Doug Weller Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Damian Walter Wrote:
> >
> > It's also the case, of course, that the
> > 'Israelite' era was already established "in
> > Canaan in the first millennium bce", rather
> > than developing then [...]
>
> Which of course is well after the Middle Kingdom.

Of course. Nobody is suggesting otherwise.

> The mention on the Merneptah Stela seems to be of
> a tribe, not a nation [...].

The significance of the mention of 'Israel' on the Merneptah Stele has been debated back and forth for a long time. No definite consensus has been agreed.

From Miller's Chieftains of the Highland Clans:

"[...] The most that can be drawn from the Merneptah Stele, apart from the sound datum of the name 'Israel' in its proper geographic location, is that the Egyptian scribe saw fit to mention this people or place in such a small list intended to represent Egypt's enemies in the Levant (Redford 1992:266). The name must have acquired some type of importance by the end of the 13th century to warrant this inclusion. This fact is more provocative than anything drawn from the structural or determinative examination had suggested, and has yet to be adequately explained" (p. 95).

> And although you don't seem to like
> Finkelstein [...]

I don't dislike Finkelstein. He's written some interesting stuff. I just don't find some of his conclusions particularly convincing, and I've read enough articles by other scholars who have raised legitimate concerns about his interpretation of the data. In other words, he has an agenda just like everyone else (my point being that he's no different from Kitchen in this respect).

For instance.

From "Some Thoughts on Khirbet en-Nahas, Edom, Biblical History and Anthropology - A Response to Israel Finkelstein" by Thomas E. Levy and Mohammad Najjar (Tel Aviv, 2006, 33, 1: 3-17):

"Israel Finkelstein's critique in Tel Aviv (2005) of our paper published in the British journal Antiquity (Levy et al. 2004) is riddled with misinterpretations of the data from our excavations at the Iron Age metal production site of Khirbet en-Nahas in southern Jordan [...]. The debate over the 'high' and 'low' chronology for the Iron Age of the southern Levant is certainly far from over [...]. However, in Finkelstein's critique, he seems to be trying to force our data into his preconceived 'low' chronological model. Granted, the most recent Iron Age radiocarbon dates (n=27) for KEN processed at the Groningen laboratory may not have been available at the time that Finkelstein's Tel Aviv comment went to press [...]; however, there is a disturbing trend in Finkelstein's recent work to ignore data or simply force it into his model. This is most recently seen in his new book (with Neil Silberman) entitled David and Solomon (2006) where, writing about Iron Age Feinan, he states that 'Another important source of copper is the area of Wadi Feinan, on the eastern margin of the Arabah Valley, approximately thirty miles south of the Dead Sea. Recent studies by German, American and Jordanian scholars revealed evidence there for continuous activity in the Iron Age, with one of the intense periods of mining and production dated to the late eighth and seventh centuries BC' [...]. Here, too, the major corpus of our publications concerning Feinan is not cited. Like the Tel Aviv critique, the new book simply misrepresents our research (the American, Jordanian and German teams) since, to date, there simply are no dated metal production deposits in the Feinan district dating to late 8th and 7th centuries BCE [...]. This is especially true of Khirbet en-Nahas, where most Iron Age radiocarbon dates have been produced and all metal production deposits date from the 12th-9th centuries BCE. In what follows, we will address some of the problems raised in Finkelstein's interpretation of our work at KEN [...]" (pp. 3-4).

> [...] in the book he
> co-authored with Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible
> Unearthed, which I have [...].

From "Three Debates about Bible and Archaeology" by Ziony Zevit (Biblica, 2002, 83: 1-27):

"[...] The book [[i]The Bible Unearthed[/i]] presents Finkelstein's positions - the 'New Vision' of the title - on a number of key and minor issues in Israelite history, not only the tenth century debate, but it does so without comment as to their status in the field [...]. In doing so, it misleads its intended audience which will include Biblicists unfamiliar with details of the archaeological debate. The book presents hypotheses as facts, not informing readers what is disputed and why, and it does not indicate that there are difficulties or uncertainties about the new vision, not of 'archaeology', but of a single archaeologist" (footnote 41, p. 24).

***

For a useful review of Finkelstein and Silberman's book:

[moses.creighton.edu]

> he/they write "the Israelites emerged
> only gradually as a distinct group in
> Canaan, beginning at the end of the
> thirteenth century BCE". Kitchen would disagree
> with Miller as well as Finkelstein and Silberman.

Contrary to what you seem to have assumed throughout this thread, Kitchen - whether or not he "believes in the Exodus" - makes no claims whatsoever about a Exodus from Egypt during the period of the Middle Kingdom. Which has kind of been my point all along.

Damian