Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Peter,

I guess we continue to agree to disagree.

>I am not so much arguing for the veracity of the [biblical] accounts 
>as arguing against the proposition that they are impossible. 

Extreme unlikeliness is ok then? What would you say about Mu or Atlantis?

>Are you prepared to 
>accept the proposition (for example) "It is possible that an Israelite 
>named Moses was brought up at the Egyptian court and learned to read 
>and write"? If so, we can agree on that. If not, I can disagree with 
>you validly by suggesting possibilities. I would accept that we can go 
>further only if we accept the premise which Kitchen and I put forward: 
>"once the veracity of Ex. ii. 10a,11 is granted"; and that (unless 
>other evidence is found) such a premise can be accepted only by faith.

Let me try a few ifs:

If there were no exodus then any hypothesis based on the assumption of an
exodus is highly improbable.

If there were no mass movement out of Egypt after the Hyksos departure then
there was no exodus. [The political directives of the New Kingdom rulers
prevented such amassing of foreign power in the country as a reaction to
the Hyksos domination.]

If there were no exodus then there would be no traces of mass movement
through lands leading from Egypt to Palestine. [While there are traces of
Roman camps around Masada and there are traces of a siege wall thrown up by
the Assyrians (against Lachish I think), there are no traces of a mass
movement of people over a forty year period, not a single spot, and yet we
are talking of several thousand people through extremely barren territory,
not open to much change through weather conditions, later people covering
things up...]

If there were no exodus then the Mosaic speculations set in Egypt have no
basis (as they are contingent on the exodus).

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

Peter:
>>>Well, if you don't accept even as suggestive evidence the physical 
>>>survival on papyrus (which you did not dispute) of one of those 
>>>records (see my separate posting),

Ian:
>>"One cannot use such a text written in Phoenician script listing some 
>>names and preserved as a palimpsest at Murabba'at as representative of the 
>>means of maintaining records in a Palestinian context. Remember that, when 
>>Lachish was under siege by the Assyrians, communications were passed on 
>>using messages written in ink on pottery, suggesting that pottery sherds 
>>were the more likely means of preserving texts."
>>
>>""Suggestive evidence" is quite an interesting term. What place does it
have 
>>in a court of law where one is trying to establish facts?"

Peter:
>What I mean is, a "something" which would contradict your "nothing to 
>suggest" quoted above. 

What you can contemplate and what comes from the period we are dealing with
are clearly two different things. It is not enough to contemplate. You need
something from the period, ie bronze age, to suggest your idea that Hebrew
traditions could have been maintained on papyrus. Hey, it is possible that
Internal Revenue records were kept on clay in some places before the
computer revolution, but there is nothing from the period to suggest it.

>I suppose the legal equivalent is 
>"circumstantial evidence", which is not enough to convict on its own 
>but which may be used to support a conviction. Thank you for reminding 
>me of further evidence of writing on pottery at Lachish, which is at 
>least "something to suggest" a means of maintaining records, on 
>pottery sherds. 

There are of course other examples of Hebrew writing including inscriptions
and ink on walls at Kuntillet Ajrud, on silver from a Hebrew tomb...

>I think there is reasonable evidence that in 
>pre-exilic Israel sometimes papyrus, sometimes pottery was used for 
>written records. I know we can't prove much by this, but we can at 
>least disprove such theories as "writing on papyrus was unknown in 
>pre-exilic Israel".

Do you know the provinence of the Murabba'at palimpsest? It was merely
written in Phoenician characters and found a millennium after it was
written. I think you need a lot more information than a report of one
papyrus document of unknown origin found in Judea. There was a tenth
century Phoenician king called Yehimilek and a fifth century one called
Yahumilek: what are the names on this list of names?

You might like to get back on track however, instead of being sidelined
into considering only evidence for a pre-exilic maintenance of records.
This is ultimately irrelevant for your hopeful defence of nomadic people in
the bronze age maintaining written traditions. By the time of the date
given to the palimpsest, the Hebrews were sedentary, weren't they?

History goes ahead by shelving extremely unlikely eventualities. It may
have to go back on that shelving when those eventualities become less
unlikely. Yet, I would say history has dropped the exodus as a non-event. I
would also say that the exodus was especially useful to the returnees from
Babylon and Egypt whose experiences were amalgamated in the hard times of
the return, the result of which provided edification for an oppressed
population. ("If our population could fight against adversity, following
the will of God to come to Jerusalem -- reinterpreting the Hyksos
experience -- and found a pious society, we can certainly do it again.")


Ian