Inside BAR

In this issue of BAR, two renowned Israeli scholars, Yigael Yadin and Abraham Malamat, bring their formidable talents to bear on a much-debated Biblical subject—the Israelite takeover of Canaan. “Is the Biblical Account of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan Historically Reliable?” by Yadin and “How Inferior Israelite Forces Conquered Fortified Canaanite Cities” by Malamat present various theories of peaceful infiltration, military conquest and social revolution.

BAR readers can examine a range of archaeological evidence to support these respective theories—evidence from spectacular Egyptian reliefs, to cuneiform tablets, to simple storage jars.

Yigael Yadin is one of the world’s pre-eminent archaeologists and a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. He occupies the chair in archaeology at Hebrew University established in honor of his father, archaeologist Eliezer Sukenik. Yadin led the excavations at Hazor, 1955–58, that revolutionized our understanding of much of Biblical chronology. He also directed the exploration of the Judean Desert caves where Bar Kochba documents were discovered in 1960–61, and led the Masada excavation in 1963. His next English publication will be The Temple Scroll (Hebrew University Press), the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the last to be discovered.