Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <cctr114 AT it.canterbury.ac.nz>]

Ian wrote:-

>>Sock it to me! Do I understand you correctly? Are really saying that
>>within the Biblical texts there is a historical memory which dates
>>back to around 1200BC?
>
>Bill, if the Arthurian legends can preserve something from the
>Gilgamesh narratives, don't you think it's possible that the biblical
>accounts can preserve something from 1200 BCE? Our problem is to find
>ways based in factual data from the relevant period (such for example
>as the data relevant to the sea peoples who ended up on the coast of
>Palestine) which can contribute to the extraction of what we can get
>out of such texts. Without the external hard data, how can we proceed?

I thought that was what you were saying. In the past you've been
fairly insistent about the unreliability of the biblical texts,
for example, arguing there is no evidence for a United Monarchy. 
I actually don't have a problem with believing there's a good
historical core in the biblical texts, just don't ask me to able
to find it!

Bill Rea, Information Technology Dept., Canterbury  University  \_ 
E-Mail b dot rea at it dot canterbury dot ac dot nz             </   New 
Phone   64-3-364-2331, Fax     64-3-364-2332                   /)  Zealand 
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