Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>]

        Ian H:  Ken, you are bs-ing. Try providing one epigraphic or
archaeological scrap
> of attestation for any of the kings of Judah before Jotham (no, please
> don't rerun bytdwd, it's significance as you know is still under a cloud).
> Show me just what one king looked like. How about some physical evidence
> for a violent conquest of Palestine by the Hebrews? The varying opinions
> are from none to none, ie you're talking rot.
> 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  
        Ian's case is illustrated by the lion-seal  of Shema' that was lost
in Berling at the end of WW II but has been on the cover of JSOT ever since
that journal began to appear. The seal reads '[belonging] to Shema' servant
of Jeroboam'. If Yeivin, Ahlström and Ussishkin are right, we may have
evidence, because of the official character of the seal, of Jeroboam ben
Nebat, if they are wrong, it is probably the second Jeroboam that is Shema's
master. It depends on archaeology, the stratigraphy of Megiddo, i.e. on
external evidence. No biblical source can decide what is the correct
interpretation. 
          

        Ian again: You invent the notion of a magical relationship. Can you
doubt the
> existence of Seti I? I can show you his body. I can show you other
> pharaohs
> of the same family and show you the family resemblance. You'll then
> respond
> that the fellahs found in New Kingdom royal caches may not have been the
> ones responsible for the construction of temples which have hteir names on
> them. Can you doubt that the res gestae of Augustus are a contemporary
> account found in situ in two locations?  [Niels Peter Lemche]   (according
> to the testimony of the inscription in 14 CE--by the way there seems to be
> one rather complete edition, the one from Ankara, and two fragmentary
> ones, from Pisidian Appollonia, and from Antioch). I think your extreme
> attempts to
> hide from the physical evidence only shows the lengths that you will go
> to:
> it in no way says anything about the actual situation of the support for
> the texts.
> 
> 
> You might check out the Oxyrhynchus materials. There is for example a good
> smattering of Thucydides, which indicates that you can take him back eight
> centuries.
> 
> But I don't want to argue Jim's case.
> 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  Again the web created by several classical
authors makes it possible to date persons like Thucydides or Herodotus to a
specific time. The alternative would be to say that this web has been
constructed by a circle (quite an extensive one) of authors from a much
later period. That would exclude Western Europe because of lack of knowledge
of Greek in that part of the world. As to Byzans, they would know Greek in
its late Byzantine form, but should in order to create this web be able to
write in Ionian Greek (Gerodotus), clear Attic Greek (several otgher
authors), place Pindar in the right place and do his dialect as well. The
literary data from classical sourcs do fit together and seem also to go well
with external evidence as well. It is probably time for Ken Litwak to stop
this ridiculous discussion about classical analogies.
        NPL