Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

Scott, there is no word divider between the two words; otherwise words in 
this inscription and many other  - but certainly not all  -- inscriptions are 
sometimes divided by a dot or another sign indicating that they are separate 
from each other.
 
 That this need not always be the case was shown by the occurrence of other 
words or phrases that are written together as are BYTDWD here. The clear 
meaning of the phrase here is not effected  as  is clear from a. two dozen or 
more of occurrence of this very phrase in the HB in the sense of  "house of 
David" b. the use of this same formula BYT...plus name of antoher ruler of 
say an Aramaeic state such as Beit Adini , if memory serves.
  Another extra-biblical exammple of such combination of two words is found 
in the Ammonite Tel Siran inscription: ....MLK   BN(AMN ... the king(of) the 
children of Ammon,
 meaning the the Ammonite people.
 
   There are other examples of such two words combinatioins in the 
inscription.
 
   Some people have a different interpetation of this phrase.
 
   I can not comment on Lemche's position here because I'm not familiar with 
it. It is known that intially he regarded the Beit David inscription as 
fraud, but later changed his mind.
 
  Perhaps others can add to the above.
 
  Uri

Scott Needham <jsn AT hwhome.com> wrote:
Folk:

N.P. Lemche, "'House of David': The Tel Dan Inscription(s)",
_Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition_, ed. Thomas L. Thompson,
2003, pp. 46-67, [and, I guess, with TLT in the 'Biran Killing David'
article some years ago] asserts (1) that the "byt dwd" part of the
inscription actually appears as "bytdwd" and (2)that the two word
usage would in BH carry significantly different implications than the
one word version.

Regarding (1), one specific question: If this is so, why do 99% of the
writers on the stela present the two word version?

Generally: Anyone care to explicate?

Regards and Happy Trails,

Scott Needham
Boulder, Colorado, USA

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>From dwashbur AT nyx.net  Mon May 24 20:43:02 2004
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From: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] question re: Tel Dan stela
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On Monday 24 May 2004 14:50, Scott Needham wrote:
> Folk:
>
> N.P. Lemche, "'House of David': The Tel Dan Inscription(s)",
> _Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition_, ed. Thomas L. Thompson,
> 2003, pp. 46-67, [and, I guess, with TLT in the 'Biran Killing David'
> article some years ago] asserts (1) that the "byt dwd" part of the
> inscription actually appears as "bytdwd" and (2)that the two word
> usage would in BH carry significantly different implications than the
> one word version.
>
> Regarding (1), one specific question: If this is so, why do 99% of the
> writers on the stela present the two word version?

It's generally assumed that the inscription has two words but lacks a 
word-divider symbol between them.  There are profuse explanations for this.

> Generally: Anyone care to explicate?

George Athas is the local expert on the Tel Dan inscription.  He has as much 
info as you could want on his web page.  I don't have the address handy, but 
a google or altavista search under his name and Tel Dan should turn it up 
pretty quickly.

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