Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

I don't understand your insistence on deifying Thutmosis III and of modern
interpreters of his writings, in that they can make no mistakes. And given
the number of cities listed whose sites are unknown, listed in
http://www.archaeowiki.org/Topographical_List%2C_First_Campaign_of_Thutmose_III,
how can you be sure that there were not misunderstandings on either or both
the people who went along on Thutmosis' campaigns, and/or modern
interpreters?

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 7:32 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>
> Joshua 15: 52-59:  Hill Country Cities?
>
> Why not? Reading in context of the whole chapter, all the cities listed in
verses 48 through 60 are in the hill country. This is the linguistic
structure of the chapter.


> For starters, it is hard to see how hill country south of Jerusalem could
> contain that many cities.  38 cities in that part of hill country?


Why not?

There are numerous references that the climate has changed since then, from
the references to forests where today there are none, and vast grasslands
where today there is desert.

Secondly, a "city" was often small enough that we today would call it a
village, containing only a few hundred to a few thousand inhabitants.

Combining the two, it is easy to include 38 "cities" in that part of the
hill country.


>  The flip side
> is that it seems very odd that on what I believe is the customary reading
> of
> the text, not a single city in the attractive Aijalon Valley is assigned to
> Judah in the Book of Joshua.


And why should one be?

Given the climate of that time, the territory given to Judah was already
very attractive, and the Aijalon Valley was assigned to other tribes, why
should one have been?


> I note that the cities in the Shephelah well south of the Aijalon Valley
> are
> well represented at Joshua 15: 33-47, along with several cities on the
> coast
> which are not in the Shephelah.  Joshua 15: 33-36 lists 14 cities "in the
> valley
> ", which apparently means the Shephelah south of the Aijalon Valley, and
> perhaps south of the Sorek Valley as well.  All 14 of those cities may well
> be
> located in the Shephelah (not on the coast).  But as for the next 28 cities
> listed (at Joshua 15: 37-47), although many such cities are located in the
> Shephelah, not all of them are.  Ashdod and Gaza at Joshua 15: 47 certainly
> are
> located on the coast, not in the Shephelah.  Moreover, in this list of 44
> cities, I
> see not a single city located in or near the Aijalon Valley.
>
> "Shephalah" merely refers to the lowlands up to and including the coast.
For one who claims to be correcting "the longstanding post-Biblical
misunderstanding of Biblical
geography", your linguistic misunderstanding has caused you to make one
yourself.


>
> B.  In this post, I will start things out by mentioning just one specific
> city:  MQRT.


Why focus on just this one city? Out of the many listed whose whereabouts
are unknown today, this one is just one more. Further, in that there seems
to be no order in the list referenced above that I could see, these unknown
cities could have been anywhere from the coast to Damascus, from Philistia
to the Beka Valley.


>   It is post-Biblical analysts,
> not the Bible itself, who have gotten so very far off the track regarding
> Biblical geography.
>
> Given your literary and linguistic errors above, how can we be sure that it
is not you who has gotten very far off the track regarding Biblical
geography?


> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
>
> Karl W. Randolph.