Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au>]

Ian Hutchesson wrote:

> 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.

Well, there do seem to be two regions called Kush in the Bible!!! It's 
certainly not
impossible to have two groups of Heth's. It may even be a euphemism for 
something. Or,
it's just plain possible that there was a clan of Hittites in the region who 
had
migrated from further north. Why is this such an impossibility?
As per the Philistines, they probably actually had the roots in S-W Palestine 
to begin
with! It is very unlikely that they were Greek Indo-Europeans since, for all 
intents
and purposes, they used Semitic languages. There is no evidence for them 
using any
other language. The various names of some Philistines in the Bible are 
foreign, but
that's a common enough practise amongst just about every people in the Near 
East. They
may have been augmented by Sea Peoples from the Aegean, but the roots of the 
majority
were definitely in S-W Palestine. Fresh analysis of the archaeological 
evidence has
led to that conclusion.

Best regards,
GEORGE ATHAS
Dept of Semitic Studies,
University of Sydney
- Email: gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au
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