Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

I can see that you did not answer my direct question again, and repeat for
the third time: Give me a precise answer to my question. Do not try to evade
it by a counterattack. The ball is on your part of the field.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Kirk [SMTP:peter_kirk AT sil.org]
> Sent: Friday, 28 January, 2000 05:50
> To:   Biblical Hebrew
> Subject:      Re: conquest etc.
> 
> Dear Niels,
> 
> You didn't wait very long for a response before complaining you didn't 
> receive one. Not all of us are on line all the time or able to respond 
> straight away.
> 
> But I find what you are saying here an offensive caricature of my 
> method. We have a written account of the destructions of certain 
> cities. Try to forget for the moment that this account is in the Bible 
> and suppose that it is on some tablet dug up in Mesopotamia. 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  

        But it is not a clay tablet from ancient Mesopotamia but a
handwritten manuscript from 1008 CE. That makes a difference, right?

> The 
> account does not clearly identify either the time of the destructions 
> or the exact places. 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  
        The biblical account does. The biblical chronology is very specific.

> Someone, maybe centuries ago, suggested (but 
> without any real proof) a possible dating and identification of the 
> cities. Later on archaeologists dug up those cities and found they 
> were not destroyed at those times. Does that make the account 
> necessarily inaccurate? No, all it does is make those suggested 
> identifications inaccurate.
> 
> It is perfectly reasonable for anyone to suggest other 
> identifications. This is apparently what Dr. John Bimson has done, and 
> his scholarship was recognised in the award of a doctorate for his 
> work. If there is some other identification in which the account ties 
> up with the archaeological data, then either the account is 
> historically accurate or it corresponds coincidentally with the data. 
> The latter is unlikely if there are several correspondences, and this 
> will suggest that the account does have some historical value. That is 
> not presumed in advance, but neither is its historicity written off 
> because the first attempt to fit it to the facts has failed.
> 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  
        I know Dr Bimson's book from years ago and found the argument
extremely twisted to use one of the favorite expressions of my critics (like
Dever who will certainly agree with me as far as this is concerned).

> Meanwhile are you really claiming (as you seem to in the middle of a 
> passage where you seem to have become carried away by your rhetoric) 
> that Beitin and el-Jib were founded later than any possible time for 
> Joshua? If so you are directly disagreeing with Rohl's table which 
> shows them both as extant in MB IIB.
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  
        I simply do not care about Rohl. I know the excavation reports as
far as they have been published and stay with them and some accepted
chronology and not something invented or imagined.

>  And not just with Rohl. A.R. 
> Millard writes in "New Bible Dictionary" that "Excavations at el-Jib, 
> some 6 miles north of Jerusalem, during 1956, 1957 and 1959 have 
> revealed remains of cities of the Early and Middle II Bronze Age..." 
> (s.v. Gibeon) and "The modern Tell Beitin... seems to have been 
> established early in the Middle Bronze Age." (s.v. Bethel). Do you 
> actually dispute these data?
> 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  
        Yes, because I read Pritchard's thing and not an article in a
dictionary that is not often quoted in scholarly circles. But try the ABD
for an exchange, or the two archaoelogical dictionaries, the New
Archaeological Excyclopedia of Excavations in the Holy Land, and the Meyers
5 volume one from Oxford (I do not have it here so I cannot give any precise
title).

> Incidentally, I am quite prepared to consider solutions in which it is 
> the Israelite dates which are changed and the Egyptian ones are fixed, 
> rather than Rohl's attempts to redate Egyptian history in a way which 
> conveniently matches the Bible (though he relies on other strong 
> evidence, not just the dates in Kings, for his redating). I just 
> expect good evidence for the traditional dating and not just the sort 
> of gut reaction which one sometimes sees to challenges to long held 
> theories. Rohl and Kitchen disagree, and I will leave the veteran 
> expert and the younger challenger to slug this one out before 
> committing myself.
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  
        Again you evaded my direct question and instead turned to something
you cannot control. I made references to two accepted and acknowledged works
on chronology, Finegan and CANE. Start there instead of asking me to use
time explaining what has been explained before so many times. You can also
start with Landsberger's article on Dark Ages that was published decades ago
and work your way through the discussion. Or you could approach Kenneth
Kitchen, and I can asure you that if there was any chance of moving around
with Egyptian chronology as it has happened here, he would a long time ago
have grasped it. But he is a professional and wants to discuss this in a
professional way. I can recomend his article 'Egyptians and Hebrews, from
Ra'amses to Jericho', in Shmuel Ahituv and Eliezer D. Oren, The Origin of
Early Israel -- Current Debate (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press,
Beersheva, 1997), pp. 65-131, which is a very conservative statement. Or
Ernest S. Frerichs and Leonard H. Lesko, Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence
(Winona Lake, Eisenbrauns, 1997), the last one being only a 100 easygoing
pages, readily accessible.
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  NPL 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  
> Peter Kirk
> 
> 
> ______________________________ Reply Separator
> _________________________________
> Subject: conquest etc.
> Author:  <npl AT teol.ku.dk> at Internet
> Date:    27/01/2000 16:12
> 
> 
> Why does everyone persist in saying that Ai must be et-Tell and then 
> use this as an excuse to rubbish the account in Joshua? There are 
> plenty of other tells in the neighbourhood which could have been the 
> site of the story in Joshua. Rohl and presumably Bimson suggest 
> Khirbet Nisya, which was abandoned at the end of MB IIB. Rohl's table 
> also shows Gibeon, el-Jib as being extant in MB IIB and abandoned at 
> the end of that period. The other sites whose destruction at the end 
> of MB IIB are listed by Rohl are: Jericho; Hebron (el-Khalil); Arad; 
> Debir; Lachish; Hazor; Bethel (Beitin). I cannot confirm these data, 
> but does anyone wish to dispute them?
> 
> Peter Kirk
> 
> 
> 
> Because there are few other tells in the neighborhood that will make an
> Ai. 
> And it is the old game--for people who have in advance decided that the 
> Bible must be true as far as historical events go--if a place can not be a
> 
> place--Biblewise--it is in another place. This trick has ben played over
> and 
> over again. bethel is not Bethel (Beitin), because it was founded later
> than 
> Joshua, Gibeon is probably not Gibeon because it was founded, and Ai is of
> 
> course not Ai because it did not exist anymore. The evidence of the Bible 
> always comes first, and anything else has to adjust to i; it can never be 
> the oppisite, or Peter Kirk mention an example that is different, and 
> finally answer my questions instead of presenting more rhetoric.
> 
> Moving around with chronology is another trick as if ANE chronology is
> such 
> a mess. Read about chronology, the state of the art, e.g. in Finegan or in
> 
> CANE or in other places. There have been black spots and some still
> remains 
> but in general, it can be controlled. So however you prefer it, the Amarna
> 
> period belongs to the 14th century. You can move around with it within a 
> couple of decades, and the picture painted of Palestine in the letters
> from 
> Palestine in the Amarna period does not conform with the one painted by
> the 
> Bible, and so forth.
> 
> And again: What about the challenge: Is Kitchen a radical scholar because
> he 
> will not accept chronologies that moves around with his beloved Egyptians 
> (no irony here) in such a wilfull way?
> 
> I am still waiting for a response.
> 
> NPL
> 
> 
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