Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Raymond de Hoop <rdehoop AT keyaccess.nl>]

On 02-03-2001 13:17 Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk> wrote:

> It can just as
> easily be turned around to say that the credulous people who accept the
> inscription as genuine, do so because they have already accepted the
> biblical story about David to be history or almost history. I cannot really
> believe that you mean this, because your argument might be understood as a
> recommendation: don't read Garbini! He is no good-one of those liberals whom
> you should never read or pay attention to such negative and dishonest
> persons. Just think of Dever's, Rendburg's and others more or less insane
> attacks on the so-called revisionists.

Dear Peter,

My point was that the arguments put forward that the stele is a forgery are
not solid (at least that it is not forgery is confirmed by George, now), but
would certainly be welcome to those who deny the historicity of this
David-figure. But we may disagree on that. It was certainly not meant to
argue against reading Garbini, I'm sorry if that's the impression.

My second point was that I (following Ian partly) said that "one has to deal
with the text and neither what one wants it to mean, nor what one DOES NOT
WANT it to mean".

With regard to your use of "liberals" and/or "the insane attacks by Dever
c.s.", I prefer to work without labels put on writers and just check their
arguments (so, with regard to the stele I would recommend reading Garbini,
next to Rendsburg).

Finally, with regard to the word divider in Ugaritic, the same can be said
of Aramaic as far as I'm aware. But I do not know why we should leave
Ugaritic out of the argument.

Regards,
Raymond