MA

thesisAs historians and scholars have studied the Bible, one unanswerable question has continued to puzzle them: Where did Ancient Israel come from? Many scholars have presented theories attempting to provide some possible answers to this question based on the Bible (and/or other ancient texts) or archaeological data or both. However, while each theory has valid arguments based on textual or archaeological data, these theories leave several questions unanswered and none fully agree with all the data available. There are data that support both a Canaanite and a non-Canaanite origin for Ancient Israel, yet these major theories focus on either the Canaanite origins of Ancient Israel or the non-Canaanite origins for Ancient Israel and never both. Thus, new theories that incorporate both sources for the origins of Ancient Israel must be formulated to get us closer to answering the question of from where Ancient Israel came