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  • From: Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>
  • To: MarianneLuban AT aol.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Akhenaten and the Hebrew Religion
  • Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 14:30:20 -0400


On Thursday, July 22, 2004, at 01:48 PM, MarianneLuban AT aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 7/22/2004 9:33:41 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
dwashbur AT nyx.net writes:


Therefore, if the toponym
"Raamses" is an anachronism in Genesis, it can just as well be in Exodus.
[snip]

Why does it have to be an anachronism? Not all cities were named after
Pharaohs, and I see no reason why it couldn't have been a place name before
a
Pharaoh adopted it. This is another example of how certain assumptions slip

subtly into our research...


True. Not all cities were named after pharaohs. But there is no evidence of
any place called "Raamses" (or any toponym even close) in Egypt before the
time of Ramesses II, who built the great city "Per-Ramesses-Meryamun" in the
eastern Delta. And Egyptian texts, mentioning hundreds of cities, provinces,
nomes, etc., go back thousands of years from the Common Era. So it is not a mere
assumption. Certain areas all over the world once went by other
designations. In fact, the Bible mentions some places as once having been known by a
different name. Some people (but not Bible scholars) still cling to the notion
that the Torah was written by Moses. And yet the toponym "Zoan" is mentioned
there. Zoan is Tanis, the first building known there being dated to the time of
Psusennes I (ca. 1039--991 BCE), replacing the abandoned
Per-Ramesses-Meryamun as a pharaonic capital of Lower Egypt and recycling many of the building
materials from that site.

Marianne, let me put a question to you: how do we know that biblical Zoan is Tanis/San el-Hagar? Apart from the assumption that the references must be to the capital of Ramesside Egypt, I mean?


Therefore, if Moses knew about Tanis, he would have
needed to exist about the same time that Solomon built the Jerusalem temple.
Even if Moses did write the Pentateuch--or at least some of it--redactions are
obvious. I give an example of one thing that can hardly have been known so
certainly at the time Bible scholars believe the Torah was written (in
exile)--and that is the construction of the Ark of the Covenant and its accoutrements.
These correspond exactly to shrines and offering tables known from Dynastic
Egypt-- down to the smallest detail. Even to the silver tenons that were
employed to hold the wooden elements together. How Jews in an era long past the
pharaonic period could have known about such details--outside of Egypt--is
something to consider.
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