God Yahweh Allah was a volcano.

[The Grand Nudger]

Again...."Abaham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter" has elements of non-fiction, that does not mean it doesn't get shelved in the fiction section. Hannah, you need to stop quoting the bible in support of the bible. If you want your theory to have any traction you need to find actual evidence that would turn our current understanding of the hebrew people as homegrown canaanites on it's head. Or at least evidence which erodes the idea, at the very least. The bible IS a storybook, why on earth do you keep insiting that it is not, without providing any evidence that it is not, in the face of mountains of evidence that it is?

Of course the hebrews have a history, the only problem is that the history in the OT does not match the history we find buried in the sand. No one here is arguing that the ancient hebrew people do not have a history, or that the authors of the bible could not have drawn on factual information to form the setting or characters of their fable. No one is arguing with you on any of those points. We are merely pointing out that we do have a history of the area, and of the people, and that this history is not equivalent to the history of the bible. In fact, it is so wildly divergent that the only word one is left with to describe the narrative of the bible....is fiction. The theory which you propose would be a credible one, worth looking into, except that we already have (which is all we're trying to convey here). Not that this should stop you, many times history has been turned on it's head by a clever discovery, so get out there and dig up the history you've presented us with.