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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Benjamin
  • Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:40:26 +0200

I agree, although there are also limits on using the "it must be someone/somewhere else by the same name" excuse. You mentioned Dan. In Gen. 14:14, Abraham persues Lot's captors "as far as Dan". However the city of Dan, as we know from Joshua, Judges and in fact from extrabiblical references as well, was called Laish or Leshem until it was conquered by the tribe of Dan and renamed after their progenitor. Since the original Dan, ansector of the tribe, was Abraham's great-grandson, the reference (as well as that in Deut. 34:1) must be anachronistic. To claim that "it must be somewhere else called Dan" does not work in this case, since the geographical contexts make it very clear which Dan is meant, and of course that Dan was a well-know city, often used as a geographical reference ("from Dan to Beer-sheba" etc.), and we DO know the biblical toponymy of Israel well enough, as to make it unlikely (albeit not impossible!) that there was another such city which we have never heard about.
Of course, to those who believe that the Torah was written by Moses, who was a prophet, this is no problem. God, who wanted the text to be relevant to people living in future generations, had Moses use a term that they would understand. Most of Moses' contemporaries didn't know the Land that well anyway. To those who do not use "prophecy" as part of their scholarly discourse, the ONLY probable solution is that these passages (at the very least!) were written many generations after Moses and refect the geography of the writer's day (or his concept of HIS past).

There are other examples as well.

Yigal
----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
To: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 4:19 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Benjamin


Yigal:

Not anyone (last paragraph below) but there are
some who so do.

I was in a debate with someone online a couple
of years ago, who made the claim that he had
proof that the Bible was self-contradictory,
because there was a report of Abraham visiting
a place with a certain name, and he had done so
before someone else was born who had the same
name as the place where Abraham visited. He
refused to admit to the possibility that there may
have been at least two people with the same name
with the place named after the first individual. But
as my memory is fading of the incident, I don't
remember the name in Tanakh that was mentioned
(I think it was Midion), nor the name of the person
I debated. For me, the impression I got from the
discussion was that the person I debated thought
that there was only one person with that name,
therefore that Abraham visited a site with the same
name that a later individual carried was evidence
that the Biblical message was garbled.

I have run into similar situations elsewhere.

Similarly, there was a tribe and country in what is now
southern Turkey that had the name of Dan, not to be
confused with the Israelite tribe of Dan, and the Mari
Benjaminites are a different people than Israelite
Benjaminites. The names were reused. Maybe often.

A similar argument is found that because a location
had a name mentioned in Genesis, therefore there was
a town there. Abraham visited Beersheba, there is no
archeological evidence that there was a town there in
Abraham's time, therefore Genesis report is garbled
(despite Genesis' report that indicated that there was
only a well and pastureland at Beersheba in Abraham's
time, no town until later).

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>

Karl,

If by "the claim you mentioned in the paragraph at the bottom of this note"
you mean "the insistance of some scholars that anything in the ANE must be
somehow related to the Bible, and that the "Patriarchal traditions" in the
Bible MUST reflect a "pre-Israelite" reality", than I agree, this claim is
also absurd.

Where I don't think that I agree with you is when your state that "they
assume that any name that is also reported in Tanakh therefore refers to a
Biblical individual is a de facto denial that names may have been reused by
ancient, Semitic peoples".

Do you mean that anyone who thinks that "Abraham" was a real person
automatically denies that there may have been other, unrelated, people who
were also named "Abraham"? Why?

Yigal Levin

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