What was the outcome of the conflict among the israelites?

Answer 1

The Book of Joshua, believed to have been written as part of the Deuteronomic History during the reign of King Josiah, says that the Israelites quickly defeated the Canaanites, destroyed their cities and committed acts of gross genocide, before occupying the land of the Canaanites.

However, scholars say that there never was a military conquest of the Canaanites. They say that the Hebrew language was very close to that of the Canaanites and that there was a shared culture. In the scholarly view, the Israelites were actually Canaanites who migrated from the cities along the coast, into the mountainous interior, where they eventually formed their own state. Archaeologists say that the mountainous hinterland was only sparsely populated until the thirteenth century BCE, when there was a gradual, peaceful increase in population.