Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Sunday 28 March 2004 08:39, Dora Smith wrote:
> Were different parts of the Song of the Sea written at different times?
> Its general style is 12th century.  It contains the oldest and most basic
> version of the story of the death of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea.
>
> Our leader in our bible study class Wednesday said that in those days
> everyone in the Near East, certainly Pharaho's armies, used horsedrawn
> chariots, not rode horses, and that noone rode horses until the 8th
> century. I don't know if this is true.    But I sure would have expected
> Pharaoh's horses to have been mainly pulling chariots - unless the passages
> taht talk about horse and rider actually mean something else or have
> another origin.

Bear in mind that it's also poetry, so the writer of the song could have used 
some poetic license for his/her own reasons, it could very well be that 
"horse and rider" sounded better to the lyricist than "horse and chariot."  
It's a song, not a treatise, so in our analysis we have to treat it as such.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Learning about Christianity from a non-Christian
is like getting a kiss over the telephone.