Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Walter wrote:

>Available at my website (click on the url in my signature line if
>interested) is an article titled "Dating 1 & 2 Chronicles via Archaeological
>Anomalies and Anchronisms."

Dear Walter,

The article seems based on the one anomaly and that is of Tadmor not existing 
in the
Iron Age while Chronicles refers to Tadmor at the time of Solomon, ie in the 
period,
we are led to believe, of the Iron Age.

This problem could easily be explained as a scribal error in a later epoch 
which
became the source text for the surviving copies used.

However, the importance of Tadmor needs to be understood: it was a permanent 
spring
in the middle of the desert. It still produces a high quantity of water, so 
it has
always had the propensity for supporting a sizable community. It's not 
strange that
Tiglath-Pileser I found such a community there circa 1110 BCE. It is strange 
though
to think that, after TPI finished his military exercise, the Aramaeans who 
lived
there didn't return to take up their relatively comfortable life again. This 
doesn't
mean that they built structures of stone in that era.

Note that although the Nabataeans lived in the area around Petra for many 
centuries,
the only structures that survived there were the tombs which were cut into 
the rock.
No public or private dwellings were found until the Roman era.

While Tadmor didn't have the sort of geographic location which allowed the 
cutting
of such tombs it had its very attractive spring and a large oasis which 
guaranteed
(and still guarantee) the necessities of life.

Arab and Aramaean tribes tended not to live in permanent structures. One would
therefore not expect to find traces of such structures in the Iron Age, even 
though
a semi-permanent population almost certainly lived at Tadmor -- despite the 
argument
from silence which says that no Iron Age sherds have been found there.

Returning to the possibility of a scribal error, we are now familiar with the 
fact
that variant traditions of OT/HB texts exist. Such traditions obviously exist 
due to
scribal intervention and have no necessary connection with the writer(s) of 
the
"original" texts concerned. Myers in the opinion you cited seems unaware of 
this
possible explanation for the existence of Tadmor in the text (where Kgs has 
Tamar)
and opts for blaming his hypothesized "Chronicler".

As the difference between <hebr>tmr</> and <hebr>tdmr</> is one consonant, 
this may
not even have been a conscious scribal intervention.


I may even agree that Chronicles is a very late text, but I don't think there 
is any
hope of dating Chronicles through the single mention of Tadmor.


Ian