The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History by Baruch Halpern

^ My dad's a bible scholar and he says this is very good. Personally, I've read a lot of Egyptian history and there was definitely literacy in the region as well as a war or two that match up, although there's a lot of room for debate (I recommend not diving into the Egypt/Israel timeline considering they were on two different types of calendars). Same as today, overall the priority wasn't really writing 100% accurate history, it was unifying the people under a single state.