ABSTRACT
A historiographical evaluation of traditional reconstructions of ‘ancient Israel’ dependent essentially on the picture offered by the biblical narrative, from the 19th century to the present, analysing works by T. Robinson, J. Bright and M. Coogan. Also present in this chapter, we find a criticism on this approaches by highlighting their ‘colonization’ of Palestine’s past through rationalisations of biblical Israel, and exposing the distorted shape of such a historical reconstruction.
