Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jonathan D. Safren" <yonsaf AT beitberl.beitberl.ac.il>]

Niels Peter Lemche wrote:

> >
> . And again I asked for evidence about the
> presence of the Chaldeans before the 9th century BCE. Nobody has answered so
> mayby nobody knows about any such evidence, and then we are back to square
> one. There is no reason to equate the Chaldeans with the Arameans or to
> relate them to the Arameans before they appearin the documentary material.
> Furthermore, it would be nice to do some more work on the elusive origin of
> the Arameans, a subject never really solved. The old immigration models have
> not been very favoured lately.

True, I have not been able to supply any evidence about the Chaldeans, but 
perhaps
that is because I do not have a research library at my disposal. Also, this 
discussion
is going on on the Biblical Hebrew List; a better venue would have been the 
ANE List,
where some "heavier cannons" are stationed than my "light arms".
As for equating the Aramaic-speaking Chaldeans with the Aramaic-speaking 
Arameans, who
are first mentioned in Upper Mesopotamia at the time of Tiglath-Pileser I 
(12th
century BCE) - where Laban the Aramean happened to live as well - why not?
   And who says people do not emigrate or immigrate? Didn't the Sea Peoples 
migrate,
according to Egyptian sources? Where did the Kassites and Gutians come from? 
Were they
also the result of 'internal social revolution", as some people would have us 
believe
of the Israelites? (Notice how New Left ideology influenced Biblical research 
in the
'70s; today it's deconstructionism and other modish ways of thinking)
   No, the Arameans, like the Israelites, did not just drop out of the sky 
(or climb
the mountains out of the lowlands). Nor did they stay put. First we find them 
in Upper
Mesopotamia. Then we find them in Syria, then invading Israel itself.. This 
is analogy
enough for me to posit that the Chaldeans were part of the same or similar 
wave of
Aramaic-speaking peoples (cf. also the Ahlamu).
Sincerely,
--
Jonathan D. Safren
Dept. of Biblical Studies
Beit Berl College
44905 Beit Berl Post Office
Israel