Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Joel Stucki" <joel AT stucki.ws>]

On 7/1/06, Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com> wrote:
>     The following statement by Joel Stucki is simply wrong:
>
>   ....."Basically anything earlier than the Davidic Monarchy
>   is hopelessly lost to time and lack of records. While there is
>    nothing that would make the biblical story impossible (although
>    there are a few rough spots), there is also nothing to support it...."
>
>     One need not be a fundamentalist, a maximalist or an Israeli
>   nationalist to be familiar with facts that are in flat contradiction to
>   such statements.It is true that people like Yitshak Sapir and others
>   regurgitate such claims.Those who make them do not let facts
>   confuse their pre-established opinions.

There is no text outside the Tanakh that supports the existence of the
people and events described in it before the Monarchy. None at all.
Please list even one reference to such a text. The works you cite
(while I am not familiar with all of them) give contextual clues and
supporting arguments of how the story could have fit inside the known
history of the ancient world. They may also point out places in the
text where events described match nicely with what is known about the
time and place described. But this is only evidence that what they
describe could have happened, not evidence that it did happen.

For the record I believe in the general historicity of the Tanakh. I
would love nothing more than for someone to unearth a copy of the
Torah from 1200 BCE. Such a find would shake the world even more than
the DSS. I would love for someone to find Egyptian records of Moshe,
the exodus and the plagues. But alas these records have not been found
and the support for the biblical claims rests entirely on faith.

Joel Stucki