Biblical Hebrew Forum

[John Ronning <ronning AT ilink.nis.za>]

Ian Hutchesson wrote:

> How the Hittites got entangled in Jewish cultural history is quite a
> mystery. They never had holdings in Palestine but might have had nominal
> tutelage -- be it unlikely -- of the entire zone through their annexation of
> the kingdom of Yamkhad in northern Syria (one wonders if Yamkhad's influence
> ever got south of Hama). Whatever the case, the Hittites lost their control
> of Yamkhad to the Mitanni, so it is unimaginable that Abraham could have
> bought a cave from any Hittites.

(I'm not an archaeologist, either - just an interested observer). There
is no need to
assume that the sons of Heth (thus called Hittites), a Canaanite tribe,
are (or were
misunderstood to be) the Hittites from Indo-Europe/Anatolia.  Tidal,
king of "Goyim" (Gen 14:1) is said by some to be a Hittite name, but he
is a foreigner and not connected (by the Bible) with the local
"Hittites" that Abraham is said to have dealings with.  On the other
hand, the Hittites mentioned in 1 Kings 10:29; 2 Kings 7:6; 2 Chron 1:17
are
clearly foreign powers, not a local Canaanite tribe, i.e. "the"
Hittites.

>From another post:
>I  have pointed out that there is no hope of such stories as Abraham and
>Sarah (or Isaac and Rebekah) in Gerar having any historicity, given the
>problem that the Philistines did not arrive in the Levant until the twelfth
>century several centuries after the reputed times of the patriarchs: they
>are anachronistic.

Gerar was inhabited in the times of Abraham and Isaac.  Is there
anything that
precludes the inhabitants from being "Casluhim (from which came the
Philistines)" (Gen
10:14)?  From another angle - why would a first millenium author make up
a story about
Philistines and put them in Gerar, instead of one of the five (1st
millenium)
Philistine cities?

More recently:
>They [the Philistines] arrived with a loud bang, yet the biblical literature 
>is silent >regarding their arrival, working on the assumption that they had 
>always been on the
>coast. In fact the table of nations in Gen10 mistakenly thinks that the
>Philistines were related to the Egyptians. The biblical lack of awareness of
>the arrival of the Philistines, supposedly after the arrival of the Hebrews,
>indicates that the conquest clearly didn't happen when indicated and as
>reported in the OT/HB.
>

The beginnings of the perrenial conflict between Israelites and
Philistines occurs late in the period of Judges, which is where it
"should" be according to archaeology.  The evidence of the "loud bang"
with which "the" Philistines arrived (the loud bang was actually made by
the "sea peoples" of which the Philistines were only a part) does not
preclude there being other peoples related to them already being there
in smaller numbers at various times.  And how do you know that it is a
mistake to say that the Philistines are related to the Egyptians?


>From another post:
>Leaving aside the logistical nightmare
>of the exodus, the Joshua stories concerning Ai and Jericho are simply shown
>to be incorrect by archaeology: we know Ai was a ruin for several centuries
>before the reputed time of the conquest and the last walls of old Jericho
>were from the middle bronze period (recently discovered by an Italian
>mission), much too early for a Joshua. The book of Joshua at best represents
>speculations of why Ai and Jericho were ruins at the time of writing.

Your point about Ai assumes that et-Tell is Joshua's Ai, which is
problematic for
various reasons (one being that et-Tell is not a small site, whereas
Joshu's Ai was).
Concerning Jericho, Bryant Wood has noted that Kathleen Kenyon's
conclusions about
whether Jericho was inhabited in the time of Joshua were based on the
absence of a
certain kind of pottery in her excavations of Jericho, which had
actually already been
found by Garstang before her (she evidently didn't study his excavation
report).  Wood
noted (BAR April '90) about a half dozen features of the biblical
account of the fall
of Jericho which are confirmed by archaeology (some of them quite
striking), and the
silence concerning this evidence on the part of archaeologists perhaps
gives us an
analogy to why the Egyptians were silent about the exodus.  Also note
that the date of
the construction of the walls that fell is not the issue - rather the
date of
destruction (Garstang had a radiocarbon date of 1400 BC).

>From another post:
>Ur of the Chaldeans... that nice anachronism. But then "of the Chaldeans" 
>may have
been added >later.

Another possibility - "Kasdim" does not (here) refer to the
neo-babylonians but is
supposed to distinguish Abraham's home city from the famous Ur excavated
by Wooley.  A
site near Haran would I think be more expected from Gen 24:4, 10; 29:4.

>From another post:
>How knowledge regarding Abraham or any of the patriarchs could have reached
>later times could at best have been through oral transmission, at worst
>through cultural creativity. Written records were normally maintained in the
>courts of substantial powers, not in the hands of "wandering Arameans". The
>earliest possible times for such written records is to the period when the
>united kingdom existed.

How is it, then, that Gen 2:11-12 apparently accurately describes the
course of the
River Pishon which had been dry and covered with sand since the third
millenium BC
(BAR July '96).  I don't see the point of your analogy with court
records.  The
traditions in Genesis would not constitute a great deal of "baggage" to
carry around,
even for a "wandering Aramean."

Cordially,

John Ronning