Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

In response to Jon Ronning's interesting post:

>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.

This is making it a coincidence that the two groups had basically the same
self name. So by this logic, one could argue that the Elam referred to in
Gen14 wasn't the Elam in south west Iran, but some Elam we hadn't heard of
before much closer to the Dead Sea. Likewise with Shinar.

>>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?

The Philistines, or Peleset in Egyptian, were more Indo-Europeans, related
to the Greeks. Actually "Philistine" is the name of only one of the groups
and it is connected with "Pelasgi", other groups include "Danuna" (Egyptian
form of the "Danoi") who one biblical scholar equates to the tribe of Dan,
Achaeans who may have given their name to the Hivites. If the Philistines,
as all evidence shows, were Indo-Europeans, they weren't Hamitic. They
arrived at a very precise time in history from the Aegean, via Cilicia,
where some stayed, via Cyprus, causing destruction, as they did in Ugarit.
That precise time, shown by archaeology, coincides with Ramses III's report
of his stopping the Sea-Peoples, some of whose names I've supplied above
from the Hieroglyphic, and that was in the twelfth century -- about 800
years after the time they were supposed to have been in Gerar.

Gerar is after all in Philistine territory, being only ten kilometres inland
from Gaza. During the late pre-exilic period the Philistines occupied a lot
of Judah.

>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 Gerar story does deal with the Philistines, relating their presence in
Palestine to the time of Abraham and Isaac. 

But then, we only have a selection of stories in Judges without any real
indication of chronology. Most of the Judges stories are from the northern
tribes and set in the hills to the north where there could not have been any
contact whatsoever with Philistines anyway. "Samson went down to Timnah"
(Jdg14:1) which is on the edge of Judah with the Philistines -- and which
would have been Philistine territory late in the pre-exilic period. We only
have a movement toward the Philistines, not of the Philistines toward 
Palestine.

>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?

Because they are Greek Indo-Europeans. Plain and simple.

>>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).

There is no doubt about the location of Ai.

The name actually says it all: (heap of) ruins. It doesn't augur well for a
report written about a functioning city.

>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).

Sorry, but it's irrelevant. The walls were uncovered last year. The main
gate this year. They are the latest walls at that site and they are from the
middle bronze period. It was an Italian team from the University of Rome "La
Sapienza" that uncovered the walls. The evidence is quite plain. The pottery
around the walls dates them precisely.

>>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.

When you find another Ur, I'd be interested to hear about it.

>>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 haven't read the BAR article, but I guess it is Rohl stuff, using a
well-known brand of phonological giggery-pokery of turning black into white
in twelve steps. (black, block, clock, chock, shock, shook, shoot, short,
shore, shone, shine, whine, white) You can often say whatever you like. Such
arguments are fine in popular publications: though they can't be taken as
anything more than untestable hypotheses, they do have a certain impact.
Some of the wildest popular potboilers on lost civilisations use the same
tactics.

>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."

It's not a matter of baggage. The history of writing and text production is
pretty well-known. The first texts produced in Mesopotamia were basically
economic records of stock and stock movement, then trade records and
agreements, then treaties, deeds, writing practice, later brief religious
and burial statements, then the emergence of propaganda texts for stelae
that began to include the deeds of the king, at the same time cult practices
and stories.

These developments took place in royal palaces and big Mesopotamian temples
which controlled vast territories for agricultural purposes. Outside these
circumstances there was almost certainly total illiteracy. It is
unimaginable that there were any written records of a type similar to those
found in Genesis (as a text type that had not developed until a millennium
or so later); it is also unimaginable due to the restriction of writing to
very explicit places.


Ian