Thadd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It probably might mean Israel, but it seems
> likely, from what is known of the actualy early
> Israelite and Judaen settlement process, that
> whatever this group of people, possibly
> semi-nomads etc, was, it was something very
> different from the later people in Canaan.

The Merneptah Stele is dated to circa 1200 BCE. The Stele refers to an entity named 'Israel'. The majority of scholars accept that the Stele locates this 'entity' (however defined) in its proper geographic location (ie. in the central hill country of Canaan).

Curiously enough, the distinctive pattern of small Iron I (1200-1000 BCE) highland settlement sites that have been revealed through archaeological survey work and excavation in the central hill country of Palestine, and which the majority of scholars accept as the earliest attested archaeological evidence for an entity named 'Israel' (however defined), first start to appear in the archaeological record in the late thirteenth or early twelfth centuries BCE.

In other words, the Merneptah Stele's mention of 'Israel' is contemporaneous with the emergence of distinctive settlement patterns that the majority of scholars accept as evidence of early 'Israelite' (or 'Proto-Israelite') settlements.

Needless to say, there are others who are put forward different arguments, but the following should nevertheless prove interesting ...

From Chieftains of the Highland Clans: A History of Israel in the 12th and 11th Centuries BC by Robert D. Miller (2005. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company):

"[...] The Merneptah Stele is direct positive evidence that the term 'Israel' was used for some entity in the highlands of Palestine in the parlance of Late Bronze IIb sources [...]. In another sense, it makes no difference what the Iron I highlanders called themselves: they were the direct antecedents of Iron II Israel and, thus, 'Proto-Israel'. There is direct continuity from the Iron I highlands to Iron II Israel and Judah in pottery, settlements, architecture, burial customs, and metals (see, among other things, the extensive literature by W. Dever and I. Finkelstein on this issue). So whatever the Iron I highlanders called themselves, by their continuity with Iron II they were nevertheless 'those elements that were not yet Israel, but which went into or led up to the creation of Israel' (Thompson 1987:33). Yet since the Merneptah Stele records that the name of this community, or at least part of it, was Israel, once archaeology has established the continuity to Iron II, there is no reason to retain the prefix 'Proto-' [...]" (p. 2).


From "Remarks on Biblical Traditions and Archaeological Evidence concerning Early Israel" by Amihai Mazar (in Symbiosis, Symbolism and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, edited by William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin. 2003. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns):

"[...] The network of some 250 Iron Age I settlement sites found by several survey teams in the central hill country has been the subject of extensive discussion in the literature [...]. The environmental and economic background of the emergence of these settlements together with their architectural and other material culture characteristics reflect the wide-spread settlement of a people with a specific socioeconomic life-style, which in my opinion accords with premonarchic Israelite society as described in the biblical narratives. The continuity between many of these sites and later Israelite towns and villages of the monarchic era legitimizes the definition of these settlers as Israelites, as I have maintained since I excavated the site of Giloh in 1978 (Mazar 1981; 1985; 1990a), and as have many other scholars. The term 'Proto-Israelites' introduced by Dever (eg., 1992; 1995) and adopted by others to designate the inhabitants of these sites is in my view superfluous.

"[...] The reference to Israel in the Merneptah stela has been assessed in various ways by different scholars. Recently Hasel (1998:194-217) has convincingly suggested that this reference must have related to an important population group in Canaan; as he and others have claimed, it is tempting to identify the Israel of the Merneptah stela with the wide-scale settlement process in the hill country of Cisjordan, as well as in northern Transjordan (Gilead), which began in the late 13th century BCE [...]" (p. 87).


Damian



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My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all.

- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

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'I am beginning to believe that nothing is quite so uncertain as facts.

- Edward S. Curtis

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'We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork', said Dr Mortimer.
'Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation', [replied Holmes].

- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

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'It never does to be too sure, you know, in these matters. Coincidence killed the professor.'

- "Novel of the Black Seal" by Arthur Machen