Endnote 6 – When Was the Age of the Patriarchs?—Of Amorites, Canaanites, and Archaeology

For the most recent detailed defense of the Amorite hypothesis, linking it to the MB I Period, see, William G. Dever, “The Peoples of Palestine in the Middle Bronze I Period,” Harvard Theological Review, 64 (1971), pp. 197–226. See also W.F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 2nd ed., 1957), pp. 163–66; E. Anati, Palestine Before the Hebrews (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), pp. 364–65; R. de Vaux, “Les patriarches hebréux et l’histoire,” Revue Biblique, LXXII (1965), pp. 5–28; K. Kenyon, Archaeology in the Holy Land (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1960), pp. 159–61. The only significant challenge to this identification in recent years has been by Paul Lapp who had been Director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem when, in 1970, he tragically drowned while swimming off the coast of Cyprus. See The Dhahr Mirzbaneh Tombs (New Haven: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1966), pp. 86–116. According to Lapp, the MB I invaders were not the Amorites, but rather were related to the Kurgan culture in Southern Russia. Although this view has not won many adherents, it nevertheless does direct attention to the significant problems with the identification of these MB I invaders as Armorites, as we shall see.