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  • From: "Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Additional data on El and Jacob
  • Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 20:52:43 -0500


Thanks for presenting some evidence.

1) tends to suggest that Jacob was some time before the Amarna era and
so before Lab'aya, certainly the name was.

2) doesn't help much with dating.

3): you have made here an important but unjustified assumption, that
Lab'aya was not an Israelite. Even if he was, your argument is only
from silence in Joshua.

Alternative hypothesis (as invited in your "methodology" posting and
also by NPL): Jacob entered Egypt during the reign of Amenemhat III,
perhaps 450 or even 600 years before Lab'ayu! Evidence: see "A Test
of Time" by David Rohl, especially chapter 15 (note that the issue
here is independent of Rohl's controversial redating), also your 18th
century Akkadian Jacob could be our hero. The evidence presented by
Rohl from Tell ed-Daba is relatively new, and I have not seen a
rebuttal of it. I welcome your attempts at falsification.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Additional data on El and Jacob
Author: <barre AT access1.com> at Internet
Date: 08/02/2000 02:01


1) The name "Jacob" is most probably a contraction of Jacob-El, the name
appeari
ng in the
list of places (!) conquered by Thut-mose III in Canaan, in Akkadian of in
the 1
8th century
as Yah-ah-qu-ub-il and the similar name of a Hyksos chieftain as Ya
'aqob-har.
Jacob-El is
though to mean "May El protect."

2) The phrase in Gen 49:24, 'abbir ya'kob may be translated as the "Bull of
Jaco
b," an
epithet commonly ascribed to El in the Ugaritic tablets, here appearing in a
con
text that also
mentions El Shaddai.

3) Jacob took Shechem between almost certainly before Joshua and sometime
after
Lab'aya
since no conflict is recorded in Joshua that would explain their possession
of t
he city.
Otherwise we must presume that Jacob took the city before Lab'aya, lost it
and t
hen some
unknown Israelite regained it again before Joshua. This would also force
Hamor,
the
contemporary of Jacob, into a pre-Lab'aya time frame. This position is
strained
and without
support.




---------------------------
L.M. Barre
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/AncientIsrael
Point Loma, California





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