Endnote 21 – Save Us from Postmodern Malarkey

For my “proto-Israelites,” see Dever, “The Late Bronze-Early Iron I Horizon in Syria-Palestine: Egyptians, Canaanites, ‘Sea Peoples,’ and ‘Proto-Israelites,’” in William A. Ward and Martha S. Joukowsky, eds., The Crisis Years: The 12th Century B.C. from Beyond the Danube to the Tigris (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1992), pp. 99–110, and “Archaeology and the Emergence of Early Israel,” in John R. Bartlett, ed., Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 20–50. On Late Bronze Age-Iron I ceramic continuity, see Dever, “Ceramics, Ethnicity, and the Question of Israel’s Origins,” BA 58:4 (1995), pp. 200–213, and references there to other literature. There is an overwhelming consensus among all archaeologists today on this continuity, although there are differences of interpretation on the implications of the facts. On the origin of the bearers of this Late Bronze-Iron I ceramic tradition, opinions vary from Finkelstein’s theory of local pastoral nomadic origins to my theory of local mixed elements, including nomads and displaced lowland farmers.