The settlement in Palestine is presented in the Bible as a tale of bloody battles leading to the conquest of Canaan. However if we realy look at the map one can hardly speak of large-scale warfare. if one marks the out on a map the places mentioned in Joshua 12 as captured cities, it transpires that the wars took place mainly in high lying areas. Moreover not all the places named in Joshua 12 are mentioned in the story of Joshua 1-11. Furthermore in Joshua 12:10 Jerusalem was occupied and according to Joshua 21-23 Taanach, Megiddo, Kedesh, Jokneam and Dor were also defeated. According to Joshua 17:11, however, Israel could not subjugate the cities of Beth-Shean, Jibleam, Dor, and Taanach and Megiddo The list of Judges 1 also mentions that some of the cities mentioned in the list of occupied cities of Joshua 12, were not occupied; Gezer Joshua as opposed to Judges 1:29 and Jerusalem Joshua 12:10 as against Judges 1:8 but compare Judges 1:21 and 2 Samuel 5.
The conquest was not achieved by crossing of the Jordan and followed by the quick capture and destruction of the fortress of Jericho, nor did they from Jericho pressed into the heart of the land, taking one fortress after another Archaeological work at Jericho could yield nothing which could be related to the siege of Jericho However other cities such as Hazor, Lachish and Ai have evidence of being destroyed at the time of the conquest. Despite the Bible's elaborate tale on the capture of Ai, archaeological work at Ai show strong evidence of the town being a deserted ruin for centuries, and not a soul lived there permanently, centuries before and up to the time the "conquest." From this it is clear that the story of the "conquest is an vastly adapted story. Egypt still exercised control along the western coastal road, as far North as the pass of Megiddo, and in that region the Philistine settlement was soon to present a barrier to the extension of Egyptian power from the year 1190 before Christ .
A coalition of five military governors of Canaanite fortresses attempted to prevent the Israelites from turning South, from the central hill country, where Gibeon and the associated cities of the Hivite Tetrapolis had submitted to them as subject-allies. The tribes of Israel formed marauding bands of looters and although the chariot-forces of Canaanite citadels prevented them from operating in more level country, they soon dominated and occupied the central and southern highlands, and also the Galilean uplands, North of the Plain of Jezreel and in the Hilly area around the pass of Beth-horon where the road to the South, lay open to the invaders. These tribes which settled in the North were cut off from their fellows in central Canaan by a chain of Canaanite fortifications in the Plain of Jezreel, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. Judah, in the South, and was even more effectively cut off from the central tribes by the stronghold of Jerusalem, which remained a Canaanite enclave for 200 years.
On one notable occasion the northern and central tribes joined forces in an uprising against the military governors of the Plain of Jezreel, who were steadily reducing them to serfdom. Their united rising was crowned with success at a skirmish at Kishon about, 1125 before Christ, when a sudden storm flooded the watercourse and put the Canaanite charioteers out of action, so that the light-armed Israelites easily routed them. But even on this occasion, while the call to action went out to all the northern and central tribes, and to those in Trans.- Jordan, Judah appears to have received no summons, being too completely cut off from the other tribes.
On an occasion like this, when the tribes of Israel remembered their covenant-bond, their united strength enabled them to resist their enemies. But such united action was rare. The recession of danger was regularly followed by a period of assimilation to Canaanite ways. This assimilation involved intermarriage and the imitation of Canaanite fertility rites, so that Yahweh was thought of rather in terms of Baal, the fructifying rain-god, than as the God of their fathers who had redeemed them from Egypt to be his peculiar people. The covenant-bond was thus weakened and they became an easy prey to their enemies. Not only did Canaanite city-states try to reduce them to servitude; from time to time they suffered incursions from beyond Jordan, by their own kinsmen the Moabites and Ammonites, and much more disastrously at the hands of raiding Bedouin. The leaders who rallied them in such periods of distress were the charismatic 'judges' after whom this whole settlement period is commonly named; these men not only promised them victory against their enemies but led them back to loyalty to Yahweh.
The principal centre of the tribes of Israel in their wilderness period was Kadesh-barnea, evidently (from its name) a sanctuary and also (from its alternative name En-mishpat) a place where causes were heard and judgement pronounced. When they left Kadesh-barnea some of them infiltrated North, into the central Negeb, but the main body advanced South and East of the Dead Sea, skirting the territories of their Edomite, Ammonite and Moabite kinsfolk, who had very recently organised themselves as settled kingdoms. Further North, in Trans - Jordan lay the Amorite kingdoms of Sihon and Og, which they entered as hostile invaders. The resisting forces of Sihon and Og were crushed, and their territories were occupied—-these are the territories later known as Reuben, Gad and east Manasseh. Part at least of the Israelite community thus settled down to an agricultural way of life even before the crossing of the Jordan. When we speak of Israel at the time of the Judges, we should really speak of some northern tribes that merged as we have the people of Israel on one hand against the people of Judah on the other. Considering the radical differences which existed throughout the history of Judah and that of Israel it is impossible that unity existed as early as the time of the Judges a greater unity was only achieved in the time of David, only to be broken up afterwards.
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