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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Yahwism (was: their altar)
  • Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:38:01 +0000

On 10/03/2005 06:04, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

Peter,

Thank you very much for the websites.

The identification of the site as a trading center seems
to me odd because I do not know what merchants or an innkeeper or any type of person who would operate such a trading center would have had to do with such writing. ...


This seems to be based on some presuppositions about who was likely to have been literate, in a society for which we have no other evidence of literacy. But (from my limited understanding) literacy in Mesopotamia was very much an activity of traders, and a high proportion of surviving tablets are records of trading transactions. And we know that Semitic miners in the Egyptian mines at Serabit-el-Khadim, not very far from Kuntillet Ajrud, were literate, several centuries earlier. So your apparent assumption that writing was only for the royal establishment is baseless.

...

The suggestion that the pictures allow us to conclude there was syncretism because they show Egyptian gods
is far fetched. There is no reason to suppose Egyptian gods are involved rather than Baal or Yahweh, especially
in light of the text. ...


On this point I am only repeating what was said in one of the papers I pointed you to, based on an Internet search.

...

Your other points seem to center around the
comparison between use of D material from Kings and
use of J material. If we identify that Kings has
a theological aim in the book to prove that "King
David acted in perfect religious faith to Yahweh and
hence Yahweh preserved his royal line for generations
to come," one cannot now accept historical statements
that seem to have behind them only this theological
aim. To make sure of this we might suggest that any
claim of the book of Kings may be tested for internal
consistency. By this, we might suggest that since
Solomon is said to have had idols in Jerusalem, we
cannot be sure he built the Temple to Yahweh. That
claim seems to overlap the theological aim of Kings
and yet is internally inconsistent with the "idols"
factoid. ...


Your point here is not entirely clear. I would hold that small inconsistencies in Kings suggest that the author was faithfully (although maybe selectively) reproducing sources and putting a theological spin on them - and that the same is very likely true of the Pentateuch. Thus, if we can find some historically useful material in J, we can find similarly useful material in an underlying layer of Kings, perhaps after stripping off some layers of obvious editorial comment like 1 Kings 15:11,14. But with Kings as with the Pentateuch, such analysis is necessarily speculative and so its results are necessarily uncertain. But I am not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with this approach to Kings.

...

The Mesha stele is ambiguous. Viewed in light
of the book of Kings, one may suggest worship of
Yahweh alone. Viewed in light of contemporaneous
inscriptions, one may suggest that the Temple
was to Yahweh, but Baal and Asherah may have been present there as well. ...


I have no quarrel with this as a tentative suggestion, which can be neither confirmed nor denied on current evidence. I would personally be surprised if Baal and Asherah were in Solomon's Temple from the start, but even according to Kings there seem to have been other gods there by the time of Ahaz, and specifically an Asherah image in the time of Manasseh. And I accept that this may have started much earlier, with Kings keeping silent either from ignorance or because it suited an overall picture.

... My final conclusion is not: J lived at Kuntillet Ajrud, but rather: There is
no reason that Kuntillet Ajrud should be viewed in opposition to the established
religion of the time.


OK, but I would also say that the opposite, that there is no reason that Kuntillet Ajrud should be assumed to represent the established religion of the time. There is simply insufficient evidence either way.

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



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