the heirs of the basic features of Canaanite material culture and the continuers of many Canaanite cults, practices and religious tenets.
The pre-Patriarchal history as sketched by the Hebrew chroniclers is clearly not history. Even from the Patriarchal narrative the kernel of historical fact is not easy to extract. The Abrahamic story may reflect the earliest migration; the Israelite may reflect the second; the Mosaic is definitely historical.
The real history of the Israelites as a people thus begins with the Exodus from Egypt, an event which took place probably between 1234 and 1215. The tribesmen lingered many years in the wilderness of Sinai and the Negeb. Their leader Moses married the daughter of a priest who worshipped Yahweh (Jehovah), a North Arabian desert deity, originally a moon god, whose abode was a tent and whose ritual comprised feasts and sacrifices.
After 1200 b.c. this mixed clan of desert-born nomads appeared from the south-east, the Transjordanian desert, intent upon the occupation of the fertile land. Their number could not have exceeded 7000, and they by-passed the petty kingdoms of Edom, Moab and Ammon. In Canaan (Palestine proper) they succeeded in taking Jericho and other towns, but the so-called Hebrew conquest was largely a slow and peaceful penetration. Having secured a foothold in the cultivated land, the newcomers were reinforced by intermarriage with older elements and by adhesion of their kinsmen who had remained in the land and never migrated to Egypt. As the land was acquired it was parcelled out among the eleven tribes, leaving the priestly tribe of Levi distributed among the others to minister to their religious needs. As a consequence Judah and Benjamin became domiciled in the hilly country around Jerusalem, and the remaining tribes were established in the more fertile plains to the north. The period of settlement lasted roughly a hundred years. It was followed by a long
