Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Banyai AT t-online.de (Michael Banyai)]

Hallo Mr. Somsel,

I can but repeat the same questions:

> What is the basis for wanting
> to retroject this back to the time of the origins of Israel?  Surely it
> reflects a patriarchal scene, but this does not necessitate that it be
> composed early.


Furthermore the description of patriarchal age itself is made possible by the 
survival, of what the writers of the considered to have been patterns typical 
of the patriarchal age, into these later ages. 

The patriarch stories project in fact in a quite anachronistic manner a 
halfnomadic society as surviving in more desertic regions of the Sinai and 
the Arabian peninsula. It is to be pointed that the patriarchs where rather 
something as "displaced sedentary people" seeking new settling land in a 
region where land was already settled than genuine nomadists.

Refferences to the Kasdim, et al, invading Arabia, or of El worship in Teman, 
pushes the date rather into a late period, post 8th century. The most 
probable period might be late Babylonian.

Best regards,

Bányai Michael
Stuttgart