Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Yigal:

As I wrote before, I write as a linguist, not an archaeologist. Furthermore,
there are examples of places that had names before there were towns built in
those areas and took the area name -- Beersheva comes to mind (no town there
when Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived in the area, a town in later history).

As for Carmel, every mention in Bible where there is enough context to get
an idea of what sort of place it was, the context indicates that it was an
area, like an American county. In Joshua it was listed as Maon of Carmel, in
the same manner of Bethlehem of Ephrata with Ephrata being the name of the
county, so Carmel in this context being a county. In Isaiah it is likened to
Lebanon as a region, not as a city. There are no references to Carmel where
the context indicates that it was the name of a town. Then there are some
references where it is assumed that the reader recognize what sort of place
it is/was.

It is possible that a later town took on the name of Carmel. All I say is
that from a linguistic standpoint, there is no town mentioned in the Bible
that had that name.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>wrote:

> Dear Karl,
>
> I really don't understand your position here; why, in the middle of a list
> that includes dozens of towns, do you insist that just "Carmel" is a region
> and not a town? Forget the name's supposed etymology - what in the list
> makes you think that it is any different from any other item on the list?
> Besides which, as I wrote, there IS an ancient site in the appropriate area
> which preserves the name to this day.
>
> Yigal Levin
>
>