Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

Joe Baker <joebaker AT cygnus.uwa.edu.au> wrote:inter alia, in a very 
interesting mail:


".... the exploits of a small group of Israelites who returned from
Egypt to join their fellow indigenous Israelites in the highlands......"

Albright and T. Meek, though different in their views of Early Israel, both 
suggested that not all Hebrews went down to Egypt. The latter also assumes, 
based on some verses in Exodus, tha those who returned from there were small 
in number.

I wonder on what is your suggestion based? It opens various possibilities,  
for  instance that Merenptah's mention of landless Israel refers to those 
groups., rather than to those who returned from Egypt.
   

 You also wrote: 

"Are people on this list aware of Professor Manfred Görg's article "Israel 
inHieroglyphen" in Biblischen Notizen 106 (2001) 21-27? Ifrom an inscription 
written during the mid 18th dynasty (c. time of
Amenhotep 2), with the writing of the name Israel following the Middle
Kingdom use of 3 for r. That is, the inscription may mention Israel some 150
years before the inscription of Merenptah...."

Has this been confirmed or commented on by any other Egyptologist?


Regards 
Joe Baker ===========\
Perth |
Western Australia ===/


Uri
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Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 11:03:36 -0500
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From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Isaiah 53 read within the book as a whole
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Dear Liz,

>  And I would expect that
>>  the case was similar with the Babylonian codes.
>Nope, nothing found. We have thousands and thousands of court cases
>and only a random few accidentally correspond with what is written
>in the codes.

HH: I have not read all these court cases and tried to compare them 
with the law codes, and I have heard that there is a lot of 
disagreement. This fact may not change what I am saying. The Middle 
Assyrian and Babylonian laws generally will reflect the legal 
structure of the societies that produced them. If a lawgiver 
authorized a law code, that does not mean that judicial decisions 
fifty years afterwards will necessarily reflect that code. Time can 
bring changes in law rather quickly. It is probably hard for us to 
date a judicial decision precisely in relation to a law code.

HH: Modern society often cites the Babylonian and Assyrian laws in a 
diachronic treatment of issues such as woman's rights, treatment of 
infants, punishment of crimes, and treatment of slaves. It is always 
assumed that these law codes reflect the mores and laws of those 
societies.

>Those laws don't come
>>  out of nowhere.
>Of course not, they are written by scribes in scribal schools.
>Their form "if a man does X, then Y should occur" corresponds
>to the format of other scribal works, like medical works.
>If a woman has twins, and one has the left ear larger than the
>right, then there will be a drought. The one is a scribal medical
>treatise, the other a scribal treatise on justice.

HH: But it seems that you may be too flippant. The scribes were not 
free to make up anything they wanted, and they would probably not 
want to do that. Especially if a law code were produced under the 
name of a king, the king would want to have laws that reflected 
reality. And if the pagans believed in their gods, which they 
apparently did, they would want to honor their gods with proper laws. 
Even the magical tablets reflect a complex set of regulations about 
reading livers and such practices. The scribes did not just write 
down whatever came to mind.

>No doubt in Israel many specific laws were developed
>>  that were not in the Mosaic code to begin with. But the OT revelation
>>  suggests that God intended Israel to live by the laws that He gave.
>>  Whatever the situation may have been in Mesopotamia, in Israel there
>>  was a real God at work. There was a true theocracy, and the laws
>>  provided specific legal guidance and expectations.
>
>Well, Harold, I admire your faith. My opinion is that Israel
>did not differ from her neighbors. To say the YHWH wanted the
>laws obeyed is no different to me than Ahura Mazda saying that
>he wanted his laws obeyed. It is different tho than the laws
>of Huammurabi. Those laws were not given by Shamash. They were
>simply there. This suggests a Persian setting for the OT laws,
>although the format if ... then is certainly Mesopotamian.

HH: One of the major teachings of the OT is that Yahweh is the one 
true God who created the world and that pagan gods are just lifeless 
idols. I believe that message. The OT shows Yahweh intimately 
involved with the national life of Israel, even on the level of 
individuals. It teaches that God Himself revealed the laws to Moses. 
So He would see whether they were being observed or not, and if they 
were not, then the curses of Deuteronomy 28 would fall on the nation 
and its individuals. So there was a great deal of incentive for 
judges to follow the laws.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard