The Archaeology of Ancient Israel

This is a very informative study on the modern view of the archeology in the Levant. It compares the traditional Judeao/Christian account with the secular view acknowledging that scripture was formed from many traditions more ancient. I believe that scripture is accurate and the dating of the Bible is more trustworthy than carbon dating. However, that said, it gives you a very detailed, general explanation of contemporary scholarship.

This volume, which is an English translation of a Hebrew language university textbook, aims to overview and introduce the archaeology of the biblical period (the Bronze and Iron ages). Though completing this task quite well, the main drawback of the book is the lack of uniformity of the various chapters, each written by scholars with very different perspectives. Needless to say, due to its publication date, it is a bit outdated (in light of more recent finds and discussions) but it still can provide a better than average summary of this topic.