[b-hebrew] Joshua 15: 52-59: Hill Country Cities?
JimStinehart at aol.com
JimStinehart at aol.com
Fri Jan 2 09:56:45 EST 2009
RUBUTU
(a) Why Is Rubutu a Major Problem for the Scholarly View of Joshua?
The one and only major problem that scholars openly acknowledge regarding
their interpretation of the cities listed at Joshua 15: 48-60 is the question of
Rubutu. One quite common scholarly view, as Prof. Yigal Levin properly noted,
holds that Rabbah at Joshua 15: 60 is Rubutu. (“Rabbah” is actually “the
Rabbah”: H RBH.) One terrible problem with that scholarly view, however, is
that it blatantly contradicts the scholarly attempt to insist that e-v-e-r-y
city listed at Joshua 15: 48-60 is located in hill country. Rubutu was located
in the south-central portion of the Aijalon Valley, not very close to hill
country. If one asserts (as many scholars do) that Rabbah at Joshua 15: 60 is
not located in hill country, that would then open the door to having to look at
each and every city listed at Joshua 15: 52-60, individually, one by one, to
see which of such cities are, and which are not, located in hill country
(which is precisely my controversial approach to analyzing Joshua 15: 48-60). Yet
if we go with Nadav Na’aman’s semi-persuasive argument that Rabbah at Joshua
15: 60 is in fact a small, inconsequential town in hill country (the other
mainstream scholarly view of this matter), then the scholarly view of Joshua has
an even greater problem. Could it be that the entire book of Joshua never
mentions the great city of Rubutu even once? That is a major problem for the
scholarly view, because Rubutu was the most important city in the entire northern
Shephelah in the Late Bronze Age. Rubutu is mentioned in every single Late
Bronze Age source of city names in Canaan, as Nadav Na’aman is the first to
admit. How then could Joshua be thought to miss Rubutu completely, when Joshua
records literally hundreds of cities, towns, villages and encampments in
southern Canaan?
(b) Where Should the Great City of Rubutu Logically Be Listed at Joshua 15:
48-60?
Where should Rubutu logically appear in the sequence of cities listed at
Joshua 15: 48-60? It makes little sense to think that the great city of Rubutu
would be shoehorned in as the very last city listed in the Joshua 15: 52-60
sequence, almost as an afterthought. That is one reason to go with Nadav Na’aman’
s view that the Rabbah at Joshua 15: 60 was an unimportant village in hill
country.
The great city of Rubutu should logically have a prominent place in the
Joshua city list.
Joshua 15: 48-51 lists 11 cities that are explicitly stated by the text to be
located in hill country. The most logical place for the greatest Late Bronze
Age city in the northern Shephelah to appear would then be the very first
city listed after those 11 cities in hill country, that is, the very first city
listed at Joshua 15: 52. If I am right that not all of the cities at Joshua
15: 52-60 are either presented as being, or actually are, in hill country (and
remembering that many scholars, perhaps a majority of scholars, have seen
Rabbah at Joshua 15: 60 as being a non-hill country town), then the #1 place we
should look for the “missing” great city of Rubutu is the very first city listed
at Joshua 15: 52. Note that if this listed city is Rubutu, Joshua’s
contemporaries likely would have instantly recognized this variant of the city name “
Rubutu”. There was no reason for Joshua to explicitly state that this city was
not located in hill country, because his contemporary audience knew that the
great city of Rubutu was not located in hill country. It was sufficient that
this city, unlike the previous 11 cities, is not explicitly stated in the text
to be located in hill country.
Once we know where to look for the Late Bronze Age great city of Rubutu on
the city list in chapter 15 of Joshua, it’s right there, plain as day, staring
us in the face: “Arab”/aleph-resh-bet/)RB. That is the first city listed at
Joshua 15: 52, exactly where it should be, well befitting Rubutu’s grand
status as being the greatest city of its day in the northern Shephelah in the Late
Bronze Age.
(c) A Linguistic Analysis of RBT (Rubutu) on the Thutmosis III List From the
Mid-15th Century BCE: RBT = “Arab” at Joshua 15: 52
RBT is item #105 on the Thutmosis III list. Scholars are virtually unanimous
that this RBT is the city of Rubutu, in the south-central portion of the
Aijalon Valley, with Rubutu being one of the most important cities in Canaan in
the Late Bronze Age.
Is there a linguistic equivalent to the Aijalon Valley Late Bronze Age city
of RBT/Rubutu at Joshua 15: 52-59? Rubutu is not portrayed in Joshua as being
assigned to either Ephraim or Dan. So on my theory of the case, Rubutu must
be at Joshua 15: 52-60. And if Nadav Na’aman is correct (as he probably is) in
seeing “Rabbah” at Joshua 15: 60 as being a small town in hill country
(rather than being the major city of Rubutu in the Aijalon Valley), then the major
Late Bronze Age city of Rubutu in the Aijalon Valley needs to be at Joshua 15:
52-59, in order for my theory of the case to work.
