Endnote 46 – Should the Exodus and the Israelite Settlement Be Redated?

Study of the Biblical text itself raises questions about the way the material was handed down and about the historicity of some of the early accounts. For example, chapters 21 and 33 in Numbers contain different traditions about the route the Israelites followed from Mt. Hor into Canaan, and Joshua 12 lists as conquered cities places that Judges 1 states were not conquered, such as Ta’anach and Megiddo. See John L. McKenzie, The World of the Judges (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 71–82 and Samuel Yeivin, The Israelite Conquest of Canaan (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Institut, 1971), pp. 5–20.