Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00680)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> Only those nations who refused to let the Isrealites live in
> peace were exterminated.

That is possible. Given that they ran amok in Egypt for thirteen 
years (according to Egyptian legend) and were eventually forced out 
at the point of a spear the fact that by their own account they 
exterminated everything in sight after being driven north looks like 
just a continuation of their previous behavior. They may have 
evolved into a quiet and pastoral people in centuries to come, but 
for a time there, by all accounts (including their own) they were a 
gang of marauders. That would have been normal for nomdaic tribes of 
the period.