Tanakh and Archaeology

The conquest of the land of Israel is described at length in Sefer Yehoshua, and the conventional view, based on a superficial reading of the text, is that the process was completed in a short time, as was the subsequent process of the settlement of the tribes of Israel. This view was accepted among archaeologists of the previous generation. However, more recent developments have made clear that the approach that treats the conquest and settlement of the land as a uniform, quick phenomenon, contradicts the archaeological findings in several respects.

These more recent findings offer support for the picture created by a more comprehensive and careful reading of the biblical account of the settlement of the land in which while there is a literary aim to describe a short process attributed entirely to Yehoshua, but in fact other descriptions in the Bible show that it was a lengthy process.

The archeological theories surrounding Jericho and Ai are examined.