Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Banyai Michael" <banyai AT t-online.de>]

Joe Baker wrote:
> ON 7 JUNE BANYAI MICHAEL SAID IN REGARD TO A SUGGESTION OF MINE
> <quote> Joe Bakers proposition to see in Herodots story about the
> Phoenician migration from the Erithrean sea (this is the Red sea too!) a
> story about the Hebrews, falls under Occams rasor. It fails to explain how,
> otherwise Herodot totaly ignores the Hebrew, why he should call them
> Phoenicians and so on.
> The Senacheribos story is overtly in all late antique sources an Egyptian
> tradition, not a hebrew one. <quote>
> ++++++++++++++++++
>
> I RESPOND
> Well I did say it was a long shot.
>
> But Herodotos did not totally ignore the Hebrews. Who were the Syrians of
> Palestine?

Well, if you take the Syrians to be Herodots Judeans, than you can not have 
at the same time have them being for Herodot Phoenicians.

> As for King Sanacharibos of the Arabs and Assyrians - where else would the
> name come from? Sanacharibos is a perfect Greek translation of Hebrew
> "snHryb" even better than the LXX's Sennakheros.
>
> Certaintly it didn't come from Egyptian sources as royal inscriptions
> invariable do not name foreign rulers. Nor do they call the people of this
> region Arabs and Assyrians. Instead they use anachronistic generic names
> such as Kharu, Amu, etc. Indeed, given Egyptian spelling of foreign names
> and Herodotos' attempts at reproducing many Egyptian names, if they had
> told Herodotos a name I can not imagine how mangled it would have been.

It surely came directly from a demotic Egyptian tale source. There are 
various demotic historic Egyptian tales preserving the names of Assyrian 
7-th century rulers, such the Pedubastis cyclus or the "Combat for the 
breastplate of Inaros". Take a look in Kitchen. Most stories related by 
late antique Greek or Latin historians are from the unofficial demotic 
historic sources, not from the official proxy monumental data, which we are 
today exclusively using.
We may assume the Egyptians had historical works, not unlike the 
Israelites, which today are completely lost. Manethos surely based his work 
on such "unofficial" sources, much more relyable, since escaping the 
propagandistic moment, and not on the monumental sources.

Best regards,

Banyai Michael