Confusion on the location of Dabbasheth

I hope I'm posting this in the right subforum.

According to Joshua 19:11, the town of Dabbesheth should be located within the borders of Zebulun.

The Factbook places Dabbesheth on "the southern border of Zebulun".

However, on the maps in Atlas, Dabbesheth is located within the borders of Asher.

It would also appear that according to Jos 19:11, 21:34, and the Factbook entry, Jokneam should belong to Zebulun, however, Atlas places it within the borders of West Manasseh. Biblical Places Maps tool also places Jokeam within West Manasseh.

I know any attempt at creating a map of the tribal distribution of Israel will contain a bit of guesswork, but these seem to be contradictions unless there is something I'm missing.

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DMB

Just for comparison to Carta/McMillan. Regarding Jokneam, I think you'd have trouble, between the wadi east, as being the border, and how Jos 21.34 would be translated (for the Levites).

Elijah Wilson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1235715#Comment_1235715

Thank you for that image as a reference. I'm not sure what you're trying to say regarding Jokneam, I understand it was a Levite city, but as to how it got within the borders of Manasseh I do not understand. The factbook entries still remain an issue.

Doug Mangum (Lexham)

It would also appear that according to Jos 19:11, 21:34, and the Factbook entry, Jokneam should belong to Zebulun, however, Atlas places it within the borders of West Manasseh. Biblical Places Maps tool also places Jokeam within West Manasseh.

Josh 19:11 says the border of Zebulun is the brook/wadi before (i.e., east of) Jokneam. All the maps I have checked of the tribal distribution put Jokneam on the Manasseh side of the border. But Josh 21:34 says Jokneam (and its surrounding area) was a Levitical city taken from the territory of Zebulun. Perhaps the boundary description means the area surrounding the wadi, so the territory of Zebulun included Jokneam. At least, that's how I read Howard:

The boundary description [of Zebulun] is different from the preceding ones in that it appears to consist primarily of border cities near which the boundaries ran rather than fixed boundary points through which the boundary went. (David M. Howard Jr., Joshua, NAC 5 [Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1998], 369).

But the maps are drawing a border based on using the Kishon River/Wadi as the border. I can't find a detailed biblical description in Josh 17 of the northern boundary of Manasseh. But even trying to trace out the territories as described in Josh 17 or Josh 19 gets confusing and the maps don't always show it. Take, for example, Josh 17:9b–10:

Then the boundary of Manasseh goes on the north side of the brook and ends at the sea, ¹⁰the land to the south being Ephraim’s and that to the north being Manasseh’s, with the sea forming its boundary. (ESV)

The "sea" must be the Dead Sea. Beitzel's Moody Atlas, the Carta Bible Atlas, and Carta's Sacred Bridge atlas don't clearly show Manasseh's territory touching the north part of the Dead Sea, though. My point is that the details in these descriptions can be hard to track consistently, but that's what a Bible atlas is trying to do, visualize the description. But they also try to connect the description to locations identified by archaeology. A lot of places named in the Bible haven't been definitively identified, but you'll still see a guess in maps like these.

In the case of Zebulun's border area, I think a broad border region that included Jokneam is likely the best explanation, but mapmakers want to draw a precise line.

But for the broader issue of reading texts like these, I think the tribes just didn't actually follow the details recorded in the lists all that precisely. Remember that Joshua and Judges both attest to the fact that reality among the 12 tribes didn't fit what was allotted. Some tribes failed to conquer or control all of their territory. The Judges period is a bit chaotic, politically, to say the least. With borders between the tribes, maybe it was a bit messy. The Bible even describes one example. Dan got the territory the Philistines controlled, couldn't conquer them, and moved to a city in Naphtali's allotment (Josh 19:40–48). I suspect some disputes over border areas happened. You can object that the tribes should have followed what was laid out in Scripture, but remember Israel in the Judges period isn't exactly paying a lot of attention to what God told them to do most of the time.