Endnote 29 – When Was the Age of the Patriarchs?—Of Amorites, Canaanites, and Archaeology

Because of this a few scholars have straddled the fence by applying the evidence to both periods, referring to the MB IIA invaders as a later wave of Amorites supplementing the earlier Amorite groups of MB I. See W. Dever, op. cit., n. 18, p. 140 and G. E. Wright, ed., The Bible and the Ancient Near East (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), p. 88. However, this group of scholars must minimize the radical break in material culture between MB I and MB II if they are to accept any correlations between archaeological remains and ethnic movements. Paul Lapp has stated that the relation of both periods to Amorite incursions “involves oversimplification, if not contradiction.” (Lapp, op. cit., p. 94.)