Modern biblical scholarship's commitment to writing a history of Israel has created the central and unavoidable problem of also writing an objective and critical history of Palestine through the biblical literature. This volume brings together key essays on historical-critical method and the biblical archaeology of Palestine. The essays employ comparative and formalistic techniques to illuminate the historical through the study of Old Testament narrative traditions from Genesis to Nehemiah. In so doing, the volume presents a detailed review of central and radical changes in the archaeology and history of Palestine. The study offers an analysis of biblical narrative as centered in theological allegory and myth and as rooted in ancient Near Eastern literature since the Bronze Age.