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  • From: Ian Charles Hutchesson <MC2499 AT mclink.it>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Balaam's Kittim Oracle
  • Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 19:09:03 +0200 (CEST)


>All this is however irrelevant for our historical
>understanding of Kittim. You will never find in
>any historical sources the Greek or Romans called
>Kittim, except one intended to allude to Balaams
>prophecy.

Thus far I partially agree with Michael,
though books of the Maccabees and even
Jerome are historical sources for their
*own* times and they definitely show the
Kittim as either Macedonian Greek or
Roman. But that doesn't interest us here
so much.

What does interest me is how Michael
doesn't look at other historical
indications:

>In the table of the nations is Kittim side by side with several
>identifiable peoples, among other Tarshish (Tarsus)capital of Danuna
>looking back on a much older period as Iron age,

This is of course not so transparent. The
first notice of the name Tarsisi was from
Esarhaddon. There were other forms of the
name previously, but not close enough to
Tarshish to justify the Hebrew form.

>Elisha (Alasia) a city
>which has been the capital city of Cyprus during Late Bronze age, and
>later lost significance.

However, names have the ability to last
longer than what they refer to, as in the
case of Hatti, Mitanni, Assyria, Babylon,
etc. Edwin Bevyn even cites a Phoenician
coin of the epoch of Antiochus IV which
mentions Kition despite the fact that
that city had been destroyed a hundred
years previously.

>It doesn´t make sense to assume with Kittim a
>second Cypriotic place name since the list involves the names of
>independent states or of capitals of states along the Anatolian coast,
>while those of lands inside Anatolia appear in a separate branch of
>the list.

Kition was in fact a separate population
from the Greeks and Cyprus was basically
divided between the two peoples: it was an
island divided in two. There is nothing
out of place to find both Alayisha and
Kition mentioned in the table of nations,
especially when it does mix eras so much.

>Besides is this list relevant only for a much older period as your "spin".
>Alasia gives us a terminus ante quem, and this is Late Bronze age.

This terminus ante quem is simply *wrong*,
otherwise we have to start imagining Hatti
lasted into the first millenium.

>Thus there is a great probability that Kittim is a geographical name
>on the Anatolian coast

There is no substantial reason to assume
that, unless one needs to postulate some
extremely vague reminiscence to order to
fit one's theories, when there is a nice
same-name place that already fits the
bill. Kition is in the right place. It
is across the sea from Tyre which it is
closely related to and to which one could
conceivably escape to as seen in
Isa 23:12.

And while Cyprus was richly wooded as to
make sense in Eze 27 (another passage
which relates the Kittim to the Phoenican
world), neither the Cilician coast nor
the north Syrian coast offered a source
of wood. Hence the following guess is
merely wishful thinking:

>(I surmise Qode)

You should read the literature on Qode/Que
first, as you apparently haven't. The
linguistics of the name points elsewhere.

>existing much before the apparition of
>Greeks in the region, so as Elisha or Tarshish were. Elisha and
>Tarshish are sure identifications. Kittim is not.

The only reason why it seems not to be sure
is that biblical scholars have tended not to
look at the evidence, of which there is quite
a lot. A historical approach to the use of
the term Kittim will reveal that it is quite
coherent. (In fact, it was only around the
time of the Hellenistic crisis that the term
started to take on a wider meaning.)

>You are building on a number of assumptions you are yourself not
>aware of.

Though this is addressed to Walter, I do
find it auto-ironic, for Michael as usual
is so full of assumptions.

>Since Kittim certainly is no Kition,

Unfounded assertion.

>because not on Cyprus,

Unfounded assertion.

>it could have existed as geographical name
>much earlier before the Greeks.

Kition has little to do with the Greeks
other than as a thorn in the side of the
Cypriot Greek states. It was founded by the
Phoenicians on an earlier site in the ninth
century BCE (please see the archaeological
reports by Marguerite Yon and naturally
Vassos Karageorghis).

The Cypriot and eastern Greek pottery found
in a northern Negeb contemporary to the
Kittim mentioned in the Arad ostraca should
make it clear who the Kittim were, when
considered along with the other evidence.

Isaiah and Ezekiel all place the Kittim
in the Phoenician world in the vicinity of
Cyprus -- you have to cross over to it (as
Jeremiah also indicates), you can't simply
go along the coast. It is seen as a place
of refuge in Isaiah and not a nice town on
the coast within easy reach of those nasty
Assyrians.

The sad thing about Kition is that it
sided with Antigonus and Demetrius in the
war of the Diadochi and it was destroyed
in 312 BCE, but that's not the end of our
story of the Kittim for a sizable number
migrated to Antioch on the Orontes, but
that *is* another story -- the heart of
what I am attempting to write at the
moment.

The reason why I mentioned Num 24:24 is
that it deals with the Kittim, but unlike
the other references this is quite opaque
in significance. Perhaps I'm being obtuse
but I am none the wiser regarding the
verse!


Ian













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