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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] What Does "Sodom" Mean?
  • Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:16:13 EST


Karl:

1. You wrote: “Look at a map. The most direct route for a pastoralist
leading thousands of livestock and hundreds of slaves to take care of them
leads to
Beer Sheva
and then to the highlands overlooking the southern Dead Sea. Reading the
actions, we get the picture that what is now desert was then vast prairies
that could support large flocks of livestock.”

(a) Abraham did not have that livestock or personnel until he got back from
Egypt.

(b) Beersheba is farther west of the Dead Sea than is Beth-el. Beersheba
and Egypt are southwest of Beth-el, whereas the Dead Sea is east or southeast
of
Beth-el. The Patriarchs never went anywhere close to the Dead Sea.

(c) There is nothing in secular history to back up your contention that “
what is now desert was then vast prairies that could support large flocks of
livestock.” The only magnet that ever drew large numbers of people to the
Negev
Desert was that dreadful copper mining.

2. You wrote: “Reading the text as written, instead of as amended by you,
Abram lived well before the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, at a time when Egypt
possessed no
territories in the Levant. Hence the contemporary lack of records in Egypt
of cities in Canaan.”

(a) In the Early Bronze Age, we have the famous Egyptian Execration texts,
which famously curse Jerusalem and other Early Bronze Age cities in Canaan.
If
there had been five fabulous cities on the southeast coast of the Dead Sea,
Egyptian records would reflect that, one way or the other.

(b) If we go back to the historical time period before the Hyksos invasion
of Egypt, we lose most of the historical bearings of the Patriarchal
narratives. Camels were extremely rare way back then. The Hittites were a
non-factor
in Canaan back then. There was no Hurrian presence in Canaan at that time.
Back then, tent-dwelling pastoralists rarely sojourned right next to
city-dwellers. Most common people lived in settled villages. About the only
time in
Canaan’s very long history when, as a routine matter, tent-dwelling
pastoralists
sojourned right next to city-dwellers, and village life was at an all-time
low, was the mid-14th century BCE time period of the Amarna Letters. The
Late
Bronze Age is also when the historical “four rulers against the five”
occurred,
just north of Canaan. That same year is when the ruler of Shechem, and all
the men who were with him, were killed in a sneak attack that, surprisingly,
resulted in no effective retribution. Every single story in the Patriarchal
narratives has a direct counterpart in the well-documented secular history of
the
Late Bronze Age.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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