the varies tribal gods the Jews also worshipped until the Davidic dynasty settled in Jerusalem.
But the Biblical text draws a picture of faithful followers of G-d being in the majority in Israel up to David's time, though nothing can be further from the truth. Our ancestors were much like their neighbors, given to the practices and superstitions of the people's around them. Where David became king, the archeological record in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas show a major change in worship, where David's G-d became the national Deity making all others due for the trash pile.
This however got "remembered" in the lore of my people differently, as if YHWH was always the G-d worshipped. The previous animalistic conquests of the Jews were thus attributed to the G-d of Abraham and Sarah by the time the legendary revisions of history became holy writ, most after the return from Babylonian exile.
Unlike Fundamentalist Christian religion which demands the Bible be a literal account, Jews view their Scriptures much like Americans view their historical legends. George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree as a child, but the myth keeps a vital truth alive about Amercian values. The log cabin on display meant to be the birthplace of Lincoln is actually not, but the legendary view of this famous president gets transmitted through the symbols preserved. The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere is just a poem, and the true details were very different. Even more recent events in American history are mythological, like the Great Depression being caused by a Stock Market crash or that the Space Race was merely the natural outcome of good old-fashioned American greatness--these are not facts. They are legends. But like movies, stage plays, musicals, and songs do, these stories transfer the truths and values of the American generations in clarity that sticks. Dry reports don't transmit values like legends do.
People need to give up on the idea that the Bible is literal or that the Jews were lying by preserving their mythology. They weren't lying anymore than Americans are in how they transmit their historical accounts.
The problem is that people blame the Bible accounts because of the failure of bad and misleading interpreters like the JWs. It is highly illogical to judge the texts of the Jews by the interpretation of Gentiles who hold the same Jews as incapable of understanding their own texts. You won't ever come to a dependable conclusion by judging a book by the interpretation of someone who refuses to discuss the same book with its authors.