Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Stoney Brier:
 
[Part 2 of 2]
 
5.  You wrote:  “Like I said, the 1st millennium's a long time. When did 
Assyria
 start to become 'hated'?”
 
Assyria started its unrelenting attacks on Israel in the 9th century BCE.  
Assyria’s murderous attacks and oppression vis-à-vis the Hebrews did not stop 
until the Babylonians totally destroyed Assyria in the late 7th century BCE.
 
No 1st millennium BCE Hebrew would portray 3 of the 4 beloved Matriarchs as 
coming from the upper Euphrates River, because to the 1st millennium BCE 
Hebrews, the upper Euphrates River area meant the hated Assyrians.
 
6.  You wrote (quoting me first):  “JS6.  No one in the 1st millennium BCE 
remembered detailed information about the Hurrians and Hittites in their 
prime, 
but it's right there in the received text of the Patriarchal narratives.
 SB: I'll defer to the archaeologists on this one. I think they'll give
 you some argument.”
 
The Hittites went extinct as a people prior to the beginning of the 1st 
millennium BCE.  How on earth could a 1st millennium BCE Hebrew come up with 
the 
following choice invective against the long-extinct Hittites:
 
“Rebekah said to Isaac, ‘I am disgusted with my life because of the Hittite 
women.’”  Genesis 27: 46 (JPS1985)
 
That’s vintage mid-2nd millennium BCE thought all the way.
 
The only part of the Bible that mentions the Hurrians/“Horites” is the 
Patriarchal narratives.  That’s because the Hurrians went extinct long before 
the 
beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, and no 1st millennium BCE Hebrews knew 
or 
cared a fig about the long-extinct Hurrians.
 
The heyday of both the Hittites and the Hurrians was, you guessed it, the 
mid-14th century BCE. 
 
7.  Are you beginning to see why Yitzhak Sapir says that no one except a “
fundamentalist” is permitted to question the 100-year-old Wellhausen JEPD 
theory 
that the Patriarchal narratives are fiction ginned up by four or more 
southern 
Hebrew authors in the mid-1st millennium BCE?  Can you imagine what would 
happen if a non-fundamentalist were permitted to question that 100-year-old 
Wellhausen JEPD theory of the case?  Every story in the Patriarchal 
narratives 
literally reeks of the well-documented secular history of the mid-14th 
century 
BCE, which in my controversial view is the historical Patriarchal Age.  
Meanwhile, no mainstream secular academic scholar in the West has published 
anything on 
that subject for the last 40 years or so.
 
*       *       *
 
You wrote:  “I hope you will permit me to take this occasion to wish you and 
yours 
 and everyone else on this list, a very merry Christmas ...”
 
May I extend my heartfelt holiday greetings to you and yours as well.
 
There’s nothing more exciting than a spirited discussion of the substantive 
content of the Patriarchal narratives.  Thank you so much for your thoughts.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
 




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