A lot of people don't understand how complex the Biblical picture of the Judges period is which is why so many people have trouble buying that the Amarna Letters are any period after Joshua. All the Authors of those letters are Pagan Canaanites and that's what I'd expect from The Biblical depiction. The major players are all among cities Judges 1 and other passages (Like Joshua 16:10 and 17:11-12) tell us were still Canaanite at least till the time of David (unless they are arguably outside the range of what was allotted to Israel entirely) Gezer, Megiddo, Jebus/Jerusalem, Sidon and her daughter Tyre. And it could be more cities were Canaanite then just the ones The Bible specified, Pella in the Trans-Jordan does not seem to be directly mentioned in Scripture at all, but most of the Roman era Decapolis cities were ones that had stayed Canaanite. Gibeon is a uniquely complicated situation.
The Israelites entered Canaan as primarily a pastoral nomadic people, for all of the Judges Period a good percentage of them, maybe even the majority, probably didn't even live in cities but preferred the rural life. Judges 1 also clarifies how The Israelites initially mainly took over power in the most mountainous regions while the Canaanites held out in the plain.
But the main cities we know were Israelite cities during this period do not have Kings or Mayors who wrote letters to Pharaoh at Amarna. Hebron, Lachish, Bethlehem, Kirathjearim and Bethgader in Judah, Gibea in Benjamin, Bethel and Hai, Jericho, Shiloh, Shechem and Tirzah in the House of Joseph's allotment. Japhia and the other Bethlehem in Zebulun, Kedesh-Naphtali and so on. Some of these cities are mentioned in the letters, some Canaanite Kings claimed sovereignty over them, but Kings do love to claim to be King of more then what they actually controlled in practice.
Labaya is the enigma, he's not really linked to a specific city the way the others are, he's been called the King of Shechem by modern scholars but that's actually a city he claims is in his domain and is not depicted as his capital at all. David Rohl argues for him being Saul and other revised chronologies have tried almsot every major Northern Kingdom monarch. But again Gezer shows that the post Solomon period can be ruled out for Amarna. And I really don't see Saul writing these kinds of letters to Pharaoh, even during his darker final years.
Labaya could just be a King of one of the Judges 1 Canaanite cities who's Amarna era King isn't specifically known, probably one of the Jezreel Valley ones disputed between Issachar and Manasseh in Joshua 17:11 and Judges 1:27. Taanach is seemingly missing from the Amarna records, and it's far enough south to be in the West Bank on a modern Map of Israel, since Labaya's fall was at the hands of nearby Gina/Jenin it fits well. The name of Labaya however is believed to come from a word for Lion, and a famous Stele at Bethshean depicts a Lion and Lioness. Another Semitic word for Lion is Gur often translated "whelp" as in a baby lion, and Gur is also a place name connected to Ibleam in 1 Kings 9:27. Dor is also missing from the Amarna records, Labaya could have ruled an alliance of everyone in those verses but Megiddo.
In my current mindset I'm trying really hard NOT to resort to Revised Chronology, to come up with an Exodus model compatible with convention mainstream Egyptology (but probably not a typical reading of Biblical Chronology).
But I certainly can't support what is within that framework called a Late Date for the Exodus, which I honestly think is just motivated by a desire for The Ten Commandments film to still be correct. In fact even most are calling an Early Date for the Exodus I consider too late. That's stuff I'll get into elsewhere.
I agree however with popular late dater Dr. David A. Falk that Habiru does have a connection to the Biblical term Hebrew but isn't always a 1 to 1 equivocation. However where I disagree is concluding no one would have called the Israelite Hapiru anymore once the Conquest of Joshua was "complete", to the Canaanite living in those cities and plains the Israelites were still outcasts living among them. The Hebrew Bible is just an account of that history from the POV of those outcasts.
The notion that the Conquest ever was "complete" in Joshua lifetime is a misunderstanding caused by some of The Bible's hyperbole. It was a process that took centuries.
So the Hapiru of the Amarna Letters I believe includes the Israelites, but the Israelites may not be the only people being called that.
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