Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <cctr114 AT its.canterbury.ac.nz>]

B-Hebrewers,

I've been reading the long running argument over the historicity or
otherwise of Israel's traditions. Just this morning I was reading about
the excavations of Shiloh carried out by the Bar-Ilan University in
1981. They concluded that the site was destroyed by fire in the
mid-11th century B.C.  While we must quickly acknowledge that the text
of 1 Samuel does not record any such event, it would seem a reasonable
implication of the text that Shiloh was destroyed as when the ark was
recovered it was not returned to Shiloh.

The destruction of Shiloh is also mentioned by Jeremiah. While
we must acknowledge that there is no direct link in the text
of the HB between the priest Eli at Shiloh and Jeremiah, there is
again an implied link between the priests at Shiloh and Anathoth
through David's personal priest banished there by Solomon.

It seems to me that while those who wish to doubt the validity of the
events interpreted in the HB may do so, the reasonable conclusion is
that the texts contain an historical memory dating back to a time
before the rise of the monarchy.

With a nod to Ian, the Philistines were supposed to be around then
to do the destroying and, yes, I realise there is no evidence for the
existance of the ark or Eli apart from these 2nd century texts we
call the Hebrew Bible. 

Bill Rea, Information Technology Services, University of Canterbury  \_ 
E-Mail b dot rea at its dot canterbury dot ac dot nz                 </   New 
Phone   64-3-364-2331, Fax     64-3-364-2332                        /)  
Zealand 
Unix Systems Administrator                                         (/'