Original sentence: Biblical minimalists, such as Philip Davies, Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas L.Dever, regard the Exodus as non-historical, at best containing a small germ of truth.Finkelstein suggests that the local Canaanites would adapt their way of living from an agricultural lifestyle to a nomadic one and vice versa.In his book, The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein points to the appearance of settlements in the central hill country around 1200, recognized by most archaeologists as the earliest settlements of the Israelites..  Others point to the settlements at Timna near Elat at the head of Aqaba which combine Egyptian artifacts with semitic settlements  dating to the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt While Finkelstein uses evidence from earlier periods, to show a cyclical pattern to these highland settlements, corresponding to the state of the surrounding cultures, The Dothans and Ken Kitchen have used textual artifacts such as the form of contracts, the price of slaves and the historical references to people and places to date the Exodus.Kenneth Kitchen begins with Abraham and Edom and follows through the form of the several different contracts with the gods of Genesis, El Shaddai, Yahwah, El Roi and Moloch to show how the order of the blessings and curses correspond to the artifacts of historical cultures.Many archaeologists, including Israel Finkelstein and William G.Others such as Trudy Dothans and Kenneth Kitchen attempt to show historical correlations.Thompson, regard the Exodus as ahistorical