The rise of ancient Israel has been studied from the perspectives of archaeology and the biblical text in parallel. Archaeology deals with the settlement processes that took place in the highlands, while biblical exegesis may identify germs of memories that go back to events that took place before the rise of the Hebrew kingdoms.

The resilience of the Canaanite palatial system has received little scholarly attention so far. During the aforementioned eight-century period many of the tiny Canaanite polities navigated well while the world around them changed: from the Middle Bronze Age “Amorite global village” (Schwartz 2013) to the Late Bronze Age—the era of the superpowers.

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Recent excavations at Megiddo facilitate the establishment of a nuanced record for the Iron IIA in northern Israel. A previously unknown phase in the settlement history of the site has been recognized at the southeastern sector of the site and is termed here "Middle Iron IIA"; it is radiocarbon dated to ca. 900 BCE.

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In this article, I suggest that Jeroboam II assembled Northern origin, royal and heroic oral traditions and committed them to writing. I refer to the Jacob and Exodus tales; Saul, Jeroboam I and Jehu narratives (possibly embedded in a Northern History); savior stories in Judges; and perhaps Northern conquest traditions.

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