ABSTRACT
The chapter starts by summarising the textual and archaeological sources on early Israel and main academic interpretations in modern biblical scholarship over the last two hundred years or so. The presentation then notes how it approaches the documents as primarily political ones, even if they also involve religious considerations and also notes that it is fitting to aim to read the documents both sympathetically and critically in their original ancient Near Eastern context. Comments on how the story about sojourn in Egypt and exodus from there in its main lines fits with the presence of Asiatics there in the second millennium, the expulsion of the Hyksos and the known coercive nature of ancient states. The presentation then summarises the argument for seeing ancient Israel as a settler colonial society whose elite produced Genesis-Joshua as a programmative document for the new society. Considerations on an accompanying Israelite ethnogenesis follow, highlighting how unintended consequences of colonialism were involved, with the development of the early Israelite society only partly corresponding to the vision embedded in the early Israelite documents, and with the transition from a tribal based system into a monarchy adding to the mix of such unintended consequences. In this context, it is shown how the early Israelite colonialism is situated on the settler colonial side in terms of its mode. An analysis of empire in ancient Israel is also made, followed by a summary of developments that relate to the division of the United monarchy and the further vicissitudes of the ancient Israelite states and beyond and the afterlife of the documents produced by the ancient Israelites.
