One primary purpose of this project is to suggest new directions for putting the Bible and history in dialogue. If we take seriously the particular character and heritage of Israel that are now embedded in a biblical framework dominated by Judah and its heirs, we may see different historical assumptions and possibilities in the Bible's Israelite material. At the same time, Israel's distinct political nature with its collaborative aspect raises its own historical questions about the place of this people in the Near East through time. With my own contribution, I leave to historians the systematic analysis of this region through each period of interest. Likewise, I leave to archaeologists the construction of frameworks for identifying and interpreting past societies through the review of all their material remains. I work primarily with texts, both biblical and inscriptional, including the cuneiform contribution to understanding the Bronze Age, and my historical offerings will be most useful and original when derived from this evidence.

With this reality in mind, the final section of this study is built around three chapters that move through blocks of time long relevant to Israel's history. To suit the Bible's primary narrative that represents my point of departure, these chapters span the period of Israel's antecedents through that of the two kingdoms. In the latter case, the books of Samuel and Kings can be mined for historical detail regarding structures and political trends (Chapter 18). The earlier parts of the narrative stand at greater distance from the times they treat, and their relationship to history requires a different approach in every case. For the region before Israel and after Israel's first emergence on the scene, I turn to issues that involve the intersection of naming and politics: the old problem of the ‘apiru as this relates to the image in Genesis and Exodus of a pastoralist people (Chapter 16), and identity of Canaan in relation to Israel at a time when both coexisted (Chapter 17). All of these problems permit reflection on the biblical portrait without intention to evaluate any body of evidence in systematic terms: the Bible's treatment of the past, material finds through space and time, or a combination regarded as grist for writing history. Instead, each problem tests different ramifications of the social and political pattern that I have understood to emerge from the biblical traditions regarding Israel.