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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] OT- perspective (was Josiah's book of the Law)
  • Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2005 02:01:18 +0100

On 07/08/2005 01:03, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

On 8/5/05, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:

Dear Yitzhak,


Where is "and the empire that he fought?" Besides building an ivory house,
I don't see any thing that is so different from other kings who didn't
successfully defend against the Assyrian empire.

HH: You seem to be requiring the Bible to give a
certain piece of information to be fair or
complete. But that is a subjective, obviously
debatable position to take.


Besides the following paragraph, I also relate to the comment of subjectivity in my reply to Brian, below.

I am not sure why it is so subjective. If the Bible doesn't provide us with a certain relatively important piece of information regarding a king, it is by
definition incomplete. It may be due to the Biblical editor's subjective
assessments. But essentially, we cannot take the Bible as historically
complete ...


Yitzhak, can you name me any work of ancient or for that matter modern history which is "historically complete", in the sense you require of recording every event within its scope, with no editorial selection being made? As for certain information being "relatively important", are you really in a better position than the editor writing much nearer the time to judge what was important to his audience? Or are you just dreaming up some idealistic modern standards for history writing which in fact no one has ever followed?

James may have claimed that Kings and Chronicles are complete, but I don't, at least in the sense you seem to require. Indeed it is easy to prove that neither of them is - because both include events omitted in the other. Anyway I don't think James meant completeness in quite the sense you seem to, that the editor is not permitted to be selective. But incompleteness does not imply unreliability or historical worthlessness.

...

It is in light of this extreme belief in the uselessness of
scholarship that the Battle
of Qarqar should be viewed. A battle by Ahab against the Assyrian empire is a
signficant event. ...


To whom? How do you know? And what do you know about what really happened, and how the Battle of Qarqar might be related to the battle of Ramoth Gilead (1 Kings 22) and Jehu's revolt? Perhaps we do have an account in the Bible, but told from a different perspective, and one which perhaps chose to keep quiet about Jehu being an Assyrian vassal. Perhaps the Assyrians as well as Mesha were a bit confused between Ahab and his son - perhaps because something was happening that we don't entirely understand. There are so many uncertainties here that we really cannot assume that there is a conflict between the Bible and Assyrian records here.

... But Read would have me believe that the Bible is so complete
that a "fragment" of the Assyrian king relating to the battle will
teach me nothing
about Israelite history but only about Assyrian history. For Read,
Israelite history
is represented faithfully, completely, and honestly by the Bible. And
it is in light
of this sweeping definition of completeness, that the absence of the
Battle of Qarqar
should be viewed.


If sweeping definitions of completeness are to be criticised, perhaps you should look more carefully at your own one.

... In fact, in 2 Kings 3:5 the word "kmwt" (as opposed to
")xry") is
used: "As Ahab died," which is ambiguous. It could mean after, but it
could also
mean "in Ahab's last days." It almost appears as if the author of 3:5 wants to make the point that the revolt occured after Ahab died, but can't, because he realizes it did not, so he attempts to gloss it over. And if we now
ask "why did
he feel the need to mark it after Ahab died," verses 1 Kings 21:28-29 come to mind.


To speculate here, I wonder if Ahab's death was not in fact as sudden as it seems in 1 Kings 22, if perhaps he was seriously wounded but didn't die for some time, and so continued to be reckoned as king while his son Joram was reigning in practice (and officially co-regent) - and fighting against Moab and perhaps at Qarqar. On this basis KMWT could mean "As he was dying".

So the question is not "is the prophecy of 1 Kings 21:28-29 fulfilled
even without the
mention of Mesha's revolt." The prophecy likely relates to not one
evil, but to all the
"evils" that would lead to the fall of Ahab's house, and this includes
the dissolution of
his empire, and the revolt of Mesha. ...


1 Kings 21:17-24 describe the disaster prophesied for Ahab's house, which in v.29 is delayed until after Ahab's death. This is not a prophecy of military defeat or the breakup of his kingdom, but a very specific prophecy that all of his descendants would be put to death - which was fulfilled at the time of Jehu's revolt. So there is no conflict here with the revolt of Moab being before Ahab's death.

... Of course, claiming that the
prophecy was fulfilled
anyway is a claim without supporting evidence. The Bible says events
that fulfilled
the prophecy happened later, but we cannot confirm it, especially in
light of the
Mesha stele. ...


Well, we cannot confirm, apart from the Bible, that all of Ahab's descendants were put to death, but the Mesha stele has nothing to do with it.

... It is even worse to try to make a comment based on the length of reign, accepting the length of reign given in the book of Kings as
authoritative and
hence dismissing the Mesha stele. The Mesha stele is more
authoritative for this
issue than the figure of length of reign given in the Bible, and the
reign lengths in the
Bible are problematic anyway and at times are at odds with one another.


Thiele's work on these reign lengths in the Bible has demonstrated that they give a consistent picture.

...

On 8/5/05, Peter Kirk wrote:

How about Ramesses II's records of his "victory" at Kadesh, ...


...

And even so, that is only proving that it is not reliable. If Ramesses II
lies
about his loss at Qadesh and describes it as a victory, then the Ramesseside
inscriptions are "complete" in the sense they also tell us about the failings
of
the king. They are just not reliable, in that they don't reliably describe
the
outcome. ...


No, it doesn't prove that. It proves rather that Ramesses II rewrote history to glorify himself. He certainly didn't record every last detail of his campaigns. I am sure that he omitted minor defeats entirely, while exaggerating similarly minor victories into major ones. Qadesh was so major that he couldn't simply ignore it, so he recast it as a victory. That has always been the way of absolute rulers, from before Ramesses until today. Indeed even of not so absolute rulers - even modern democracies celebrate and build monuments to their victories like WWII but try to forget their defeats like Vietnam. It was not the way of the biblical authors, for reasons that we can only speculate about - but part of the difference is that the Bible books were not rulers' monumental inscriptions but accounts probably originating from outside the royal court - so the modern analogy might be to popular literature and Hollywood, which have not painted past presidents as all-conquering heroes or ignored Vietnam.

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





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