Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>]

>By "serious" I take it you mean, one that doesn't want
>to be open to ridicule by suggesting that iron was in
>use before the "bronze-age" and that the skill of iron
>working may have been lost.

No, I mean one who does not state things for which there is no evidence,
and which in fact contradict what evidence there is.

>
>Look if the author of Samuel can clearly state that
>Saul's armour was "bronze" and not be confused 

He didn't say "bronze" - he said (or wrote) "nehoshet", which means copper.
As I wrote, I don't think that he differentiated between "soft" copper and
its "more useful" alloys.

In any case, this is one more case of anachronism - of the later author
assuming the existance of technology which did exist in his day.

(copper
>as you have mentioned being totally useless for armour
>or weaponry), why would the author of an ancient
>narrative like Genesis say that Tubal-cain worked
>iron.

1. Who said that the present narrative of Genesis is "ancient"?
2. As I have already suggested, he might have been using "iron" as a
generic term for all metalworking, since in his (the author's) day
ironworking WAS the most "advanced" form of metalworking.

>The author of Leviticus or Exodus doesn't make this
>mistake he quite clearly writes copper or bronze when
>he means exactly that.

That's right.


>
>History is in a constant state of flux, perhaps more
>now than at any point in the last hundred years, why
>is it ridiculous that iron could have been worked
>pre-bronze age. We didn't credit the Incas with that
>much knowledge a few decades ago, now we know that
>they were capable of detailed and complex astronomy.
>

I agree completly. New evidence is always being turned up, and our theories
have to keep changing to explain the new evidence. However, we do have to
stick to the evidence, or at least not to contradict it. The evidence that
we have today seems to point to a later date of the composition of the
Pentateuch, and to the fact that ironworking was develped after that of
copper and bronze.

>Yours.
>An obviously non-'serious academic' obviously
>ultra-conservative open mind.
>
Don't put yourself down. I certainly didn't intend to. 

Shabbat Shalom.

Yigal
Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.