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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Carmel: The Town of David's Abigail
  • Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:19:26 +0200

Karl, you keep repeating the same claim, without explaining your position. Josh. 15:20-62 is a list of TOWNS. It is divided into regions (Negev, Shephelah, Hills and Desert), and the Shephlah and Hill regions are further sub-divided into districts, with a numerical summary at the end of each. Vss, 55-57 list ten towns, including Carmel, and then summarize "ten towns and their fields". What's not to understand? Is it because Carmel lacks the vav "and"? So do "Haqqayin" and "Gibeah" in vs. 57, but they're still counted as part of the district's 10 towns. And if Carmel is a town near Maon in Josh. 15, what's to stop it from being a town near Maon in 1 Samuel?

Even if some passages treat Carmel as a region, it is usually the region that is named after the town, not vise versa. If you take the text literally, Abraham's Beersheba was a very specific place - a group of seven wells - rather than a region. It was this group of wells that eventually became the town.


Yigal

----- Original Message ----- From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
To: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 9:59 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Carmel: The Town of David's Abigail



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


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