Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 20.59 09/05/99 -0400, peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG wrote:
>I suspect that the LXX translators (not native speakers of Hebrew and 
>working from a consonantal text) missed the nuances and read weyiqtol 
>for wayyiqtol. As for the Qumran commentary, its writers reinterpreted 
>the Chaldeans as the Kittim or Romans, 

The conventional Roman reading is simply wrong. Is it enough to know that
Josephus mentions the notion of "worshiping one's standards", as pHab does,
without knowing the habits of other peoples than Romans? The Kittim were as
we all know originally Cypriots and that's how it is mainly used in the
OT/HB, with the one exception being Daniel (11:30, whose LXX didn't have
the allusion to Num 24:24 and merely said "Romans"). The first Seleucids
soldiers to occupy Jerusalem were in fact Cypriot mercenaries (2Macc4:29),
who of course were Kittim. Nicanor, who was the Seleucid general that Judas
Maccabaeus routed was called a Cypriarch, ie he was the head of the Cypriot
troops. One can see the process of widening of the pejorative term from the
Cypriot mercenaries to all Seleucid forces, thence Seleucids, later
Macedonians in general (1Macc1:1) and probably some time after Pompey took
the temple if even may have been used for the Romans.

However, pHab has been C-14 dated to the middle of the first century BCE
(104-43 BCE -- according to 1986, but there's been a redating).

> and so they had to reinterpret 
>the Hebrew text as entirely prophetic and future from Habbakuk's 
>viewpoint.

It is important to note that if the Kittim were the forces of the Seleucids
then the Seleucids, who were also kings of Babylon, hence Chaldeans, would
cause no need for reinterpretation of the Hebrew text.

A Cypriot/Seleucid reading helps in other texts as well. The War Scroll
talks of the king of Asshur entering Egypt with the Kittim -- just as
Antiochus IV entered Egypt, only to meet with Popillius Laenas who told him
to get out causing the wrath mentioned in 1QM 1,4 as he turned back north
to deal with other problems in his kingdom -- such as Jason's rebellion and
troubles in the northern kingdoms: "In that time he shall go forth in great
wrath to do battle against the kings of the north, and in his anger he
shall set out to destroy and eliminate the strength of Israel."

"[God did not deliver Jerusalem] into the hands of the kings of Yavan from
Antiochus up to the appearance of the chiefs of the Kittim." (pNah 3-4, 3)
I gather Antiochus was Antiochus III who had a peaceful relationship with
Jerusalem, as did his son. It was not until the mercenaries of Antiochus
that Jerusalem was delivered to the Greeks, when the Cypriots came to
Jerusalem to support the investiture of Menelaus. This of course would ask
for a dating of pNah to around 160 BCE, at the time of Demetrius I.

This also asks for a rethought of the late dating of 1QS. No evidence from
within the texts suggests a date later than the time of Aemilius Scaurus
who was in Palestine from about 65 BCE to 62 BCE. Most C-14 dated texts are
early, suggesting those few late ones are statistically dubious --
especially when one thinks that one of those late ones was in the hands of
John Allegro, who with F.M. Cross used castor oil on some of the texts to
clean them in order to read them. (Does one need to talk about the pie in
the sky Cross palaeographic sequences that are more accurate with far fewer
exemplars than any other palaeographically sequenced periods in history?)

I would challenge anyone to come up with definitive indications of late
datings for DSS texts.


Ian