Biblical Hebrew Forum

[kdlitwak <kdlitwak AT concentric.net>]

Walter Mattfeld wrote:

> In reply to Mr. Washburn's most recent comments challenging my position that
> Genesis is a fifth century BCE creation I have assembled a list of what I
> consider to be "historical markers" indicating Genesis was not written by
> Moses in the 15th century BCE as he maintains:
>
> Please note that all these "markers" are not of the 2nd millenium BCE, they
> are of the 1st millenium BCE:
>
> Cities:
>
> Calah, of no importance till the 9th century when it becomes a capital of
> Assyria.
> Nineveh, becomes a capital 705-612  BCE and thereupon achieves "world
> renoun".
>
> Nations (Peoples):
>
> Gomer (Assyrian Gimirraa) appear for the first time on the historical scene
> in Assyrian records of the 8th-7th centuries BCE, terrorizing Anatolia,
> Ararat, Media and Assyria.
>
> Media takes on no importance till the 9th,8th and 7th centuries BCE when she
> struggles against Assyria.
>
> Magog, has been suggested by some scholars to be Assyrian mat-Guggu (the
> land of Gog, alluding to Gyges of Lydia), if they are correct, this is a 7th
> century BCE marker.
>
> Meshech, Assyrian Mushki, makes its first appearance historically in
> Assyrian annals of Tiglath-Pileser I (ca. 1100 BCE)

Um, how do I say this?   You're not serious with this are you?  The fact that 
a city
is not otherwise known from extant texts proves that another text which 
mentions it
must be later than the text which first mentioned it or something like that?  
 I am
incredulous.  That's like going into something relatively recent like 
California
history and saying that no one could have mentioned Sacramento before it was
important, so any letter or book which does so, regardless of its reputed 
date, must
be later.  Just because, so far as other extant texts are concerned, some 
city was not
of note is completely irrelevant to whether it was known or not and to 
whether or not
the author (that is, the one who wrote our version of the tradition) knew of 
it or
thought it was of note.  I live in Milpitas, CA.  To date, that's a relatively
insignificant California city.  That doesn't mean that if it gets famous one 
day that
my email mentioning it must have been wrongly dated to today, simply because 
no one
else on the list probably knows of this city.   Let's try logic:

Premise A: The Bible mentions a city that no other known, extant text knows 
of which
dates from the 2nd millennium BC.
Premise B: (the unspoken premise, I won't bother with the Greek term for this 
kind of
argument) No biblical author could possibly know about a city before it's 
attested in
texts from another source.
Conclusion:  Therefore, the biblical texts mentioning this city must be dated 
to the
1st millennium.
I would hope that even without having taken Logic 101 everyone on the list 
can see how
illogical (in the formal sense) this argument is.

Ken Litwak