We start with a linguistic analysis of RBT. A final T is the second most
common ending for the 119 items on the Thutmosis III list. As a practical
matter, a final T on the Thutmosis III list effectively means “city”. That final T
is a mere suffix, which is not part of the root. (The final T is probably
the construct state here, though in other cases a final T can technically mean
feminine, plural, or feminine plural. But the bottom line result is always
the same in all these various cases on the Thutmosis III list. That final T
effectively means “city”, in the extremely limited context of a Late Bronze Age
west Semitic geographical place name. Most importantly for us, that final T
is not part of the root.) Thus the final T does not affect the meaning of the
root of the city name. Moreover, as a mere suffix the final T is optional and
can be dropped. In particular, note that many scholars have matched “Rabbah”
at Joshua 15: 60 with Rubutu, despite the absence of a final T in the city
name “Rabbah”. Indeed, the most passionate opponent of the theory that Rabbah
at Joshua 15: 60 is Rubutu, namely Nadav Na’aman, never mentions the absence
of a final T in the city name “Rabbah” as possibly being a distinguishing
feature from Rubutu.
RBT is thus RB + T, where T is a mere optional suffix effectively meaning “
city”. RBT = RB + T = the “R-B City”.
The 2-letter archaic root of RBT is R-B, a root which is present in all the
early Semitic languages, such as Akkadian, Assyrian, Ugaritic and Hebrew. The
most common meaning of R-B is “great” or “big”. (R-B can have a fairly
broad range of related meanings, however, including, in a Bronze Age context, “many
”, “more than three”, or “four”.) Here, the most likely meaning of RB + T
is “Great City”. Since it is such a run-of-the-mill Canaanite city name, it
is not surprising that there was a second RBT/Rubutu farther north, near
Megiddo. And Rabbah at Joshua 15: 60 may also mean “Great City”. But from its
location on the Thutmosis III list (with RBT at item #105 being right next to
item #104, Gezer, which is a famous city just northwest of the Aijalon Valley),
we can tell that this RBT is the city of Rubutu that was located in the
Aijalon Valley.
As we have now seen, the root of RBT (Rubutu) is RB.
In a slightly different connection, we learn from Nadav Na’aman that in the
Late Bronze Age, an initial prosthetic aleph could be placed at the beginning
of such a root, without changing the meaning, and with both forms being
linguistic equivalents:
“The identity of Canaanite Rubutu [the Rubutu up north, near Megiddo] and
biblical Aruboth [at the same location] (as suggested by Abel and Albright) is
self-evident; the omission of the initial vowel [a prosthetic initial aleph]
has many parallels in Palestinian and ancient Near Eastern onomasticon (for
references, see Zadok 1978: 164-165; 1982: 124).” Nadav Na’aman, “Rubutu/Aruboth
”, in Canaan in the Second Millennium B.C.E.: Collected Essays (2005), at p.
210.
Thus, per logic and Nadav Na’aman, aleph-resh-bet/)RB cannot be distinguished
linguistically from either RB or RBT on the basis of the presence or absence
of the initial prosthetic aleph, because the initial prosthetic aleph is not
part of the root and in a Late Bronze Age context is optional. Moreover, as
noted earlier, the presence or absence of the final T is also not a
distinguishing factor, because the final T is an optional suffix that can be dropped (as
recognized by all the many scholars who try to equate “Rabbah” at Joshua 15:
60, with no final T, to Rubutu). Thus )RB is the linguistic equivalent of RBT
at item #105 on the Thutmosis III list. The presence of the initial
prosthetic aleph/) in )RB can be ignored, and the presence of the final T in RBT can
likewise be ignored, because each such letter is optional and is not part of the
underlying root. The Bronze Age root of each of )RB and RBT is RB, and as
Late Bronze Age city names, each of )RB and RBT effectively means “Great City”.
)RB, or “Arab”, is exactly what we see, letter for letter, at Joshua 15: 52.
(d) Joshua Had a Good Late Bronze Age Source of City Names
We are finding that Joshua in fact had a very good Bronze Age source for many
of the city names that Joshua cites. Magaroth (Maarath), Halhul, and Arab
all are very close linguistic matches to Late Bronze Age cities in the Aijalon
Valley at items #100 - #106 on the Thutmosis III list. Letter-for-letter
accuracy like that in comparison with the mid-15th century BCE Thutmosis list
cannot be “faked”, or “edited in” centuries later by an editor. No way. Rather,
the above three city names from Joshua 15: 52-59 exhibit, in spectacular
fashion, pinpoint historical accuracy in a Late Bronze Age secular historical
context.
Note that the text of Joshua itself does not say that all the cities listed
at Joshua 15: 52-59 are located in hill country south of Jerusalem. That’s
because at least some of those cities are located in the Aijalon Valley, rather
than in hill country. Joshua presents these cities as being Late Bronze Age
cities in southern Canaan. Though disputed by scholars, we are slowly but
surely seeing that (i) Joshua in fact did indeed have a good Late Bronze Age source
of city names, and (ii) many of the cities listed at Joshua 15: 52-59 are not
located in hill country.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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