Israel’s Origins

Some believe the Bible is the authoritative oracle of the Creator who communicated his message to humanity through inspired human authors. At the opposite extreme are those who discount the existence of God and necessarily conclude that the Bible is a late product of the human imagination, carrying no more insight nor moral imperative than other human texts. However, many within academia identify with a qualified or intermediate position regarding the historical integrity of the early texts that deal with Israel’s origins. 

This website (and the book it is based upon) addresses a primary contributing reason for skepticism among those whose beliefs are somewhere between the extremes. That reason is the disconnect between the traditional projected dates of text events and the dating evidence. 

While it may matter little to the unbeliever whether biblical events happened, it must matter to the believer because if any part of the text is historically unreliable, the authority of the entire Bible becomes suspect. 

This was the issue that compelled me to spend a generation searching for a solution to the apparent disconnect between the story of Israel’s origins and the evidence. Ironically, conservative Bible scholars have presented the greatest obstacle to confidence in the historical merit of the Bible’s early texts. They have done this by persistently dating the Conquest to the wrong century. The articles below summarize why they have done this and how dating the Conquest to the latter 12th century BC reconciles the evidence with the Bible’s story of Israel’s origins.