Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>>1) He has found (or borrowed from others e.g. Bimson) a number of 
>>plausible correspondences between people and events named in the 
>>Hebrew Bible (from the time of Jacob to the middle of the Divided 
>>Monarchy) and archaeological finds in Egypt and Palestine, which are 
>>not generally accepted because the Bible apparently dates these 
>>considerably later than the conventional chronologies for Egypt and 
>>for Palestinian archaeology.
>
>This is exactly what Velikovsky did!
>
>PK: If you can't find any argument against a hypothesis, you just try 
>to discredit it by name-calling. Possibly Velikovsky had a few good 
>ideas among the others.

What have you got against Velikovsky? His idea was novel and interesting. I
liked it for its good points. Rohl is not possible without Velikovsky to
have done his thinking for him. The difference is that the world is a more
knowledgeable one than it was in the fifties. There is the evidence to show
that this chaos theory doesn't work. One cannot claim as Velikovsky did
that Egyptian chronology was wrong without considering all the other
factors involved. Rohl according to your report (and the many others I have
read) is a victim of the same criticism. He just can't make his case and
because he knows it he doesn't attempt to do so in the right and proper
place. He merely plays an ignorant audience.

>>On the other hand, Rohl has provided some clear evidence for the absolute 
>>dating of his own scheme, independent of any Israelite chronology. The 
>>most impressive is his evidence of a total solar eclipse at Ugarit in 
>>1012 BCE, indirectly reported in an Amarna letter.
>
>As long as you 1) trust his interpretation of the Amarna letter and 2) 
>trust his recalculation of solar eclipses. This is more an amazing tales 
>sort of fact (Ripley's Believe it or Not), and doesn't make the 
>archaeological records disappear.
>
>PK: Eclipse timings can now be calculated extremely accurately by 
>computer. I admit I don't know quite how accurately. Do you know 
>enough to cast reasonable doubt on the calculations of Wayne Mitchell 
>using the programs of Professor Peter Huber of MIT?

Total eclipses happen relatively frequently for a single zone (remember
that a total eclipse seen recently in England was also seen here in Italy),
more than once every hundred years seems to be a good average. If the
Ugaritic writer is actually referring to an eclipse -- it is still at this
moment only a figment of Rohl's imagination (was the writer actually
referring to an eclipse, if so was he being literal, if so was he
accurate?) -- then there is no necessity for it to have been when Rohl
wanted it to have been. This is merely his desires and have no necessary
connection with what happened. If I dug up my old astronomical program, it
did eclipses all I had to do was feed in the location and it would provide
them. Nothing startling there. (It doesn't take a professor to do the
calculations. This is merely show for people who don't know any better.)

>>If Rohl's
>>interpretation of this evidence is right, the Amarna period indeed 
>>corresponds to that of David and Saul by the Thiele's chronology, but 
>>Rohl's compressed Iron Age is required.
>
>It is wrong according to his interpretation of equivalents between Assyrian 
>and Egyptian reigns. His equivalents are shown to be falsified.
>
>I can see nothing in the following table for Israel that can be considered 
>a fixed datable event. This is all conjecture. All of it. Try and sell any 
>one of these to an Egyptologist. Would you like a few email addresses?
>
>PK: What do you mean by "fixed datable event"? The date of death of 
>the man Rohl identifies as Joseph, and whose tomb has been found, is 
>an event fixed and datable in principle. 

Strange that no scholar sticks his neck out to support this Rohl
conjecture. Peter, it is absurd to hope that you can make someone called by
some name be the person you want him to be just because of a few linguistic
similarities. There are those People who want to see Joseph as Yuya and
those who want to see him as Yusef-Har and those who want to see him as
someone else. This is incredibly poor scholarship.

>So is the departure of a 
>large group of Semites from Israel, corresponding to a plague from 
>which bodies have been found, and corresponding to the death of 
>Pharaoh Dudimose. So is the MB IIB destruction of Jericho. Etc. etc. 
>These correspondences may not all be provable because insufficient 
>evidence has survived, but they are reasonable conjectures.
>
>PK: As for the Assyrian correspondences, which are not relevant to 
>b-hebrew,

If Rohl is relevant to b-hebrew then one has to deal with the
Assyrian/Babylonian/Hittite/Mitannian/Egyptian correspondences.

>I do not have the background to discuss them. Can anyone 
>else help with this?

If I can find this out across a number of books, you can as well. The
information is available and I have quoted a number of sources, admitting
that probably any higher university text dealing with the subjects, if they
are exhaustive enough will provide you with the data to hang him with.

Here's a rehash of Ahlstrom, p245-247, that reflects on the rubbish about
Saul:

When Lab'ayu was king of Shechem, Abdi-Hepa was ruler of Jerusalem (EA
287). Lab'ayu was captured, taken to Acco and was to be sent to Egypt by
ship (EA 245). He bribed his way out, but was killed at Gina (south-west of
Hazor). Lab'ayu was succeeded by two sons. One of Abdi-Hepa's letters
mentions their alliance with the king of Gezer. Oh, and Abdi-Hepa complains
about the Nubian troops stationed in Jerusalem.

1) Lab'ayu's death is nothing like that of Saul's.
2) More than one son survived Lab'ayu
3) The king of Jerusalem during and after Lab'ayu was Abdi-Hepa
   (and I bet he must have been David, right???)
4) The structure of the zone of Palestine differs completely
   from that portrayed in I Samuel. Each town had its own ruler.
5) Nubian troops in Jerusalem??


It's always worth reading the status quo. It might be wrong, but it is the
standard you measure by until it is revoked.


Cheers,


Ian