Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Walter Mattfeld" <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com>]

> Jonathan and Walter,
>
> would you use the mentioning of Mycenae in Homer to date Homer's
> poems (remember that the traditional view is 8th century, Mycenae gone for
> 4-500 years; 'revisionist' as some would say dates it even later. Probably
> no one earlier)? Does a place need to exist 'in the flesh' in order to
live
> in a tradition-oral or literary? Are we, e.g. in Europe ignorant of ruined
> places that attract the attention of storytellers and singers and become
> famous places, inhabited by the ghosts of the past, fairies, demons of
> deceased kings etc. etc.? The only necessary thing in order to mention
> Heshbon in a literary piece of work is that this Heshbon must have existed
> as the name of a place, whether a ruin or a still thriving and inhabited
> place. So you cannot really use this kind of material for dating except as
a
> terminus a quo.
>
> NPL

Dear Niels,

As you stated, the place has "to first exist." Tell Hesban (Heshbon) "did
not
exist" before 1200 BCE, so the Exodus, if occurring circa 1540, 1446, or
1250
BCE, possesses, at the very least, "fictional elements."

As you well know, the "latest elements" date a historical composition. If I
am correct in asserting that Madai's Japhethic descent is based on the
Athenian Greek Medus myth, which can be no earlier than the 6th century BCE,
then obviously we have to date the Pentateuch to period after the 1200's and
by the 6th/5th century BCE, allowing for a passage of time, at least a
century or two, maybe more, for the national memory banks to have forgotten
when Heshbon really came into being. The national memory banks would also
have to have a period of time, at least a hundred or two hundred years, to
forget just when the Pelest/Philistines had arrived in Canaan (they having
arrived in the 12th century, ca. 1177 BCE).

I understand that the Pentateuch preserves Pre-Exilic traditions, rather
garbled (some from the early Bronze Age, i.e., Jericho's fallen walls), and
I would hazard "an educated guess" that some of these traditions arose circa
1000 BCE at the earliest, because Isaiah knows some of these Pentateuchal
traditions and parts of his oracles appear to date to the 8th century BCE.
This "educated guess" sees the time of David or Solomon for the formation of
some of the motifs later found in the Pentateuchal narratives, allowing
about 200 years before their appearance in statements by Isaiah, Hosea, and
Amos. It is about 540 years from the Hyksos expulsion (1540 BCE) to the days
of David and Solomon, time enough for the account to become "garbled" into
the
forming Exodus traditions alluded to still later by Isaiah.

So, in conclusion, I understand that the Pentateuch as we have it, is
probably a creation of
the 5th centruy BCE, but preserving some Pre-Exilic traditions, alluded to
by
Isaiah, Hosea and Amos, who in turn must have picked them up from even
earlier times, the Davidic/Solomonic era, I suspect.

Was there a real Exodus ? No ! The Pentateuchal account is fiction as
revealed by archaeology, but it is
ultimately drawing on an Iron Age fiction.

P.S.
In regards to the Homeric epics, I note a reference to a "lake of
Gyges/Gygean lake," as
Gyges lived in the 7th century BCE, this may be a "historical marker" for
the
composition (if not a later interpolation) ?

All the best, Walter

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg
Germany