Joshua and Judges Overview

Two Biblical Views of How Israel Acquired the Land: Joshua and Judges

 The books of Joshua and Judges give different views as to how Canaan was conquered.  On the whole, the book of Joshua presents the Conquest as a lightning campaign that was totally successful.  The view of the Conquest presented by the Book of Joshua is an idealized version.  Joshua's campaigns were not quite the smashing successes they appear to be in Joshua’s accounts.

 The book of Judges describes a continuing struggle to wrest the land from the enemy, stretching over more than a century, since much of the land was unconquered.

 Recent Views of the Acquisition of the Land

 There are 4 major models that attempt to explain how the conquest of Palestine (Canaan) occurred.

1.  An Invasion

This is basically the biblical story told in Joshua.  This view proposes that there really was a violent attack on the land from the eastern desert region.

Supporters of this model point to archaeological evidence which suggests that the cities of Lachish, Bethel, and Hazor were destroyed in the second half of the thirteenth century B.C.E.

2.  A Peaceful Infiltration

This model proposes that the Israelites were clans of sheep and goat herders who moved into the cultivated areas when vegetation was too scarce on the desert fringes.  Gradually, they began to settle in unoccupied areas and became farmers.  It was only later, when they came in conflict with the Canaanites, that they captured the larger cities.

3.  A Peasant's Revolt

This model proposes that most of the Israelites were Canaanite peasant farmers for whom herding was a secondary occupation.  These lower class people gained power by revolting against their Canaanite overlords.  This model sees the lower class people moving from the cities on the coast into the scarcely populated hill country.

4.  Canaanites Turned Israelites

This is a variation of the peasant’s revolt model.  This model proposes that the Israelites really were Canaanite farmers who centuries earlier were forced by changing social and economic conditions to become herdsmen living on the desert fringe in Transjordan and southern Palestine.  Then, around 1250 B.C.E., the Palestinian coastal cities declined, depriving the herdsmen of their markets.

They then gradually moved back into the hill country, established villages, and became farmers, becoming what we know as Israelites.  The major problem with this model is that it leaves open the question of religious development.