Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Ian:
>> You are putting forward (as it seemed Dave was) support for this 
>> neo-ages-in-chaos position...
>> 
>> PK: No name calling please.
>
>I have given up trying to discuss this with Ian, 

Dave,

You never started. All you did was express your zeal for a position that
had not faced the critical eye of the scholarly Egyptological world, a
position which I have falsified.

>and I would suggest 
>you do the same.  Without coming out and saying it, he doesn't 
>feel like reading the book so he wants us to essentially transcribe 
>the whole thing for him here, bit by bit, 

Actually, my interest was not in the book, but in the basic notion that
someone could come along and rehash an old argument, the *Ages in Chaos*
argument, which had died because of the same basic absurdities: it doesn't
deal with the plain archaeological evidence of pottery and stratigraphy
that show no disturbance in chronology and it has to concoct unsupportable
parallels in other chonologies.

You went to water on this because you realise that it is undefendable,
pulling in your horns in to say that you only found his analysis of the
Third Intermediate Period to be convincing, which would be less than a
tenth of the book. Yet about this analysis you wouldn't say what it was
exactly that you found convincing. It seems to me that it merely takes
advantage of the obscurity of the range of evidence for the status quo,
physical data found in the works of Kathleen Kenyon, W.F.Albright and Gosta
Ahlstrom, stratum upon stratum of continuous archaeological evidence -- the
movement of Sea People's pottery in specifically Philistine areas from the
coastal plain up into the more mountainous regions, as shown by
stratigraphy, well before the archaeological period of the Millo (in fact
the only evidence for the Millo comes from the 7th - 6th centuries, Kenyon
p237).

Tell Beit Mirsim shows the Sea People's pottery at level B2, then there are
all the known periods represented down to the city's destruction in
Babylonian times. Kenyon says in related levels at other sites material
from the time of Ramses III have been found.

The evidence against the ages in chaos is available in scads if you really
want to look at it. I'm amazed that scholars give such stuff time. I do try
to maintain standards of what I read. As Rohl hasn't gone the route of open
critical analysis by his peers, it should be indicative of the lack of
seriousness.

>so he doesn't have to 
>inconvenience himself by actually checking out the material he 
>insists on complaining about.  I don't know about you, but I don't 
>have time to rewrite the entire book for one person who won't even 
>try to check it out for himself.

Please don't. What I wanted was evidence, not sophistry.

It should be plain with my previous post that his chronology seems to be
*wrong* and doesn't fit the facts, because despite trying hard to relocate
the Assyrian side, he fails to make things work anywhere near as clearly as
the status quo. As the other side (Egypt and Israel) is conjecture, it is
not enough to stand on its own feet, especially when there are good
correspondences between the Egyptian 18th & 19th dynasties with known
Assyrian reigns.

I don't like the fact that the fellow hasn't published in recognized
Egyptological journals, but chose to go for the cash.


Cheers,


Ian