Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 26/07/2004 02:06, MarianneLuban AT aol.com wrote:

> ...  For me, the Hebrews came out of Egypt in waves--not in one 
> fell swoop--but they ultimately had to wait, no matter what were their 
> victories and defeats in the interim, for Egypt to grow so weak that it no longer had 
> any holdings in the Levant before Israel could establish itself as a united 
> kingdom. ... For David Rohl to maintain that the Lebayu of 
> the Amarna Letters is none other than Saul is, in my opinion, a ridiculous 
> assertion
>  

I'm not sure of all the grounds on which you consider Rohl's conclusion 
ridiculous. But there is no contradiction with the notion that Egypt had 
to grow weak. For Rohl puts the rise of Labayu/Saul (whose reign he cuts 
down to just one year as in the Hebrew text) and David into the one 
earlier time when Egypt was weak and unable to assert its authority in 
Canaan, the reign of Akhenaten. In Rohl's reconstruction, David and 
Solomon became too powerful for Egypt to overthrow easily during the 
following chaotic period, but when Solomon died Rameses II (= Shishak) 
took the opportunity first to divide the Israelite kingdom by getting 
his protege Jeroboam (see 1 Kings 11:40) to rebel, and a few years later 
to sack Jerusalem. After that Judah and Israel remained weak until a 
partial revival when Egypt returned to weakness in the Third 
Intermediate Period.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/