In the process, we will be looking at three key strands of evidence: the biblical record, archaeology, and the pattern that is evident today as one travels throughout the Middle East.įigure 1: Unnamed Jordanian village. While this study focuses on the period from Joshua to David (i.e., the United Kingdom), Genesis 33:19 suggests that the same pattern existed in the time of Jacob. The purpose of this study is to look at what an agricultural community in the post-Conquest period-i.e., the time of the books of Judges and Samuel-might have looked like. The fields of the settlement’s farmers collectively would have encircled that cluster of houses. In contrast, the evidence indicates that the typical Israelite farming community, like that of the earlier Canaanites, would have been a cluster of houses built in close proximity to each other, even to the point of having common walls. Commercial enterprises would often be miles away. As a result, farm homes have tended to be somewhat isolated, often hundreds of yards (or meters) or more apart. Typically, rural America has consisted of farmers living on sizable parcels of land divided into a variety of personally owned fields. One such gap is the significant difference in the structure of the agricultural communities. When we study the OT, we need to bridge a number of cultural gaps.