Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Brian Roberts" <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>]

Karl,

Are you a proponent of Rohl's (or anyone else's) chronological revisions? If
not, then aren't you "marshalling facts to fit a predetermined conclusion"?

If so, then let us know how you would answer your own questions put to
Yitzhak. I think you'd get a fair hearing.

Best,

R. Brian Roberts
Amateur Researcher in Biblical Archaeology



-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of K Randolph
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2007 8:01 PM
To: b-hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Wellhausen
There are questions that throw doubts on all your claims concerning dates.

Who was the pharaoh of the Exodus? It is almost certain that the pharaoh at
the time that Moses was plucked out of the Nile was Hyksos, as recognized by
clues in the book of Exodus and that they had practices foreign to native
Egyptians. I suspect that what broke the back of the Hyksos military might
and allowed the Egyptians to drive them out was the loss of their best
troops in the Red Sea.

Given the deliberate destruction of Hyksos records by the native Egyptians,
if the pharaoh of the Exodus was Hyksos, the surviving Egyptian records
would be very, very unlikely to record the Israelite Exodus.

There are Egyptologists who dispute the traditional dates given for many
pharaohs: one claim being that Raamses II was the pharaoh who sacked
Jerusalem after Solomon died, not the pharaoh of the Exodus. If that's the
case, that would put the end of the bronze age/beginning of the iron age, at
about the time of King David. The greatly expanded settlements a reflection
of the peace and security afforded by the kings of Israel, Saul, David and
Solomon, so would be dated at that time.

Finkelstein/Mazar are just one strand of the discussion, and could very well
be wrong, as you well know.

According to Joshua, only three cities were destroyed during the invasion;
Jericho, Ai and Hazor. All the others were captured and looted, but not
razed. Thus by the historical sources, there should be almost no
archeological evidence of the invasion. Isn't that what we find for about
1400 BC?

>From the above, I conclude that there is a lot of sloppy, or is it
ideologically biased, scholarship going on, marshaling facts to fit a
predetermined conclusion. And that conclusion is that the Bible is
historically inaccurate. So far the data you have provided are surrounded by
question marks, making them unable to disprove the historicity of the Bible.

Karl W. Randolph.