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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] "Wells, Wells of Bitumen"
  • Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 11:13:38 EDT


Karl:

1. You wrote: “It [HRRM] is used only this once, and more than likely
refers to a name of a city within Seir. That is the best way to explain the
grammatical structure of the context.”

You say that HRRM is “a name of city within Seir”, and James Christian
says this is construct form. Both of you seem to be denying this is a plural?

As to the construct issue, I’m delighted to go with the erudite analyses of
Don Vance and George Athas (which are much appreciated). [I will refrain
from saying “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”]

My own analysis is simply that the regular plural is HRYM, and this archaic
plural is HRRM.

You’re saying that there was a city named “HRRM”? And that the %(YR that
follows HRRM means “(in the district of) Seir”? No city named HRRM is
attested south of the Dead Sea or elsewhere, to the best of my knowledge.
Why
are you so quick to deny that this is an historical reference to the
well-wooded hill country near historical Seir/Jazer, and come up with an
unattested
name of an unattested city?

2. To my assertion that “Seir” literally means “hairy”, and hence “
well-wooded”, you responded: “No, it does not. That is a fairy tale that you
made up.”

I did not make that up. I’m quoting BDB: “the ‘hairy’, i.e. ‘well-wooded
’. Cf. [the Arabic word for] trees”. A site on the Internet gives the
following Arabic for tree and trees: “Tree = shajra; Trees = shajar”. I
also quoted Gesenius, who sees Seir as meaning “clothed, and, as it were,
bristled with trees and thick woods”.

So I most definitely did not “make it up”. Many analysts see %(YR as
meaning “well-wooded”. Historically, the area south of the Dead Sea was
never “
well-wooded”. But in Biblical times, the hill country of the Transjordan
was definitely “well-wooded”. The facts are all on my side, as usual. You
can call my marshalling of objective facts “a fairy tale”, but that’s the
identical lingo that the Biblical Minimalists use to characterize the
Patriarchal narratives as a whole.

3. You wrote: “How many times do we have to repeat that Qadesh in Genesis
14 is most likely the same Qadesh as in Numbers 33:6 and Deuteronomy 32:51,
which was in the wilderness of Zin south of the Dead Sea, and not the same
as Qadesh Barnea? That you keep returning to this theme is not only
intellectual laziness, but also intellectual dishonesty.”

My apologies. University scholars see the QD$ at Genesis 14: 7 as applying
to Kadesh-barnea, and I honestly forgot that you and James Christian have a
different locale for QD$.

I presume your Numbers reference is a typo, and you meant Numbers 33: 36.
As I read Numbers 33: 6-37, the Hebrews made a long journey through desolate
wilderness, and though they made many recorded stops, they never seem to
have encountered any people along the way, precisely because it was such a
desolate wilderness. Why would you think that such a desolate wilderness,
“the
wilderness of Zin south of the Dead Sea”, would attract concerted military
activity by 4 attacking rulers? I don’t see how your theory of Genesis 14:
6-7 makes any sense on any level.

On your theory of $WB, the 4 attacking rulers are making military attacks
in the wilderness of Zin area, and then after going a little ways away, they “
return”/$WB”, and then they come to QD$ “in the wilderness of Zin south of
the Dead Sea”. So the essence of your theory of Genesis 14: 6-7 is that 4
attacking rulers focused their military efforts during this phase of the
military campaign “in the wilderness of Zin south of the Dead Sea”. Why? Do
you consider that to be a plausible theory of the case? It makes no sense
on any level to me.

Why are you so sure that the 4 attacking rulers did not focus instead on a
lucrative target like the QD$ that is located in lovely, prosperous Upper
Galilee? And from there, they could have then struck the Amorites who
historically are known to have lived in and near Hasi [XCCN TMR] in the
north-central Beqa Valley. In fact, Amarna Letters EA 174, EA 175, EA 176
and EA 363
verify such an attack on Amorites in and near Hasi. Those Amarna Letters
reference the Hittite attackers, with Tidal being a Hittite name, and also
Etakkama, a Hurrian with a strong Hittite connection. Arioch is a Hurrian
name,
and Elassar is a Hittite word, nicely showing a Hittite connection. So if
we look north of the Dead Sea, not only is the military operation logical,
instead of ludicrous, but also we can verify each step of the troop movements
by reference to various Amarna Letters! Everything checks out perfectly.
Even the word GM, meaning “indeed, even”, accurately reflects the
historical fact that it was unusual to find Amorites in the Hurrian-dominated
Beqa
Valley, with the one important enclave of Amorites being at and near Hasi,
exactly as Genesis 14: 7 portrays the matter, with pinpoint historical
accuracy.

You started your post with HRRM as allegedly being an unattested name of an
unattested city south of the Dead Sea, and now you’re on to claiming that
there’s a QD$ south of the Dead Sea that is an unattested name of an
unattested desert oasis. Are the Amalekites an unattested name of an
unattested
people south of the Dead Sea? Where does all this end? Why are you so
enamored of making unsupported claims about unattested names of unattested
peoples
and places south of the Dead Sea? Are the Horites an unattested name of an
unattested people south of the Dead Sea? My gosh, your analysis is just as
bad as Rainey’s map (and indeed for the most part is indistinguishable from
it, except that your unattested name QD$ is at a different location than his
unattested name QD$).






