While also considering nonbiblical sources and being attentive to what the disciplines of anthropology and sociology suggest about the past, those sources are used in the context and paradigm of the Old Testament canon, which is held as the primary document for reconstructing Israel's history. In Part I, Provan, Long, and Longman set the volume in context and review past and current scholarly debate about learning Israel's history, negating arguments against using the Bible as the central source. In Part 2, they seek to reconstruct the history itself.