Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>Ian again you are saying
>
><quote>
>That there is no hard evidence for a Judah before the time of Hezekiah
>roughly.
>
>That the first evidence for a Judah springs from the time of the demise the
>Israelite state.
></quote>
>
>It is good to see you now qualify such statement by the use of "roughly" as
>I have several times before have had to correct you.

It's nice of you, Joe, to correct me for the severalth time. In fact you
have to my memory mentioned these items once, which had the same effect as
it does now of demonstrating the basic correctness of the information that
the first evidence for a Judah springs from the time of the Israelite state.
Nice of you to note that I had qualified my statement, because it rendered
your "correction" useless. You should have understood that. Perhaps I was
mindreading when I put in the "roughly" just to thwart your attempts at
clarifying the fact that Judah does in fact spring into history a generation
before Hezekiah.

>As you know in 701 Sennacherib mentions Hezekiah (Hazaqiau of Yaudi).
>But earlier, in 734, Tiglathpileser records the tribute of Yauahaz of Yaudi
>(the geographic order in this tribute list shows that Yaudi is Judah). This
>ruler can be identified as the Biblical Ahaz father of Hezekiah.
>There is also a seal of "'Hz, [son of] Yhwtm, mlk of Yhdh". This can only
be
>the Biblical Ahaz son of Jotham.

The seal itself shows nothing of the power situation in Palestine

>So we now have confirmation of a kingdom of Judah and proof of the names of
>kings extending back at least two generations from Hezekiah (and of course
>we have contemporary mentions of Manasseh and Jehoiachin).

Naturally the thesis stands, ie Judah didn't come to the fore until the end
was upon Samaria. It might have been nice to produce something out of the
hat like a ribbone of Rehoboam or something of that ilk to get us into an
important Judean kingdom at the height of Israel.

>And this is only for Judah, in Israel we have Omri, Ahab 853, Jehu 841,
>Jehoash 796, Menahem 738, Pekah 732 and Hoshea 732. So 11 kings mentioned
in
>contemporary inscriptions,

Precisely. Israel is a well attested state. If Joe you had been following
the thread you would have known what it was about. The problem is that Judah
is not a well attested state. The notion of the two kingdoms in tandem is
not supported by the evidence. In the tenth/ninth centuries Israel had
direct access to Kuntillat Ajrud (the argumentation is in the archives). The
"divided monarchy" doesn't get a show from the archaeological record.

I get the idea, Joe, that you seem to have the idea that the only
alternative idea to the true and faithful record of the histories is simple
making it up.


Ian


>from Moab, Assyria and Babylon, match the
>Biblical record. Indeed these inscriptions only name kings of Israel and
>Judah known from the Biblical record. Not one of them names a king who is
>not mentioned in the Book of Kings. 11 out of 11 is good odds (with a
>possibility of increasing this if the Tell Dan stela is correctly
>translated, and several seals referring to servants of people whose names
>are the same as Biblical kings).
>
>So essentially contemporary inscription show the accuracy of the King list
>within the book of Kings. Given this, what is the odds that during the
>reigns of Omri and Ahab a king of Judah named Jehoshaphat ruled from
>Jerusalem. Surely it is not zero? I would say it was highly likely.