Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

>Ian, I've moved beyond Kuntillat Ajrud to another line of argument. If you
>have problems with my probability argument,

I don't have problems with it, you do.

>think of it this way. If I
>predict to you all of the winners at the races tomorrow, I think you will
>agree that either I was very lucky or I had inside information. Indeed you
>might decide to try to profit from on my tips for the day after, if you
were
>the betting type. But if I named for you the winners of yesterday's races,
>you wouldn't be very impressed. Gore Vidal has named yesterday's winners.

You insist on avoiding the implication of the example. You cannot know what
you need to know about the genre of the text in order for you to attempt to
apply your probabilities.

>The Book of Kings names, if not the future winners, at least winners which
>according to you the author had no information about. But doesn't that
>suggest that the author did in fact know the real winners?

You are making assumptions about a text and using theose assumptions as
though they had some validity.

>The argument is independent of whether I know the author or his work. It
>applies to any modern work which is based on good (or bad!) research into
>what is known today of this period.

I cited an undated, unknown text. It just so happened that you knew the text
and then assumed dissimilarity of genre (why, I don't know) and lost the
thread of the argument.

>By the way, I am also aware of the book of Judith as well,

I made no assumptions here. You merely asked if there were any examples of a
particular genre in antiquity.

>and have it on my
>computer. Here is the first verse (sorry it's not in proper Greek letters):
>žtouv dwdek€tou tÒv basile°av Naboucodonosor ëv bas°leusen HAssur°wn n
>Nineuj tÞ pçlei tÞ meg€lÛ n ta²v Óm™raiv Arfaxad ëv bas°leusen MÐdwn n
>HEkbat€noiv. Well, weren't Assyria and Nineveh part of Nebuchadnezzar's
>empire? I thought he conquered them. Wouldn't he have taken the title king
>of Assyria? And might he not have been known by this title in neighbouring
>Media? I would not jump to conclusions too quickly based on a single
>apparent error. But OK, this may be a historical novelette, so I'm not
going
>to waste any more bytes trying to argue this one.

Allowing the possibility that Judith could be a "historical novelette", and,
not knowing the genre of Kings, could the latter not also be of a similar
genre to Judith?


Ian