Historicity of the Jebusites

The archaeological record does not confirm the existence of the Jebusite people prior to David’s takeover of their city (Mazar, Archaeology, 333, 353). This leads some to deny that the Jebusites were a historical group. Aharoni, on the other hand, observes that the city name “Jebus” appears in boundary lists in Judges, indicating that these territory descriptions come from a pre-Davidic source. He argues that the geographical precision of these boundary lists lends special credibility to the existence of Jebus and its people (Aharoni, Land, 231–33).