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I started Niels Peter Lemche's The Israelites in History and Tradition. Here are some points:
1. Lemche is known as a biblical minimalist, which means that he is skeptical about the historicity of much of the Hebrew Bible. Or let me sharpen that a bit: he doesn't think that scholars should just assume the historicity of the Hebrew Bible, as he believes that so many of them do. What's odd, however, is that, when Lemche disputes the interpretation of the Tel Dan Stela advanced by Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, he points out that it contradicts II Kings 11:21-29 (page 40). Whereas the Tel Dan Stela (according to Biran and Naveh) says that an Aramean king killed King Ahaziah of Judah, II Kings 11 says that Jehu did so. Lemche argues strongly in this book that the Hebrew Bible is not a primary source, for it talks about events several years after they occurred, as well as mixes kernals of history with legend. Why, then, does he treat II Kings 11:21-29 as an authority in his critique of an interpretation of the Tel Dan Stela?
Moreover, on page 41, Lemche appears open to the possibility that the Tel Dan Stela is a forgery. He says that it jumbles together Aramaic and Phoenician as well as employs phraseology that resembles that of the "Mesha inscription and the Aramaic Zakkur inscription near Aleppo" (page 41). Lemche adds that "some of the circumstances surrounding its discovery may speak against its being genuine" (page 41). But why would someone forge a document that contradicts the Hebrew Bible?
Lemche explores other possibilities besides the Tel Dan Stela being a forgery. He notes that "Betdawd" in the Stela is one word, and so it is most likely not to be translated as "House of David." In the Hebrew Bible, "Beyt David" is two words, and "dynastic names of states in Syria and Mesopotamia" also use two words for the house of someone (page 43). But place names with "beyt" in the Hebrew Bible, such as "Bethel," appear as one word, so Betdawd may be a place. Or perhaps "Dawd" is the name of a god. In the Mesha inscription, we see the god Daudo. Lemche says that there is "at least a possibility that we also in the Tel Dan inscription have a reference to what might be a local temple of the same god, or a god carrying the same surname" (page 46).
2. On pages 66-67, Lemche talks about the end of the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age. Iron was used in the Levant before the Iron Age, but it was too brittle for weapons and utensils, for which bronze was used. But "materials had to be imported" to make bronze, which was a "mixture of mainly copper and tin", and the "breakdown of international trade, which was a side effect of the diversified troubles that hit most of the civilized world between 1300 and 1000 B.C.E.", cut off the lifeline to bronze. And so it was replaced by iron.
3. On pages 99-100, Lemche discusses critiques of Martin Noth's view that Israel was an amphictyony of tribes that came together, much like tribes in ancient Greece. An argument against this is that there are there are lists of tribes within the Hebrew Bible that differ from each other. If there's not a uniform list of tribes, one can ask, how can we be so certain that twelve specific tribes joined together into an amphictyony before the composition of the Hebrew Bible?
Lemche refers to a tribe in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5) that "is not otherwise in the Old Testament reckoned an independent tribe" (page 100). On page 203, he elaborates: "Machir being artificially reckoned a half-tribe, the son of Joseph's son Manasseh; see Gen. 50:23. Machir in Judg. 5:14, however, is not thought of as different from the other tribes mentioned here."
And, indeed, Machir is mentioned with other tribes in Judges 5:14---Ephraim, Benjamin, and Zebulun.
