Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>PK: According to Rohl, the MIT professor's eclipse program showed that 
>this was the only possible eclipse at Ugarit near to sunset during 
>April/May during the whole second millennium BCE. If you think you can 
>falsify this claim with your own program, please go ahead and try. By 
>the way, "It has been calculated that a total solar eclipse occurs 
>only once every three hundred and sixty years (on average) at any 
>point on earth." By the way, on August 11 a TOTAL eclipse was not seen 
>anywhere in Italy, I have the map to prove it.

It's gotta be an eclipse, does it? And it's gotta be a total eclipse, does
it? And it can't be anything else, can it? And it has to be at that time,
doesn't it? The eclipse argument is one that says I know what the writer
meant and I know when he meant it.


>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.
>
>PK: For the record, Rohl does not make any identification of Joseph by 
>name. The name of the person whose tomb he has found is unknown. If 
>you want to know how he has made this identification, read the book!

The point is that there is nothing in that table that is historically
identifiable. He may make some connection between Joseph and an unnamed
tomb, but frankly I get tired of all these fancy unfalsifiable
identifications.

>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??
>
>PK: Thank you for this rehash. Rohl's interpretations for your 
>information: 1) Gina is Jenin which is the nearest town to Mount 
>Gilboa; Saul was killed not at Gina, but by men of Gina in the battle 
>at Gilboa. 

Neither the biblical nor the Amarna texts say this.

>2) One son and one son-in-law, Ishbaal (= Mutbaal) and David. 

Ahlstrom says, "Two of his sons seem ot have ruled the territory (ie
Shechem) and one of them, Mut-Ba'lu, became king of Pehel (Pella)... One of
the letters mentions that Lab'ayu's sons were in an alliance with Milkilu
of Gezer."

Supposedly David was king of Hebron at the time and there was no accord
between him and Ishbaal. And there was a battle at Gibeon between David and
Ishbaal's forces.

Rohl's analysis here is at best wishful thinking.

>3) No, Abdi-Hepa was the last Jebusite ruler. 

Whew!! Fortunate.

>4) Precisely 
>which towns in the hill country, other than Jerusalem? Rohl has 
>Labayu/Saul as ruler of the hill country (apart from Jerusalem) and 
>parts of Transjordan. Shechem is in his territory, but not his 
>capital.

Megiddo, Gina, Yanuammu, Pella, Hazor, Ta'anak, Hebron, Lachish and others.
One would think that Adbi-Tishri, king of Hazor, was just as big a
disturbance as Lab'ayu. This is not the Palestine of the Saul stories.

Why omit the Nubian troops in Jerusalem? Bethshan was the Egyptian
stronghold in Palestine and it functioned on into the times of Ramses III,
but this "revised chronology" would have all Israel in David's hands before
the time of Ramses III. The fact is that Rohl doesn't deal with the facts.

With this, his errors in Assyrian chronology in order to make his other
chronology work and the fact that archaeology doesn't allow his
chronological revisions, I'd recommend that you file the book in the WPB*.
It seems to be a deceptive manipulation of the evidence readily available.
(Here I am in Rome with very few bibliographical resources and I have
enough here to deal with this stuff.)


Cheers,


Ian


*Waste Paper Basket