Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>]

Dear Niels,

I'm not sure what direct question you wanted me to answer. The only 
question in your posting was:

     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 took this as a rhetorical question, but if you insist on an answer, 
the answer is, No. I respect Kitchen, but any scholar needs to be 
prepared to see his theories challenged and to answer them on the 
basis of evidence rather than emotion. I have not seen reasoned 
answers by Kitchen to Rohl's theories, but maybe I have not looked in 
the right place. I have not seen reasoned answers by you to my 
hypotheses, but I am still hoping to receive them.

See some further comments below.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re: conquest etc.
Author:  <npl AT teol.ku.dk> at Internet
Date:    27/01/2000 23:25


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?

PK: Why? For a start, we also have extracts dating back as far as 1st 
century BCE (? - Qumran) and a complete translation from the 4th 
century CE (LXX). There might be some arguments for the greater 
reliability of a contemporary clay tablet, but I didn't say a 
contemporary record, I was thinking also of those tablets e.g. of 
Gilgamesh which were copied and recopied, also translated for 
millennia just like Biblical manuscripts. All evidence needs to be 
examined on its merits.

> 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.

PK: The Biblical chronology, as Walter has pointed out, is very 
specific in dating the Exodus and Conquest long before the 13th 
century BCE. This dating, and identifications like Ai = et-Tell, are 
based on 19th century speculation rather than Biblical data.

<snip>

>  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).

PK: I, like you, do not have these works at hand, and so I cannot 
quote them. But I did happen to have these articles by Millard, who is 
a colleague of Kitchen at Liverpool University. Millard refers to 
works by Pritchard dated 1959-1961 (and no others) in the bibliography 
of his article on Gibeon. Has Pritchard changed his opinion in more 
recent works? Millard had nothing to gain by inventing Middle Bronze 
evidence as he was looking for evidence of a Late Bronze conquest.

PK: May I ask you a question? Have you actually recently read the 
archaeological reports on Gibeon and Bethel? Or are you relying on a 
confused memory that these sites do not support the Bible story 
because there is little or no Late Bronze occupation of these sites? 
Remember that I am talking about Middle Bronze. Others on this list 
are suggesting Late Bronze for the conquest. Please try to keep this 
distinction clear in your mind.

PK: As for the further literature you cite, I would love to read it, 
but I doubt if there are any copies here in Azerbaijan. Maybe sometime 
I will have time to go into this in more detail.

Peter Kirk