Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Peter Kirk wrote:

>I don't think I or anyone else claimed on this list that Abraham 
>brought written documents from Harran or Ur. 

Dear Peter,

You forget that correspondence between the Canaanite cities and Egypt
during the reign of Amenhotep IV was on clay in Akkadian cuneiform, so
whether or not Abraham carried traditions with him or not is irrelevant.

>I would suggest that he 
>brought culture and oral traditions but not writing. 

You may suggest it, but it seems hopeful.

>Perhaps the first 
>literate Israelites were Ephraim and Manasseh, grandsons of the priest 
>of On. 

If we are to give the account credence (I don't), then we must see those
grand children as sons of foreigners. The Egyptians were not very found of
foreigners at any time. I wouldn't speculate on them as you do.

>But then I thought writing in Egypt was not just a religious 
>thing, but was used also (in hieratic script) for "the mundane 
>purposes of administration" (quoting New Bible Dictionary), even if 
>the scribes were also nominally priests. 

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that there were scribes who had
titles such as the scribe of the herds of the pharaoh and so on. This does
not change the fact that those who did the writing were, from all evidence,
priests.

>If an Israelite called Moses 
>was indeed brought up at the Egyptian court, he would very likely have 
>learned to write on papyrus. 

What evidence have you got to support such a conjecture?

>If there was no papyrus available during 
>the wilderness wanderings, there were surely animal skins to write on, 
>and hours to spend just watching sheep which could also be used for 
>writing. 

OK, not clay tablets, well, umm, papyrus! OK, not papyrus, then, leather.
Even if we could establish a tradition of writing on leather in Palestine
in 1500 BCE and following, you will have to posit the idea that these
nomads mysteriously had learnt scribal activities and maintained them in
their nomadic state, carrying around their traditions wherever they went
along with all those things that were necessary for maintaining life. One
was a nomad through necessity: life was tough, the lands were not fruitful,
one didn't know any better and had no domestication for city living. It
would seem to me only through high romanticism that one could propose that
these particular nomads were able against all odds to maintain a written
tradition.

>After the conquest of Canaan, papyrus would have been 
>available again,                               

Again? I know you will continue to assume things that you haven't
established. And Canaan was in the hands of the Egyptians until after the
arrival of the Philistines, as shown by Egyptian cities such as Beth-Shean
(excavated by Albright) and Aphek. The Egyptians didn't know anything
about, nor experience, a conquest. Beth-Shean fell to the Philistines who
expanded through to the Jordan valley. The Joshua tales don't fit into the
archaeological evidence. As I said in previous posts the Philistines were
already in Palestine for the Hebrews, even though they arrived in the
twelfth century. They are in biblical reports even in Palestine five
hundred years or so before at Gerar! The conquest story is not accurate, if
at all historical. Historical problems with the exodus, with the conquest,
Jerusalem a tiny place in the ninth century: all add up to a set of
legendary traditions that don't give much hope of ever having happened, but
do help to give a tradition history to the Hebrews. 

>either from the Jordan valley or imported from Egypt, 
>and indeed "strangely enough" we have evidence for this, a surviving 
>pre-exilic Hebrew papyrus as well as impressions of papyrus on the 
>backs of pre-exilic seals.

There is nothing to suggest the means of maintaining records in pre-exilic
Palestine.

>Of course it is hard to disprove to you theories that the Exodus 
>tradition was a post-exilic invention if you reject a priori the main 
>evidence to the contrary which is the Exodus narrative itself. 

One could go some way by giving some geographical sense to the numerous
places mentioned in the exodus stories but never discovered, by finding
traces of a movement of the numerous thousands of people who traveled
around in the desert for forty years. A pharaoh whose corpse is missing.
(Ah, there's history: with very few exceptions there are corpses for all
pharaohs from the start of the 18th dynasty through to the twentieth, and
you can note the family likenesses in the Ramessid family. The reported
death of Tao II is born out by his body.)

Would you use Le Morte d'Arthur as your sole source on events in Britain in
the sixth century? Wouldn't you consider it, by analogy with Exodus, the
"main evidence" for the period it refers to? I would hope not. But aren't
you trying to make a special case for your "main evidence"?

>Maybe 
>there was indeed a link between the Exodus and the expulsion of the 
>Hyksos, though I know there are dating problems with that. But then 
>are there contemporary accounts of the expulsion of the Hyksos? 

There are contemporary Egyptian records.

One of the good things about Egyptian history is that there is extremely
often contemporary documentation for most events in history (things get
thin in the ninth century BCE): you mightn't like the spin, but it's still
contemporary and deals in some respect with the matters at hand. Just about
the only stuff we have for the Hebrew tradition is the OT/HB which has no
currency before the second century BCE. (It may in fact refer to events
that happened long before, but is there any way of ever knowing?)

>Or do 
>the arguments in the books you recommend assume (improbably) the 
>reliability of Manetho and Josephus while giving no weight to 
>documents such as Exodus?

The books I mentioned tend very strongly to use archaeological and
epigraphic sources.

What weight can you honestly give a book whose existence can only be shown
to go back to the second century BCE while referring to events well over a
thousand years before, whose aims were not historical but cultural, whose
contents belie a continual reworking, and whose contents when taken in
historical consideration don't give hope of being historical?


Ian