Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 02/02/2004 04:09, Dora Smith wrote:

> Someone posted this book excerpt to another list I'm on.
>
>  
>
> > > THE ISRAELITES IN HISTORY AND TRADITION
> > > by Niels Peter Lemche (c) 1998
> > >      
> > Page 95
> >
> > ...
> >    
>
> I don't know what to think of Lemche or the thoroughness of his research.
> It is news to me that anyone has been searching for a temple at Shiloh;  I
> always understood the shrine at Shiloh to be only a shrine.
>
>  
This seems to be typical of certain kinds of scholarship. One scholar 
erects a theory that there was a permanent and impressive temple at 
Shiloh although the records don't say there was. Another demolishes this 
theory and then presumes that he has discredited the account which 
didn't support the theory in the first place. Anyway it is extremely 
hazardous to conclude anything from negative evidence in archaeology, 
failure to find something. There are so many reasons why evidence can 
have disappeared, or not be in the expected place.

Prof Lemche was on this list a few years ago. Maybe he is still lurking. 
I would of course be interested to hear his response to my criticism.

> The actual passages as translated in the New Revised Standard Version DO
> refer to a temple there, but one of the passages also calls it a tent of
> meeting, and my Access Bible interprets this to mean the "temple" was a
> mobile tent shrine.
>
> What Hebrew word is used, how can it be interpreted, and what light can
> anyone shed on whether the structure was a tent or a temple?
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Jeremiah 4:12; Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name
> dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people
> Israel.  Notes explain that Shiloh was a shrine in the northern kingdom that
> was destroyed by the Philistines.
>
>  
7:12 actually, describes Shiloh as a MAQOM "place", nothing more speific.

> ...
> Note on this says "Elkanah's annual pilgrimage to the temple of Yahweh or
> house of the Lord (v. 7) in Shiloh..."
>
>  
1 Sam 1:7 BEYT-YHWH "house of the Lord" (cf. 2 Sam 12:20 before the 
building of the temple), but BAYIT does not always mean a permanent 
house, it can refer to a tent e.g. Gen 27:15. Anyway, even if this was a 
regular BAYIT it would have been built of mud brick and so its remains 
would be undetectable, or indistinguishable from those of dwelling 
houses, after 3000 years.

> Now Eli was very old.  He heard all that his sons were doing to all Israel,
> an dhow they lay with the women who served at the entrance to the tent of
> meeting. ...
This is 1 Sam 2:22, and the shrine is described as 'OHEL MO`ED "tent of 
meeting", the same term regularly used for the tabernacle which was 
transported through the desert in Moses' time. This clearly implies that 
the author identifies the Shiloh shrine with that tent. Of course the 
tent might have been partly replaced by a more permanent structure, but 
the text doesn't say that it had been.

> ...
> 3:3:  And Samuel was lying down n the temple of the Lord, where the ark of
> God was.  Note on this says, "Samuel's bed was in the temple near the inner
> sanctuary where the ark of God was kept.  "
>  

Here, also 1:9, HEYKAL "temple" is used, but this word alone doesn't 
tell us what kind of building it was.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/