Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hallo Ian,
 
> You assume an 11th century document. Why?

Because of the internal yardstick which I legitimately assume on count of
the names appearing in the Balaam-text, identical with those in 1 Samuel.

This is at first glance the best hypothesis one could build out of the
names, before one supposes with you that the writers were simply drunk.

> At the moment I am arguing that it is plainly
> after the period you are considering, as the
> Assyrian name Tarsisi used for the first time
> during the reign of Esarhaddon shows.

Yes, and I showed you that the name of Togarma best fits the Hethite
name-form pointing at an earlier borrowing of the word into the list, than
Neo-Assyrian times. Since Tarshish is much older than its Assyrian name
form, one could assume that the name was already previously in the table
of the nations, and was simply reactualised according to contemporary
orthography.
 

> >Even this doesn´t mean that  a Kittim of the 11th century would have the
> >same geographic meaning.
> 
> When does the name first appear in datable
> sources?

Ian, you seem to oversee the fact that the discussion now going on is
about an ethnonym and not about the city of Kition which began to
represent it by the 10th century.

Sometimes predate geographical names their use in a concrete situation.
Should we limit the use of the term England to the colonisation period of
New England, Jersey to that of New Jersey, and so on, we would arrive to
entirely aberrant conclusions.

Kittim in the Balaam text is unlocalisable out of the context. There is no
ground to assume it on Cyprus as we could do with other mentions of the
name.

It ammusingly occurs that the Phoenician name of Kition is qrthdsht, thus
"new city" of Kition.


All the best,

Bányai Michael