2 - Historical notes on Israel's conquest of Palestine: a peasants' rebellion

Summary

1978

Scholars today are in nearly unanimous agreement about the chronology for the origin of Israel: the transition in Palestine from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age. However, this consensus is not the conclusion of a problem solved after long debate; for there is no agreement whatever on the evidence for the consensus. It is rather a procedural consensus, wrought out of the uncertainty of how it happened and even of what happened. The adherents of the two most dominant interpretations (Albrecht Alt's settlement hypothesis in contrast to William F. Albright's conquest) are not themselves entirely convinced by them. In such uncertainty, it is not only important to be aware of the many alternatives available, but also to see clearly the presuppositions and methods of each. It is this service that Hauser attempts with his discussion of the thesis of Mendenhall and Gottwald. In many ways, his discussion is a reaffirmation of Manfred Weippert's thorough rebuttal of the Mendenhall thesis in 1967. However, it can be argued with some justice that Weippert's critique was premature, since at that time Mendenhall's thesis was based on only a single popular article. Now, a decade later, the literature has grown greatly, and the thesis, though little changed, has become increasingly influential.