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b-hebrew - RE: Iron and Bronze.

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  • From: Ian Goldsmith <iangoldsmith1969 AT yahoo.co.uk>
  • To: b- hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Iron and Bronze.
  • Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:52:04 +0100 (BST)


To be honest I didn't expect many of you to openly say
that Genesis could have been written in the bronze
age.
I was more interested in any info other that might
exist on the Hebrew for 'iron'.

> I don't think that any serious scholar, except
> ultra-conservatives who
> insist on the Mosaic composition of the Pentateuch,
> think that Genesis was
> written in the Bronze Age (that is, before c. 1200
> BCE).
By "serious" I take it you mean, one that doesn't want
to be open to ridicule by suggesting that iron was in
use before the "bronze-age" and that the skill of iron
working may have been lost.

Look if the author of Samuel can clearly state that
Saul's armour was "bronze" and not be confused (copper
as you have mentioned being totally useless for armour
or weaponry), why would the author of an ancient
narrative like Genesis say that Tubal-cain worked
iron.
The author of Leviticus or Exodus doesn't make this
mistake he quite clearly writes copper or bronze when
he means exactly that.

History is in a constant state of flux, perhaps more
now than at any point in the last hundred years, why
is it ridiculous that iron could have been worked
pre-bronze age. We didn't credit the Incas with that
much knowledge a few decades ago, now we know that
they were capable of detailed and complex astronomy.

Yours.
An obviously non-'serious academic' obviously
ultra-conservative open mind.





=====
Ian Goldsmith.
England.

Dibrah Torah kilshone bnei-adam
'The Torah spoke in the language of ordinary men.'
Berakot 31b

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