The New Gospel

The process … is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause.  And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan – they emerged from within it.  There was no mass Exodus from Egypt.  There was no violent conquest of Canaan.  Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people – the same people we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages.  The early Israelites were – irony of ironies – themselves originally Canaanites!