Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 05/11/2005 16:37, Yigal Levin wrote:

> Karl, now you're back to advocating a 15th century Exodus. There is no 
> reason to think that the author of Exodus had ever heard of the so-called 
> "Hyksos". And that, as I wrote before, the real issue - what the author of 
> Exodus intended his readers to think about the midwives, not who we, with 
> our "understanding" of "real history" think they might have been.
>
>  
I don't want to defend Karl's Hyksos idea. But your alternative picture 
seems to be that the author of Exodus knew little about the real Egypt 
was writing from imagination about conditions there. That speculative 
position would have significant implications on the names - although 
possibly in either way: one might argue that an author ignorant of real 
Egyptian names would have given Hebrew names to Egyptian as well as 
Israelite characters; or that he or she would have given clearly foreign 
looking names (even if not real Egyptian ones) to non-Israelites and so 
the Israelite names imply that the midwives were Israelite.

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