A hypothesis I've been developing over the past few years in light of that emerging archeological picture is that the Exodus narrative was a sea peoples story appropriated by the Israelites after the sea peoples alleged settlement and relocation in Palestine in the 12th century BCE by Ramses III.
A number of stories in the Biblical account which have no archeological evidence as occurring for the Israelites have similar events well attested for the sea peoples, including:
Judges 18 has the descendents of Moses as priests for Dan; the Karatepe bilingual and Çineköy inscription both have a "House of Mopsus" as the ancestral lineage for the leaders of the Denyen in Adana (the Denyen have also been connected to Dan)
Sea peoples "without foreskins" battling against Merneptah at the battle of the Nile (see Libyan war inscriptions regarding the captives) vs the second circumcision in Joshua 5:2 immediately following an exodus from Egypt (where partial circumcision leaving the foreskin was practiced)
There's no evidence of the described conquest of ancestral homeland taking place in Canaan per Joshua, but there's considerable evidence of conquest of Mediterranean sites by sea peoples best summed up by the Cypriot response to the fall of Ugarit: "As for the matter concerning these enemies: (it was) the people from your country (and) your own ships (who) did this!"
No evidence of Samson (with similar features to the mythical Hercules) or the Israelites conquering Ashkelon, but considerable evidence (i.e. OP study) of Anatolian or Aegean sea people doing so in the 12th century BCE (where Xanthus placed Mopsus as conqueror).
You even have the Lukku, one of the tribes fighting Merneptah, as one of an explicit 12 groups of tribes brought into captivity by Ramses II following the battle of Kadesh.
This picture even emerged in antiquity following the comparing of notes between Egypt, the Greeks, Anatolia, and the Jews in the wake of Alexander's conquest, from Atrapanus of Alexandria claiming Moses had taught mysteries to Orpheus (the Thracian poet and shipmate of Mopsus), or the Jewish author of book 3 of the Sybiline Oracles claiming the kingdom of Solomon included a number of Anatolian tribes.
A number of stories in the Biblical account which have no archeological evidence as occurring for the Israelites have similar events well attested for the sea peoples, including:
Judges 18 has the descendents of Moses as priests for Dan; the Karatepe bilingual and Çineköy inscription both have a "House of Mopsus" as the ancestral lineage for the leaders of the Denyen in Adana (the Denyen have also been connected to Dan)
Sea peoples "without foreskins" battling against Merneptah at the battle of the Nile (see Libyan war inscriptions regarding the captives) vs the second circumcision in Joshua 5:2 immediately following an exodus from Egypt (where partial circumcision leaving the foreskin was practiced)
There's no evidence of the described conquest of ancestral homeland taking place in Canaan per Joshua, but there's considerable evidence of conquest of Mediterranean sites by sea peoples best summed up by the Cypriot response to the fall of Ugarit: "As for the matter concerning these enemies: (it was) the people from your country (and) your own ships (who) did this!"
No evidence of Samson (with similar features to the mythical Hercules) or the Israelites conquering Ashkelon, but considerable evidence (i.e. OP study) of Anatolian or Aegean sea people doing so in the 12th century BCE (where Xanthus placed Mopsus as conqueror).
You even have the Lukku, one of the tribes fighting Merneptah, as one of an explicit 12 groups of tribes brought into captivity by Ramses II following the battle of Kadesh.
This picture even emerged in antiquity following the comparing of notes between Egypt, the Greeks, Anatolia, and the Jews in the wake of Alexander's conquest, from Atrapanus of Alexandria claiming Moses had taught mysteries to Orpheus (the Thracian poet and shipmate of Mopsus), or the Jewish author of book 3 of the Sybiline Oracles claiming the kingdom of Solomon included a number of Anatolian tribes.