BYLINE: SARI BASHI DATELINE: JERUSALEM

BODY:  There was no exodus from Egypt, Joshua didn't bring down the walls
of Jericho, and Solomon's kingdom was a small, tribal dynasty, an Israeli
archaeologist wrote in an article published Thursday.

Colleagues and critics accepted some of Zeev Herzog's evidence, and
questioned some of it but warned that the accuracy of the Bible, the
wellspring of Jewish claims to the land of Israel, is less the point than
the national myths it engendered.

Archaeological findings do not support and in many cases directly
contradict Biblical stories describing the birth of the Jewish people,
Herzog of Tel Aviv University wrote in Thursday's Haaretz daily.

He reviewed evidence now commonly accepted by most archaeologists showing
that there was no exodus from Egypt at the time the Bible says Jews left
Egypt en masse, and that Jericho fell in stages over an extended period
and not in a single raid led by Joshua.

More controversially, Herzog argues that the seeds of the Jewish state are
to be found in the ninth century B.C. when groups of shepherds who had
settled in hilltops established two rival states, Judah and Israel.

Excavations of cities from the supposedly majestic time of Kings David and
Solomon a century earlier, he said, revealed that the ''cities'' consisted
of scattered buildings and the kingdoms were small, provincial dynasties
that exercised no real claim over the land.

Herzog said Jerusalem, the majestic capital built by King David to rule
over an empire that spanned much of the Middle East, was at best a small
fiefdom.

Fellow archaeologist Amnon Ben-Tor of the rival Hebrew University, a top
critic of Herzog and his post-modernist school of thought, said Herzog
uses archaeology to satisfy a political agenda, namely debunking the
legends upon which the Jewish state was founded.

Ben-Tor agreed that ''there is a large measure of glorification in the
Bible,'' but said that inscriptions and excavations from the 10th century
show the ancient Hebrews had established a state ruled by David and
Solomon, that was substantial if not magnificent.

Lawmaker Tommy Lapid, a secular rights champion who believes humans wrote
the Bible, accused Herzog of trying to undermine the educational and
ideological basis of the state.

Herzog is ''feeding propaganda to Israel's enemies who want to negate our
right to be here,'' Lapid said.

He said the Bible contained many myths, but that its basic historical
facts document Jewish claims on Israel and form the basis for Jewish
history, culture, language and literature.

Herzog's article addressed archaeological discoveries from the last few
decades, when archaeologists in Israel broke away from seeking out
physical evidence for Biblical events.

Their findings have not entered the public consciousness, said
archaeologist Moshe Kochavi of Tel Aviv University, because Israelis are
not ready to abandon their national myths.

Kochavi said books publishing these findings have met with particularly
vehement opposition from the 30 percent of Israeli Jews who define
themselves as religious in some way, many of whom take the Bible as the
word of God.

''The religious scream out when books like these, saying there was no
conquest and that David's period was not majestic, are written,'' he said.

Israeli adults and schoolchildren regularly tour archaeological sites that
guides say prove the Bible was right, and the state devotes substantial
resources to excavations thought likely to reveal evidence of Biblical
footsteps.

Education Minister Yossi Sarid, who recently stirred controversy by
expunging from textbooks what he says are myths of modern Israeli history,
said Herzog's work deserved consideration.

''If it's interesting and well-founded, I don't see why it shouldn't be
presented in schools as an option,'' he told Haaretz.