Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jonathan D. Safren" <yonsaf AT beitberl.beitberl.ac.il>]

Why assume that Mesopotamian cultural influences
amounted to much during
the period of Egyptian hegemony?  Based on what?
Intermittant trade?  I
do hope you are not going to try to build too much
of a case from an
isolated fragment.

I don't have the sources in front of me so I can't be sure. But wasn't a
copy of sar tamhari (Lord of Battle) found at Tell El Amarna in Egypt,
same period as the 14th century Gilgamesh find at Megiddo, and the
period of Ehyptian hegemony over Syro-Palestine?
BTW, the El Amarna Tablets are written in Akkadian and not in Egyptian.
Akkadian was the lingua franca of the period and not Egyptian. If the
Akkadian language was known and used in Egypt and Canaan during this
period, then so was Akkadian literature.
So scribes in pre-Israelite Canaan (and Egypt) would have known about
Esagila and the Apsu.
And there is no reason why the later Israelite scribes, schooled in the
Canaanite tradition, wouldn't have had the same knowledge. When
Mesopotamia went over to Aramaic, so did they, witness Hezekiah's
officials.
Actually, Stephen, the argument between us boils down to this. You want
to see late authorship and influences, and I want to see early
authorhsip and influences. So each of us is marshaling the arguments
necessary to support his pet theory. The same controversy is going on in
the wider academci world.
The real question is why each of us wishes to see the Israelite
traditions in the way he does?
Le'elohim pitronim!

Sincerely,
Jonathan D. Safren
Dept. of Biblical Studies
Beit Berl College
Beit Berl Post Office 44905
Israel