Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 50:2 (Jun 2007)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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JETS 50:2 (June 2007) p. 377

Book Reviews

Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel 1300-1100 B.C.E. By Ann E. Killebrew. SBL Archaeology and Biblical Studies 9. Atlanta: SBL, 2005, xx + 362 pp., $39.95 paper.

Ann Killebrew presents a detailed analysis of thirteenth to twelfth-century bc pottery in Canaan in the context of debate over Israel’s origins and the historicity of biblical narratives. As an experienced field archaeologist and professor at Pennsylvania State University, she examines the identification of group ethnic boundaries by means of a multi-disciplinary approach involving ceramic archaeological data and socio-economic and political processes.

Killebrew’s introductory chapter explains the issues, tensions, and procedural approach (pp. 1–19). Subsequent chapters describe the internationalism of the eastern Mediterranean in the thirteenth century bc (pp. 21–49), Egypt in Canaan (pp. 51–92), the Canaanites (pp. 93–148), early Israel (pp. 149–96), and the Philistines (pp. 197–245). A brief conclusion summarizes Killebrew’s reconstruction (pp. 247–51). Each chapter provides an overview of the written texts and material culture associated with each ethnic group. The bibliography is extensive and representative of key scholarly research (pp. 253–334). A full set of indexes closes the volume (pp. 335–62).

This volume focuses on Canaan and the socio-economic transition that took place at the end of the Bronze Age. Theories dealing with catalysts for the transition variously specify migration, conquest, revolt, pirates, overpopulation, earthquakes, drought, technological innovation (iron working and chariotry), socio-economic systems collapse (due to any number of the foregoing events), and the cyclical rise and fall of urban cultures. Killebrew observes that none of these factors or their associated models adequately represent the complex nature of the transformation (p. 37). Rather than viewing the outcome as a catastrophic collapse, she concludes that the transition consisted of a gradual “restructuring of economic control in core-periphery relations” (p. 42).

According to Killebrew’s study, this gradual transition included Israel’s ethno-genesis out of a mixed population made up of Canaanites, displaced peasants and pas-toralists, ‘apiru, Shasu, and possibly fugitive Semitic slaves from Egypt (pp. 149, 184). Israel’s genesis was “a heterogeneous, multifaceted, and complex process” (p. 184). The author grants only limited credence to the biblical texts, concluding that accounts in Joshua and Judges are contradictory and that Josh 11:16–23 is in...

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