Scholars offer several models for how Israel emerged in Canaan. Part of what drives the debate is that two biblical books tell it differently. Which pair?

Joshua summarizes a finished conquest (11:23), yet the same book also lists land and peoples remaining (13:1-6; 15:63; 17:12-13); Judges opens by pressing that incomplete picture further. Scholars propose conquest, gradual settlement, and internal-change models — driven less by the literary difference than by settlement surveys, material culture, and social theory.