Mendenhall graduated from Midland College in Nebraska in 1936, and from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in 1938.
Mendenhall was first an ordained Lutheran minister, and during World War II he served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy.
After the war, Mendenhall obtained a Ph.D. in Semitic languages from Johns Hopkins University and began a career in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical studies as well as related archeology.
The Tenth Generation proposed that the Ancient Israelite settlement was actually the result of a cultural-religious egalitarian revolution within Canaanite society, rejecting the views it was either a military conquest or a process of peaceful sedentism.
[citation needed] Mendenhall died in August 2016, just 8 days short of his 100th birthday.