Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>]

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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