Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

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