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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Carmel: The Town of David's Abigail
  • Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:12:08 EST


Professor Yigal Levin has nicely answered most of the questions that have
been raised so far on this thread. So in the interest of brevity, I will for
the
most part not respond to the individual points that people have made.

I believe that a majority of scholars would agree that the Biblical Hebrew
common words KRM and KRML, plus Abigail's KRML, likely have KRM as their
root.
(By contrast, Mt. Carmel is a completely different place with completely
different characteristics, so Mt. Carmel might have a completely different
etymology, perhaps something along the lines suggested by Isaac Fried.)


Bill Rea perceptively observed that poetry is often not the best place to
look in determining meanings of words. But a KRML (a garden that bears fine
fruits) sometimes is smaller and finer than a KRM (a vineyard), so the view
that
the final lamed/L in KRML is a suffix that has a diminutive meaning makes a
good deal of sense here. Professor Yigal Levin set forth another mainstream
scholarly view of the final lamed/L in Abigail’s KRML: “KRML…is sometimes
taken
as a shortened form of Kerem (vineyard) + El (God)”.

The one and only critical linguistic issue here is to recognize that the
final lamed/L in Abigail’s KRML, whether it be a diminutive or a theophoric,
is
likely a mere suffix.



* * *

Professor Yigal Levin delicately, and accurately, sets forth the scholarly
view of Abigail’s city of Carmel as follows:

“As far as I know, the name ‘Carmel’ is NOT attested in any pre-Israelite
sources. … I am pretty certain that I’m going to disagree with whatever Jim
is
getting to [regarding] Carmel in Judah”.

Despite that scholarly view, on this thread I will set forth Late Bronze Age
secular historical documentation showing that Abigail’s Carmel as portrayed
in
I Samuel is historical, not fictional, based primarily on comparing west
Semitic secular historical inscriptions from the Late Bronze Age to
comparable
Biblical Hebrew words or names. I hope I am right in thinking that doing a
linguistic comparison of west Semitic geographical place names from the
secular
history of Canaan in the Late Bronze Age to Biblical Hebrew geographical
place
names, in order to try to verify the historicity of Abigail’s Carmel in I
Samuel, is an appropriate topic for the b-hebrew list.

* * *

The name of Abigail’s city of Carmel/KRML in southern Canaan is likely KRM +
suffix. The normal way to check to see if Abigail’s KRML was already in
existence 500 years before Abigail’s day, with this same town having this
same
basic city name, would be to look at the mid-15th century BCE Thutmosis III
list
of places in Canaan.

It would not be surprising for the particular suffix involved to be
different. In fact, an –el suffix is very rare on the Thutmosis III list.
(It would
have an Egyptian R as its final letter, and it might have an Egyptian J as
its
next to final letter. The first version of item #102 has that JR ending,
though the longer, second version does not.) The most common ending of them
all
on the Thutmosis III list is an N. So the most likely entry we would expect
to
find, 500 years before Abigail’s birth, for the town of Carmel/KRML that is
associated with David’s Abigail, would be as follows: KRM + N = KRMN.

That is exactly what we see at item #96 on the Thutmosis III list: KRMN.
KRMN on the Thutmosis III list is KRM + suffix. Abigail’s Carmel in chapter
25
of I Samuel is likewise KRM + suffix. It’s a perfect linguistic match.

As to the location of the KRMN on the Thutmosis III list, KRMN is one of 17
straight items that appear to be located in or near the general vicinity of
the
Sorek and Aijalon Valleys in the northern Shephelah, just west of hill
country. Based in part on additional evidence that can be examined later,
Abigail’s
KRML was probably located on the northern edge of the Sorek Valley. The
Sorek Valley was a fine place for Abigail’s first husband to graze his 3,000
sheep
and 1,000 goats, per I Samuel 25: 2. An earlier item in that long stretch of
17 items on the Thutmosis III list is item #91, JTR(, which is probably
Ether/(TR at Joshua 15: 42, located south of the Sorek Valley. [That
Egyptian J is
an all-purpose guttural with no direct equivalent in Biblical Hebrew, often
being an aleph, but sometimes being an ayin or heth, in the Biblical Hebrew
equivalent of city names on the Thutmosis III list.] Scholars agree that two
later items (in this stretch of 17 items, from #90 through #106) on the
Thutmosis
III list, namely items #104 and #105, are Gezer [QDR, where an Egyptian Q can
represent a gimel/G, and the D is underlined to indicated a Z-type sound],
and Rubutu [RBT]. Gezer is located just northwest of the Aijalon Valley, and
Rubutu is located in the south-central portion of the Aijalon Valley, with
the
Aijalon Valley in turn being located just north of the Sorek Valley.
Geographically, everything makes perfect sense for KRMN at item #96 on the
Thutmosis
III list to be located on the northern edge of the Sorek Valley, just south
of
the Aijalon Valley, just west of hill country.

Under ordinary circumstances, one might think that this would end the matter.
Chapter 25 of Samuel presents Carmel/KRML as being a city in 10th century
BCE southern Canaan. What appears to be a Late Bronze Age linguistic
equivalent
name, KRMN, appears at item #96 on the mid-15th century BCE Thutmosis III
list, in the middle of a long string of entries which seem to be located in
or
near the Sorek and Aijalon Valleys, in the northern Shephelah west of hill
country. That would seem to confirm both (i) the historicity of a city named
Carmel in Judah, just as stated in I Samuel, and (ii) the approximate
location of
such historical city, probably on the northern edge of the Sorek Valley, west
of hill country. That is my view of the matter.

But scholars will have none of it. To the best of my knowledge, no scholar
has ever asked whether KRMN at item #96 on the Thutmosis III list may be KRM
+
suffix, and hence be an exact linguistic equivalent of, and be the same city
as, Abigail’s KRML/Carmel in chapter 25 of I Samuel, with the city name
Carmel/KRML likewise being KRM + suffix.

Both the Bible and the secular history of the ancient world strongly suggest
that Abigail’s Carmel was an historical city in southern Canaan in both the
Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age. But scholars say No. As I noted in my
first
post, Carmel as a city in Judah is much more controversial than one would
think.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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