Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Bailey <jonathan.bailey AT gmx.de>]

---------- Original Message ----------

>Im not sure how such could be verified or falsified Jonathan.  How would you
>know the answer to this question even if there was neutral evidence?  (which
>there isnt).  How could the "Joshua" conquest (!!!!!!) be coordinated with
>the Habiru invasion????  Im just a bit confused as to how the Habiru and
>Joshua could possibly be tied together.

I am just looking for plausibility and possibility, not proof. I am not 
aiming to change
the way we look at the history of the 14th century levant. I am just looking 
into the
possibility that there is a connection because one historical (albeit 
primarily
theological) document describes a series events that would have to leave 
massive
marks on the region (the Joshua campaign) while the Amarna letters don't 
mention it.
So I thought that perhaps we should look for signs of Joshua's events in 
names that
we find at Amarna. The urge to tie them together came from the fact that we 
don't
know much about the Habiru, yet they are splattered all over the Amarna 
letters. They
were a major event, Joshua was a major event, so perhaps they are related.

Also a possibility of connection could be that both events have a wide 
variety of
"roles". What I mean is, Joshua apparently had a huge campaign with almost
unlimited victories, yet we see upon his death the Israelite tribes that 
remained behind
him being overrun by the enemies that he supposedly wiped from the face of the
earth, and later "rebelling" from their canaanite masters. Also, the conflict 
between
the Israelites and the enemy tribes took generations, with nobody ever 
gaining a
decisive upper hand for any length of time and the result was the situation 
described
in the book of Judges. Now we have in the Amarna letters these Habiru who at 
times
are described as taking massive victories. The phrase "and if you don't send 
men, ALL
YOUR CITIES will belong to the Habiru" is common in the Amarna letters, while 
it
would seem that the Habiru invasion is actually an uprising. What I am saying 
is, both
Joshua/Judges and Amarna are describing "an invasion" by people who have been 
in
the area for generations and were at least in some places ruled by the 
Canaanites.

A last point in common is the ayn beth resh continuity.

>>Could it be that Amarna does not mention Israelites because the Amarna
>>Akkadian/Canaanite word for "Israelite" is "Hebrew"/"Habiru"? Could it be 
>>that
>>Philistines are not mentioned in Amarna because that is just not what they
>called
>>themselves? If these two "can it be"s are answerable in the affirmative,
>then do the
>>records of the conquests and peoples from Amarna line up with the accounts 
>>in
>>Joshua and Judges?

>Could it be that the Habiru have absolutely nothing at all to do with
>Joshua?  Could it be that what you are comparing here are totally unrelated?
>I dont see the connection and I dont think there is one.  But I cant falsify
>your supposition because there is no way to falsify a negative.

Of course it could be that they are unrelated. Lots of things could be. We 
are looking
at a small number of dirty clay tablets describing events over 3000 years 
old. I just
wanted to know if it could be that they were related.

Now you could falsify the idea by connecting the Habiru definitively with a 
non-Israelite
tribe. You could definitively protray the Habiru as a strictly domestic 
uprising with no
"invasion" qualities by providing convincing arguments that downsize the 
scale of
Habiru activities and make the letters that portray that Habiru as an 
apokalyptic army
seem better to fit a few angry peasants. Or you could make a plausible Karl 
Marx style
mega peasant revolution that fits the tone of the letters. My impression from 
the
letters is that the Habiru thing was pretty big. You could destroy that 
impression.

But these are all ideas for falsification. Falsification would basically 
require conjecture
from you that counters the conjecture from me. At least that is what 
falsification
would be in our case, seeing as true falsification isn't possible here, 
because there
isn't anything to falsify. I am just conjecturing and I wanted opinions on 
the rationality
of the conjecture, though based on textual references, names, and dates, 
rather than
the Swami Prabhupada silliness that I got as a response from Barré. At any 
rate, true
falsification is really only possible for all of a half a percent of what we 
do here
because of our limited knowledge.

At any rate, Jim, though it is obvious that you think I am totally off in 
left field (which I
may well be), I appreciate your giving me an on the level response, rather 
than the
inane missive from Mr. Barré or the sentence fragment from NPL which served
neither to inform nor set me straight (though I see now that he directed me 
to some
books for further reading in another post, which I appreciate).




"If there are many wisemen in a city, this means that the city will soon 
fall."
Babylonian proverb

Jonathan Bailey
Hochschule für Jüdische Studien
Heidelberg
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Column/9707/index.html