With Benjamin, we have finished a review of the evidence for a range of Israelite voices preserved in the primary biblical narrative that runs from Genesis through Kings. While the discussion has required a level of detail that may be a burden to those without particular interest or training in the field, specialists will see immediately the extent to which each treatment represents an overview. My hypothesis throughout has been that Israelite material in the Bible is characterized by more than just distinct geography; it also displays a social organization that resulted in different political traditions. The path that led to monarchy in Israel did not produce the consistent combination of political and sacred centers as at Jerusalem, and Samaria seems not to have become a dominant population center as was Jerusalem in the eighth and seventh centuries. The contrast that is rooted in different historical developments is sharpened by the likelihood that the Bible's earlier Judahite writing derives mainly from this later monarchy, with its massive Jerusalem hub. Another biblical expression of Israelite society is the sheer variety of perspectives, which reflect a wide range of place, with accompanying local interests.

Based on all the lines of evidence that allow isolation of Israelite content, including geography, politics, and topical interest, it is possible to piece together a biblical view of ancient Israel that does not partake of some common generalizations about what pertains to “Israel” or “the Bible.” Taken together, these texts may allow a fresh dialogue between the disciplines of history, archaeology, and biblical studies, with new possibilities for how the Bible relates to historical questions. One somewhat surprising pattern in the Israelite material is a vivid recollection of how a distinct herding tradition shaped Israel's origins. A major role for pastoralism in the early southern region is clear from archaeological finds, but texts from Judah preserve little of this, and the Bible's account of ancestral shepherds seems to originate in Israelite narrative. Other offerings for historical study result simply from stripping away certain assumptions from the later and Judahite combination of biblical texts. With this concluding review, we set the stage for further examination of the “collaborative” political tradition so strongly displayed in the Bible's Israelite material (Part III), and for reflection on selected historical questions that relate to broad issues of social and political organization.