Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Dear Peter:

Having lived in both predominently rural and predominently urban areas of the 
country, I found out a lot about agriculture just watching TV, even in 
university and industrial cities with well over 100,000 population but 
surrounded by crops: so many advertisements were for fertilizers, tactors, 
combines, insecticides and herbecides, etc. Even among those who were not 
connected with agriculture, they were aware of the agriculture around them.

Now that I live in an urban area, I miss those connections with agriculture.

Was ancient Jerusalem larger than a few tens of thousands at most, many of 
whom still worked their fields around the city? A writer in that era would 
have had to have been pretty dense not to have cogniscence of the agriculture 
around him.

Karl W. Randolph.


----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>

> On 22/06/2004 23:04, Yigal Levin wrote:
> 
> >I once heard Prof. Yehuda Feliks lecture on how many "mistakes" the author
> >of the Song made in his understanding of nature. The way he put it,
> >"Solomon" was a great poet, but he was a city boy who really had no idea
> >what how vinyard worked.
> >
> >Yigal
> >  
> >
> 
> In the light of Harold's reply, I wonder whether the true city boy was 
> "Solomon" or Prof Feliks.
> 
> Bear in mind that Jerusalem at the time the Song was written (almost 
> whenever that might have been) was only a small town by modern standards 
> and probably surrounded by vineyards. Any travel would have been at 
> walking pace, leaving plenty of time to observe the surrounding 
> vineyards and talk to those who worked in them. The author, unless 
> brought up in a very sheltered palace environment, would not have been 
> nearly as unfamiliar with vineyards as city boys today.
> 
> -- 
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
-- 
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