Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ken Litwak <kdlitwak AT concentric.net>]

Loren, you still haven't addressed my issue, but I'll address one of
yours.  I never advocated that we ignore archaeological and epigraphic
data.  I argued, and still argue that we recognize a) the limitations of
such data and b) the factor introduced by interpreters of that data.

   On pint a), let us consider briefly for a moment the supposed
evidence that Scriptures of Israel, to use Ian's term, is "blatantly"
wrong about the existence of the Philistines in Canaan before he 12th
century.  The potential fact that material remains from the 12 century
are identified with the Philistines  says nothing about whether there
could have been Philistines present before those material remains became
deposited (assuming the unprovable that they are dated correctly).  It
ONLY says that at a certain date, material remains were found that are
identified with the Sea Peoples, if the reconstructed history that the
Sea Peoples invaded the coastal region of Palestine in the 2nd
millennium are correct, which is by nature a hypothesis and not provable
in any rigorous sense (note: I am not per se contesting the
reconstruction, but noting that it is a hypothesis, not an observable
"fact" like "Hydrogen is easily ignitable with a lit match").  So having
material remains of a given date that presumably belong to a different
group than was there before, again a hypothesis, doesn't tell us
anything about when this group of Sea Peoples actually sowed up.  I only
tells us when material remains from them showed up.  

    Second, as pointed out by others, this data has no bearing on
whether the author of Genesis used this term because it would be
meaningless to refer to an ethnic group (if they had a specific name)
that the audience for Genesis would have never known.  By analogy, it
would do little good for me to tell my child, while we are driving that
we are gong to where Francis Drake landed in northern California or to
call it Drake's Bay because he doesn't know, at 5, wo Francis Drake is
or probably even that there is an England. Or, if I tell my son that the
Mayans were conquered by Conquistadors, I've given him a Microsoft-type
statement.  It's totally correct, but for him, not knowing that there
were Conquistadors, or what they might be, it doesn't do him any good. 
So it seems perfectly plausible to see Philistine, if it doesn't apply
to 15th century inhabitants of the coast, as a term used for a general
people group whose real name would have meant absolutely nothing to the
audience for Genesis.  Archaeology can't address this possibility.  It
can tell us about the evolution of the lamp at Caeseraea Maritima (I"ve
seen the range from the excavaor) but not those things which go beyond
physical data. Also, nothing in the archaeological evidence shows that
it is impossible for the inhabitants of the coast to have been called
Philistines by anyone anytime previous to the 12th century.  ALl the
evidence shows is that in the 12th century somebody's material remains,
which we interpret as belonging to the Sea Peoples, who we then claim
became Philistines, was deposited at the sties it was found at, which
also says nothing about the surrounding area.  What do you think?  Is
physical evidence able to do more than this?   Look at another ANE
example.  All the Babylonian tablets ever found show only that there
were tablets made.  It doesn't tell us anything of certainty about when
those texts were meant to be treated as non-fiction and whether 
anything in them was based on real events.  Their existence only proves
that, well, they exist.  Anything  more is an interpretation based on
the researcher's ideology combined with an historiographical method that
may or may not be valid.  

   How about this for those who rely so heavily on archaeological and
epigraphic data:  where's the epigraphic proof tat there was  second
Isaiah?  Where's the physical proof that such a  composition technique
would have been acceptable to anyone?  No physical proof?  Well then, to
quote another poster, this scholarly assertion about his existence is
"blatantly" wrong, n'est pas?    

    Now, back to my point.  Would you mind telling us what your method
is for determining when biblical texts ought to be dated and how to
determine whether what they portray actually happened or did not
happen?  Note also that you needn't tell me that some event may have
happened but it is presented in a theological way in the TaNaKh so it
may not have happened exactly as written, because I've already asserted
that no one ever wrote any objective historical account.  Everybody has
an ideology at work, including me.   It seems very odd to me to be the
conservative Evangelical asking others to be rigorous in their methods. 
Here I thought it was others who accused Evangelicals of not being
scholarly enough.  So I'd like to see a rigourous historiographical
statement before someone makes a claim about the historical reliability
or lack thereof the the narratives in teh Scriptures of Isarel.  Thee's
no a priori reason to say the Exile occurred than there is for asserting
that the Philistines in any century attacked Israel or, moving beyond
the TaNaKh, that Judas Maccabaeus ever existed or that Herod ever
lived.  The only real evidence for any of this is written.  

Ken Litwak