The biblical traditions as we have them are seen as the result of a long and complex process of development, only taking their final shape during or after the Babylonian exile (6th century BC) and reflecting the political and theological concerns of that late period.Most scholars are therefore pessimistic about the possibility that these traditions preserve historical facts from a much earlier time. Gottwald is typical of many in affirming that the traditions concerning Israel's origins outside the land of Canaan are of questionable historical credibility [19]; N. Lemche is confident that in its present form the account of Israel's pre-Palestinian existence..hardly be described as other than a fiction [Lemche:409]; G. Ahlstrsm states that the story of the Exodus from Egypt is concerned with mythology rather than with a detailed reporting of historical facts [Ahlstrsm:46].The occurrence of this name in Exodus has therefore been taken as an indicator that the enslaved Hebrews actually laboured for Ramesses II (1279-1213 BC).[1] If this reasoning is sound, the Exodus cannot have happened before the 13th century BC.It is my contention that the failure to find appropriate evidence of Israel's conquest of Canaan is actually the result of looking for it in the wrong archaeological period.

Today most biblical scholars and archaeologists doubt the historicity of even this basic outline of events.However, another source of such scepticism is undoubtedly the perceived clash between the biblical traditions and archaeological evidence.Searching for evidence that Israel's conquest of Canaan occurred at the close of the Late Bronze Age (end of 13th century BC), scholars have failed to find any convincing correlations. It is no longer possible to offer even a reasonable defense of the Conquest narratives" [Lemche:413].To begin by grasping the nettle offered by the second half of our title, it has to be said that archaeology cannot usually tell us whether biblical traditions are historical or mythological.Archaeology is not, strictly speaking, a science (although it employs scientific tools).Against the use of Exodus as dating evidence we must balance two other biblical references.l Kings 6:1 places the Exodus 480 years before the 4th year of Solomon, which points to a date (in round figures) of about 1450 BC.In the case of the cities of the Ancient Near East, limited time and resources mean that the archaeologist can only excavate a relatively small proportion of a tell (the Arabic term for a ruin-mound, in Hebrew spelt tel).For example, Yigael Yadin estimated that to excavate every level of the tell of Hazor (in northern Galilee) in its entirety would take eight hundred years!The first part of this paper is devoted to challenging the conventionally accepted date in the 13th century BC and defending an alternative date some two centuries earlier -- a date suggested by the Bible itself.Between the 1930s and 1950s evidence accumulated in favour of dating the Exodus and Conquest to the 13th century BC. Even some of those scholars who reject the historicity of the Exodus and Conquest traditions still look to the decades around 1200 BC as the time when Israel emerged as a recognizable entity in Canaan.The first thing to note is that the Hebrew Bible does not use the name Raamses with chronological rigour.It uses it in Genesis (actually in the form Rameses; the variation is not significant) to indicate the area where the ancestors of the Hebrew tribes first settled in the time of Jacob.period that they cannot possibly contain historical reminiscences from almost a thousand years before [Lemche:377-78, 384].This view cannot be challenged here; suffice it to say that many scholars reject it, believing that at least some of the traditions concerning Israel's early history, especially those preserved in poetic form, do go back to the time before the monarchy [Cross; Freedman; Halpern].