I have never understood this. What gives people born far away more right to that land then the people who actually live there? What was there about being Jewish that gave a foreigner the special right to move to Palestine?
I mean this only academically because as xtisme rightly points out, the reality of the situation now is that the nation of Israel exists, has the will and the means to keep existing, and therefore gets to make its own rules. That basically gives them the right to allow foreign Jews to make Israel home. But what special right did Jews have before Israel existed?
Kitchen is mainstream in Egyptology (his specialty) but he’s also an evangelical Christian and somewhat of an apologist with some atypical views (he does not accept the documentary hyothesis, for example).
Maximalism is an increasingly obsolete position and is no longer mainstream. A priori Assumptions of Biblical inerrantism are simply not regarded as particularly legitimate anymore.
It’s not an either or, though. The mainstream finds plenty of room between inerrantist Maximalism and radical Minimalist (and technically, Finkelstein is not a Minimalist). The mainstream accepts David as historical but does not accept the Exodus or the conquest of Canaan. The position that Finkelstein has probably faced the most opposition over is his conclusion that there was never a unified kingdom of Israel (i.e. that the northern and southern kingdoms were never unified under David and Solomon). Finkelstein bases his conclusion on comparisons of wealth and population between the two regions in the 10th Century. The northern region was wealthier and more populous, Jersualem was not yet a big city and the southern region does not appear to have had the wealth or the numbers of people which would have been necessary to control the north.
Because of the political ramifications of Finkelstein’s opinion, he has faced resistance at least in terms of acceptance that his conclusion should be accepted as a given.
There are other things in The Bible Unearthed, however, which are not regarded as particularly controversial (namely, that the patriarchal legends, the Exodus and the the conquest of Canaan are ahistorical).
There is no doubt that the traditionalist view of the Kingdom of Solomon is incorrect - there is simply nothing in the historical record to suggest a wealthy and powerful kingdom as suggested in the Bilbe.
However, positive declarations as to what did happen are quite premature. The evidence is simply not sufficient to make conclusions, such as certain political arrangements did or did not happen such as the union of kingdoms under a central authority, with any sort of certainty.
Obviously we are dealing with mythologized history, and the exact untwining of myth and history, as of today, is anyone’s guess as to the particular details. My own opinion is that the “conquest of Caanan” represents a very ancient and fundamental conflict between upland pastoralists and lowland agriculturalists (see also the Cain & Abel legend), which the pastoralists “won” and then lost as their way of life was absorbed by the lowlanders.
You see the same tensions and ethnogenisis at work in other parts of the world (think of the hill tribes of Thailand – many of them are actually Thai in ancesory, but would self-identify with groups who have migrated from Yunnan - - as far as both hilltribes and Thai are concerned, ethnicity is intimately bound up in a way of life, rather than being strictly based on genetics - if you become a hill dweller, you take on a particular way of life - swidden agriculture, semi-nomadism - and with it, you take on a set of mythology appropriate to that way of life).
What I think happened to the ancient Israelites is that the mythology of the highlands came to dominate the lowlands; part of that mythology included stories of the exodus; naturally, the vast majority of the population was not descended from anyone involved in such an exodus, which if it happened at all was a relatively small-scale affair involving some bedouin-like pastoralists.
I doubt that David was such a myth, he was probably a real war leader. As for the debate over the antiquity of Biblical Jerusalem, these days it is being fought over the so-called “large stone structure” recently discovered there - some say it is physical evidence of such a city; some claim that is wishful thinking.
It seems at the very least that future editions of Professor Finkelstein’s book will have to deal with this evidence. For the moment, the claim that there was ‘nothing much there’ other than a minor tribal center seems somewhat refuted.
I have no doubt that the balance will swing, and repeatedly, over the next few decades. This story is not finished yet, and any who think that it has been conclusively proven one way or the other will be in for some surprises.
One little side note … most of those who lived in Palestine around the time of Israel’s birth were recent immigrants to the area, Jew and Arab alike. The fact of the matter is that Jewish immigration to the area brought economic growth and that growth promoted Arab immigration in from surrounding areas. Agreed that most of this is a moot discussion, but both the story of Jews coming into a desolate land and of a long standing Palestinian people displaced by Jewish immigration are myths not supported by historical facts.
That there was a historic Jewish kingdom there, that its people were forcibly displaced but never gave up their claim to the land, that there was some ongoing Jewish presence there throughout - all these are matters of record. That Israel now exists and is not going away is also a matter of fact. That a Palestinian identity now exists consisting of the descendants of people who also occupied the area at the time of modern Israel’s creation and that people with that identity are justifiably desirous of a land to call their own is also a matter of fact.