Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

        Ken Litwak
> >I'm afraid that
> >I don't consider a "web of relationships" evidence of anything.  You kept
> talking
> >about hard evidence.  To me that means that I can go to the battle field
> where the
> >battle of Waterloo or QarQar or the Pelopenesian War and find bodies
> dressed in
> >appropriate clothes, weapons, supplies, etc, which can be dated fairly
> precisely to
> >the correct date for the battle.  
> 
        Ian H.
>  Funnier things have happened, Ken. There have been finds from the
> battlefield near Lake Trasimene which evince a battle between Romans and
> Carthaginians.
> 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  Funny with that example. An even better is the
case of the battle of the Teuteburger woods. Place unknown until the late
1980s. Then found with battle evidence and everything. So now we have a
text, a tradition and a battle field with indisputable evidence.

        On the other hand, what is the worsest part to have a battle with a
name (and a text) or a battle with a place but no name and no text. Few
among you may know that we have the biggest collection of Roman swiords from
the 2nd century CE here in Denmark, found twenty years ago in a Moor,
Illerup, close to Aarhus in Jutland. Thousands of copies, all bent and
thrown into the moor as a kind of potlack destruction, most likely weapons
from a vanguished foe. It must for its time have been a huge battle, but not
a single trace in later tradition, no inscriptions nothing.
        NPL

> At the same time the example of the two field reports of the battle of
> Qadesh is useful. One comes from Egypt the other from Hittite royal
> records. No collusion there, right Ken? Yet, knowing the terrain and
> reading the two different points of view, a good understanding of how the
> battle went can be gained. This is epigraphic evidence for you to have to
> deal with. Yes, note, physical evidence is not only archaeological but
> also
> epigraphic materials.
> 
> >If literary testimony from the Bible is irrelevant,
> >than it is inconsistent to treat data from other literary sources, simply
> because they
> >exhibit a web of relationships which could have been created in a number
> of ways, as
> >important.  You're privileging one set of texts and dismissing another
> without
> >warrant.
> 
> This is just self-deception, Ken. No privilege. A text has to fit the
> rigour of historical accreditation. You wouldn't accept just anyone's word
> in a court of law... or would you? Perhaps you would, if you were
> consistent with the mummery you've been performing recently.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 
> Ian
> 
> 
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