Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

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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> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew


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