History of Israel
In the scholarly mainstream, historians of ancient Israel have adapted their methodologies by relying less on the Bible and more on sociological models and archaeological evidence. Scholars such as Lester L. Grabbe ("Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?", 2007), Victor H. Matthews ("Studying the Ancient Israelites: A Guide to Sources and Methods", 2007), and Hans Barstad ("History and the Hebrew Bible", 2008) simply put the evidence before the reader and explain the issues, rather than attempt to write histories; others such as K.L. Knoll ("Canaan and Israel in Antiquity", 2001) attempt to include Israel in a broader treatment of Syria-Palestine/Canaan. This is not to say that the ideas of the minimalists are completely adopted in modern study of ancient Israel: Mario Liverani, for example ("Israel's History and the History of Israel", 2005), accepts that the biblical sources are from the Persian period, but believes that the minimalists have not truly understood that context nor recognised the importance of the ancient sources used by the authors. Thus positions that do not fit either a minimalist or a maximalist position are now being expressed.