Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear LMB,

I'm sorry, have I missed something? Do you have any evidence at all to 
link Jacob with Lab'aya? If so, please could you state it again 
clearly.

This is important because "traditional" chronology places Jacob many 
centuries before Lab'aya. So yes, your thesis does have competition, 
if you can call competition a race between untrained amateurs like 
yours and Olympic medallists. Your "It is the reigning hypothesis" is 
true inside your head only, surely. Unless you can produce any 
evidence, on your "probability scale of 1-10" I can only give zero to 
your hypothesis! Well, if we assume for now that Jacob existed and is 
not a 2nd century BCE fictional character, I suppose he lived sometime 
in the 2nd millennium, which gives him a 1 in 50 chance of fitting 
those 20 years, so I allow 0.2 on your scale of 1-10.

I'm sorry, but your hermeneutical circle looks very much like 
Hypothesis - Hypothesis - Hypothesis, with hypotheses building on top 
of one another but no evidence or data in sight.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: The Hermeneutic Circle
Author:  <barre AT access1.com> at Internet
Date:    07/02/2000 22:27


<snip>

..Further, I have learned we can narrow Lab'aya dates to 1370-1350 which 
would 
place Jacob's fighting years in this span...

<snip>

The hypothesis, with its limited data, is nonetheless an important one for 
the s
imple reason
that it has no competition.  It is the reigning hypothesis, presently by 
default
.  It is also
interpretively useful, for it indicates that we should be looking to the 
Amarna 
age for
patriarchal origins--not in the many others that have been suggested on the 
basi
s of parallel
customs from Nuzi or Genesis 14.  Actually, I guess the thesis does have 
competi
tion.  So
which is more probable and why?...

<snip>

It is hard to be certain?  Is is rare, yea theoretically impossible. So what? 
 O
n a probability
scale of 1-10, we should be constructing on those hypothesis that radiate out 
fr
om 5.
Lemche is only interest in probably 8-10...

<snip>

..It is known as the "hermeneutical circle."

Data - Evidence - Hypothesis - Evidence - Data

<snip>