Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Ken,

You wrote:

>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  

I'm having a great deal of difficulty conveying the facts to you, Ken on
this point. The Philistines arrived in Palestine after having travelled
through Greece, along the coast of Asia Minor, some via Cyprus others via
land to Ugarit and the Hittite possessions and finally down to Palestine
with the intention of invading Egypt. The events that are involved here all
work out to one particular time, thirteenth century in Greece, twelfth
century in Palestine. The progress is recorded in the Ugaritic letters of
the time. The final battles with Rameses III are recorded on the mortuary
temple of Medinet Habu across the river from Luxor. (You should go and see
it: it's in remarkably good condition and though the reliefs on the subject
have suffered over the millennia they are clear enough to provide exact
information on the subject.) There is no lack of prior data. It's just that
that prior data comes from elsewhere, ie not in Palestine, but Greece,
Turkey, Cyprus, Ugarit, Hatti...

As I have said before they cultural artifacts of the Philistines have
nothing to do with a Canaanite tradition, but bear close relations with for
example Mycenae, as pottery of a similar age displays.

>(assuming the unprovable that they are dated correctly). 

I advise you to look at the wealth of proof on the subject, Ken. I don't
understand why you say things like the above parenthesis: it suggests that
if something doesn't agree with your a priori assumptions they must be
wrong, unprovable, or whatever means you care to use to ignore them.

>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").  

Ken, what makes history for you? I don't understand the approach you are
advocating here, unless you refute all history that is not within your
lifetime.

>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.  

This seems to be a refutation of all archaeology. If I put two books on the
table, the one at the bottom was placed there first, was it not? Examining
that first book you find a publication date of 1998, so therefore you know
that book one was there at least after the publication of that book, so was
the one above it. We may not have publication dates for the archaeological
remains, but we have enormous series of pottery, glass, statuary,
architecture all of which provide dating mechanisms. The epigraphic remains
from Medinet Habu -- yet again -- are clearly datable to the year of reign
of Rameses III.

>    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.  

If I understand the argument here, Ken, you are suggesting that the writer
of Genesis deliberately used a term that was not appropriate in order not
to confuse his five-year-old audience.

>Archaeology can't address this possibility.  

You're definitely right, if I have understood what you said above.

>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.  

It's perfectly possible that the people along the coast were called
Philistines before the Philistines got there, but that possibility is so
infinitesimally small that under normal human thinking we discard it out of
hand as ridiculous to even consider.

>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?   

Why are you ignoring the epigraphic evidence? Medinet Habu has the Egyptian
equivalent to Philistine. The imagery shows that they were by culture
related to the Greeks, as does the archaeological remains. The other groups
mentioned and portrayed also bear Greek cultural traits and Greek ethnic
names.

>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.  

This is naturally true, just as it is the case with biblical literature...
except that we can use the tablets as epigraphic records while we cannot do
that for the biblical texts as we only have works that date to the second
century BCE. The tablets go back to the times they apply to, often being
trading accounts of kings with various other countries, so we can construct
the trade relations in the area. There are treaties, land deals,
conquests,.. all events that you mightn't accept as ever having happened,
but they have a historical value that places them at times in the past that
at least give them the possibility of being contemporary reports. This
simply cannot be said about the biblical narratives.

>Their existence only proves that, well, they exist.  

Why do you deny their historical value as epigraphic records? If you were
to write a history of any given time you would probably refer to the
epigraphic records, ie those that are first hand, contemporary. Anything
else would not really be acceptable, if there were those epigraphic
records. Unfortunately, we don't have them for the biblical narratives.

>Anything  more is an interpretation based on
>the researcher's ideology combined with an historiographical method that
>may or may not be valid.  

This seems to be a denial of all history that is not modern contemporary.

>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 epigraphic proof that there was a first Isaiah? You merely have
a large collection of words. Anything  more is an interpretation based on
the researcher's ideology combined with an historiographical method that
may or may not be valid.

>Where's the physical proof that such a composition technique
>would have been acceptable to anyone?  

Perhaps you could reword this so that I could get the idea you intend. As
things stand I don't understand the thought.

>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?  

First, one establishes various series of chronologically ordered cultural
artifacts, such as pottery, statuary, architectural forms, materials used,
and many others. These are then related to epigraphic remains, to absolute
dating methods where possible. These series are checked in cross-cultural
comparisons. With such epigraphically rich remains as the Egyptian at times
year by year information can be supplied to our complex of dating
procedures. Hittite epigraphy can be related for example to that from Egypt
as can Mesopotamian.

Second, armed with the complex array of dating mechanisms already provided,
one then attempts to relate the biblical narrative information to events
dated by our mechanisms: our mechanisms indicate when Ai was destroyed,
when Jericho was abandoned, when the Philistines arrived in Palestine.
Accuracy is a prime concern in this business, so methods and dates are
consistently being corroborated and refined, even redefined if it is proven
necessary. The results from comparing the biblical narrative information
with the dated events in the geographical area those narratives are meant
to deal with provides the means 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.  

There may never have been an objective historical account, but has there
not been a relatively accurate 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.  

It would seem to me, Ken, that you simply haven't investigated the area
well enough, so you don't seem to have enough information about the basic
processes involved. There is nothing arcane about the techniques involved
in dating events or judging from evidence about literary information.

>Thee's no a priori reason to say the Exile occurred 

No a priori reason, but it has a probability, unlike the exodus. We do have
epigraphic records of a Jewish family living in Babylon at the right time
which does corroborate the exile, though it is in no respect sufficient.

>than there is for asserting that the Philistines in any century attacked 
>Israel 

No-one ever talked about them attacking Israel, Ken.

>or, moving beyond
>the TaNaKh, that Judas Maccabaeus ever existed 

If we moved to John Hyrcanus, would his coin issues be enough? Would the
constructions at Beth-Sur that are archaeologically datable to the time
Simon Hashmon was said to be there, archaeological remains that match other
works that adhere to the same styles and also related to literary reports?

>or that Herod ever lived.  

There are so many of Herod's coins: these add up to be epigraphic remains
of immense value. They also relate to the building programs attributed to
Herod in literary sources.

>The only real evidence for any of this is written.  

Simply not true, Ken.

Perhaps you might find Meshorer's "Ancient Jewish Coinage", vol 2, "Herod
the Great through Bar Cochba", 1982, useful. By the way Herod's coins bear
the inscription "hErOdEs basileus" (or the genitive form).

A trip to Medinet Habu would also be an eye-opener. You of course should go
armed with a knowledge of how to transliterate Egyptian hieroglyphics into
Roman script. Then you can confirm the names as applicable to the Philistines.


Ian