[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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