Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>]

> p with the Rohl material.
> 
> Thank you, Ian. I agree that Rohl's name identifications are 
> speculative and prove little. But, leaving aside the matters of names 
> and of absolute dates, there is still Rohl's basic thesis identifying 
> the Canaan of the books of Samuel with that of the Amarna age. I have 
> already tried to make that work. It is now up to others to falisfy 
> this. Can you do so? Note that to falsify a hypothesis you need to do 
> more than cast doubt on the evidence in its favour; you need to 
> produce evidence which clearly contradicts it. 
> 
        No, Peter, this does not make sense. Münchhausen proposed the Moon
to be a green cheese. Who could say that he was wrong before Armstrong
arrived there? There is no obligation to find evidence to disprove a
hypothesis that has no evidence to support it exept wild speculation. This
is the essence of the Popper.approach to science that has been advocated so
many times on this list and elsewhere; or as Liverani--one of Ian's and my
favourites--put it more then twenty years ago: 'I fell no obligation to
answer worng questions by other people'. It is a waste of time. As far as I
understand, Rohl has not produced anything that looks like evidence based on
the Amarna archive. There is accordingly no reason to waste time of refuting
his speculations. Th Amarna period is not one about which it is allowed to
speculate wildly. It is one of the periods on pre-classical times about
which we know the most (but of course not all). It has been heavily studied
by many author--the literaure is massive, and this is also relevant to the
Amarna letters. Rainey, in his recent work on the language devoted 70 peges
to the literature about these letters, and claims his list to be no way
exhaustive, Heintz' bibliographies are even more complete. So why should we
pay attention to wild speculations from a person who has never obtained any
credibility of any kind among our fraternity? If Rohl got into a seriopus
dialogue with the people he seemingly is opposition to, the case may be
different. To go after Rohl in any serious way is at the present wild goose
hunting.

        NPL

          
> That evidence I have 
> not yet seen.
> 
> Peter Kirk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Try and make Rohl's theories work based on the data that we have from 
> Mesopotamia read in the context of the Amarna letters providing a solid 
> synchronization between the Amarna age and Ashur-uballit I & Burna-buriash
> II.
> 
> 
> Ian
> 
>