Biblical Hebrew Forum

["George Athas" <gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au>]

Although I beg to differ with NPL's disassociation of Lab'aya and Shechem, 
his methodology
is quite coherent. In addition to his arguments contra Lloyd Barré's 
hypothesis, let me
say that it's a nice theory, but we have no corroboration for Hamor as an 
historical ruler
of Shechem. Simply doing it on the basis that his name might be Hurrian (it's 
probably
Semitic) and that the Amarna letters contain some Hurrian names is a very 
weak link. Also,
Shechem is mentioned way back in 12th Dynasty Egyptian execration texts in 
MBII. We can
hardly posit that it did not receive its name until LBII in the Amarna 
period. The theory
just doesn't work historically.

Best regards,
George Athas
 Dept of Semitic Studies,
 University of Sydney
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