Ze'ev Herzog

In this article Herzog cites recent scholarship to support that "the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.

Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom.

And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the god of Israel, Jehovah, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai".

[2] Herzog's article was criticized by Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, in a letter to the same publication.

[3] Herzog is a co-author with Israel Finkelstein of a 2007 paper which opposes claims made by Eilat Mazar who unearthed what she believed was King David's palace in Jerusalem, but is now known as the Large Stone Structure.