And what, pray tell, are you doing with “En-Mishpat”? As to an unattested
desert oasis, is this an unattested former name of the unattested later name
of an unattested desert oasis in the Arabah? “En-Mishpat” makes perfect
sense as meaning “Eye on Seat of Justice”, that is, “Eye on Mt. Hermon”,
and hence being a perfect alternative name for Qadesh of Upper Galilee, where
the Israeli members of the kibbutz there today sing of “Facing the radiance
of Mt. Hermon”. That makes sense today, just as it did in the Bronze Age,
if the locale is Qadesh of Upper Galilee, just south of towering Mt. Hermon
and the Beqa Valley. But how does “En-Mishpat” make any sense “in the
wilderness of Zin south of the Dead Sea”? And whereas I have a variant of
the
name En-Mishpat attested at item #5 on the Thutmose III list, you, as always,
have nothing attested historically at all.

4. You wrote: “Who said anything about Ezra? Is this some fiction that
you made up?”

Do you see Ezra as being the author of post-exilic Chronicles? Yigal Levin
recently said that instead of doing a Hurrian analysis, he identifies XCCN
TMR at Genesis 14: 7 as being Ein-gedi per II Chronicles 20: 2. Please note
that when you ask Prof. Yigal Levin about the truly ancient chapter 14 of
Genesis, he answers in terms of Ezra’s post-exilic Chronicles, while never
mentioning a single historical inscription from the ancient world. Kinda
like
your analysis, come to think of it.

5. You wrote: “Just because there aren’t any [‘wells, wells of bitumen’
at the Dead Sea] today doesn’t mean that 4000 years ago there weren’t any
that have since dried up. Things change. The present is not necessarily
the key to the past.”

Don’t you think an Israeli scientist would take those factors into account?
If you don’t trust an Israeli scientist, who can you trust? Why are the
facts always on my side?

6. To my reference to “‘return’/$WB back”, you said: “Stop misusing the
term ‘return’ in this context.”

I will agree that you do not grotesquely torture the Biblical Hebrew
language like the university scholarly view does. They have El-Paran/Great
Desert
meaning a navigable waterway (!!!), namely the Gulf of Aqaba, and they have
$WB meaning “and then they made a very wide turn to the right (and
proceeded into the Sinai Desert)”. Even HALOT itself won’t countenance that
bizarre view of $WB.

But your view makes even less sense from a military perspective than does
the university scholarly view. You have the 4 attacking rulers spending all
of Genesis 14: 6 and Genesis 14: 7 “in the wilderness of Zin south of the
Dead Sea”. Why would 4 attacking rulers spend so much time “in the
wilderness of Zin”?

Moreover, the Hebrew text does not say that they returned to En-Mishpat
(QD$). No, it says “and then they returned, and they came to En-Mishpat
(QD$)”
. That is to say, first they returned, and then after that, they came to
En-Mishpat (QD$). Since the military sequence began at Ashteroth in the
northern Transjordan per Genesis 14: 5, $WB at the beginning of Genesis 14: 7
is
logically saying that the troops of the 4 attacking rulers returned to the
Ashteroth area, that is, they returned back north to the Ashteroth area.
Only after that did they come to En-Mishpat (QD$). Here’s the Hebrew text:

W-Y$BW W-YB)W )L-(YN M$P+ HW) QD$

That second phrase, W-YB)W, means: “and came to”. So first they
returned, and then after that, they came to En-Mishpat (QD$). That is to
say, first
they returned (back north) to the Ashteroth area, and then (continuing to
proceed further north) they came to En-Misphat (QD$), that is, Qadesh of
Upper Galilee (which is north by northwest of Ashteroth). On your view of
the
case, to which place did the 4 attacking rulers return/$WB, b-e-f-o-r-e
they came to En-Mishpat (QD$)? The natural reading, as I see it, is that
En-Mishpat (QD$) is somewhere beyond the place to which the troops returned.

7. Karl, there’s n-o-t-h-i-n-g historical to support your view of
Genesis 14: 6-7, or James Christian’s view, or the scholarly view.
N-o-t-h-i-n-g. Why do you all think that the text portrays Horites/Hurrians
and
Amorites as living south of the Dead Sea, when certainly the Hebrew author of
this
ancient text knew the historical Hurrians and the historical Amorites, and
knew that they did not live south of the Dead Sea? Why do such historical
facts never seem to slow down any analyses of Genesis 14: 6-7, whether
scholarly or non-scholarly?
Except me, no one ever points to any historical inscriptions in analyzing
Genesis 14: 6-7. That’s where you all have gone wrong. Why abandon history?
That’s what the Biblical Minimalists want us to do. Relying on unattested
names of unattested sites [HRRM; QD$] plays right into the hands of the
Biblical Minimalists.

Karl, why not instead consider an historical approach, that does not rely
on unattested names of unattested sites? Genesis 14: 1-11 is fully
historical, and fully verifiable historically, if you’d just give the
Biblical text
half a chance. Take a look at Bronze Age inscriptions from n-o-r-t-h of
the Dead Sea. Then e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g checks out perfectly. There’s no
need to dream up any unattested names of any unattested sites. There’s no
way
that the troops of 4 attacking rulers would waste their precious time
mucking about the desolate Arabah south of the Dead Sea, focusing their
attention
on a QD$ “in the wilderness of Zin south of the Dead Sea”. That makes no
sense on any level. With the fertile, and strategically located, Beqa
Valley ripe for the taking, which is where the Amorites referenced at Genesis
14:
7 historically lived, why muck around “in the wilderness of Zin south of t
he Dead Sea”? What sense does that make? The Amarna Letters even let us
monitor the exact troop movements as they happen. Everything is verified to
the nth degree. It’s just a question of relying on historical inscriptions
from the ancient world n-o-r-t-h of the Dead Sea, instead of making up, and
then relying upon, unattested names of unattested sites and peoples south of
the Dead Sea.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois






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