Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear John,

Thanks for your continuing interest in the subject.

>> I really can't understand the importance that a datum fit what the 
>>biblical stories mention. Is it, well they got this one bit right, so 
>>all the rest must basically be right as well?

Let me explain: I did not feel that it was necessary to look at that datum
at the time: the indication of perhaps well maybe a dry river bed is
actually one of the four rivers. (I am acquainted with David Rohl's
demostration that the four rivers of the garden were in the border area of
Turkey/Iran. So somebody else says something else. Another person of course
will have some other explanation.) I could go further into this (eg
"Looking for Dilmun", G.Bibby), but one datum in itself doesn't help the
argument I perceived you were making. 

(BAR after all is in the business of making money and has few scholarly
restrictions.)

>No, if you recall, the point under discussion (which you said you wanted
>to get back to) was whether it was possible that bronze
>age traditions could have been handed down in written form to the
>Israelites by their forefathers.  To show that such is possible, it is
>not necessary to show that "all the rest must be basically right". The
>"datum" under discussion was from the early bronze age.  

Hopefully we aren't going to get bogged down with this. That one datum
found in the Hebrew early tradition possibly being correct doesn't indicate
that there was a continuous tradition that this datum is representative of.
With the one datum you cannot establish a tradition for you cannot
establish a trajectory for that datum that is necessarily through a Hebrew
tradition from the early bronze, ie such a datum could have been derived
from other sources at any time. I can't see that it helps you. 

>I take it
>you are now admitting it is possible but are just trying to change the
>subject?  Or do you have another explanation?  And if they knew such
>minutiae from the early bronze age, isn't it possible they also knew who
>the early inhabitants of Gerar were related to (you certainly don't).
>
>> . . .
>> The walls of Jericho put all this theorising to rest. Jericho was 
>>abandoned before the late bronze period, with few traces of anything 
>>later.
>
>This abandonment is theorized on the basis of pottery finds and tomb
>abandonment, so your argument is circular here, since both Garstang and
>Kenyon found plenty of LB I pottery, 

From Moorey's revision of Kenyon's "Bible & Recent Arch.", Brit. Museum
Pubs., 1987, p75: "Professor Garstang was misled in the interpretation of
the evidence from [tombs excavated in 1930-36] by misdatings of sixteenth-
to fourteenth-century pottery current at the time." The text goes on to say
that due to a number of mistaken assumptions Garstang's analyses give "a
wholly false impression of continuity and early chronology".

>whether Nigro has or not, and
>continued tomb occupation in LB I 

It is precisely in Garstang's analysis of the tomb evidence that his wrong
assumptions come into play. "He also failed to realise that in these
rock-cut tombs the latest burial is usually at a low level in the fron of
the tomb, with the remains of earlier burials pushed back and mounded up at
the rear. Absolute height of burials within the tomb chamber means nothing
and Professor Garstang was led to believe that later objects found on the
same level as earlier ones were contemporary... Kenyon's excavations
indicated that a very few of the middle bronze age tombs were reopened and
some later burials were placed in them."

Jericho was destroyed in the first half of the sixteenth century BCE,
totally abandoned for over a century, then there was a small settlement on
the site from 1400-1325 then nothing until the eleventh century.

>is shown by Egyptian scarabs from the
>18th - 14th centuries. (I do apologize for including the mention of the
>C-14 date, which I now understand to be obsolete information).
>
>Concerning Gibeon, as I noted there is a similar problem with Hebron,
>which lacks LB I remains, yet it is on Pharaoh's map list from that
>era.  Whatever explains the discrepancy at Hebron (not to mention
>Jerusalem) may also apply to Gibeon and other MB cities listed in Joshua
>that do not have significant LB I remains.

There is naturally a problem of interpretation of the Rameses II list which
seems to be an itinerary, but an itninerary of what? Were the places
mentioned necessarily cities or did the list contain some locations such as
an area passed through that once was controlled by city X. This problem of
interpretation is however known. One wonders how your itnerperters choose
that it necessarily refers to cities.


Ian