Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Banyai Michael" <banyai AT t-online.de>]

Dear Walter, 

I reread your message with mixed feelings. I have a certain feeling you
have just sometime during your lifetime just changed the dogma you were
sticking to.

You can not appeal to authority against the common sense. Even if this
were a most respected scholar authority in our field.

Common sense forbids me the idea, that the table of the nations in Genesis
mixes against any ration the names of cities like Alasia (Elisha)
abandoned 1050 and Kition (if we take your acceptance of Kittim), a city
constructed 100 years later.

Common sense forbids the idea of a mix of peoples like Amalek and Kenaz,
and kings´names like of Agog (associated all in 1 Samuel with Sauls reign,
thus again with the 1050ies), disappearing from the political landscape of
later Iron Age and your allusions to some obscure helenistic age
Greek-Kittim (acting against the Assyrians- how grotesque!).

It seems to me you make no halt before any anachronism so long it runs in
your wish direction.

Since, it seems you have an enormous faith into the authority of Josephus,
who is the source of this confusion, identificating Kittim with Kition,
you should take also other Josephus identifications based just on the
"Syrene des Gleichklangs" like his explanation of the Kaphtorites as
Kappadokians.

I for myself am holding with a reasonable Keftjw/Kaptara/Krete.


All the best,

Bányai Michael