Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

We continue on now with comparing 27 consecutive items on the mid-15th 
century BCE Thutmosis III list of cities in Canaan with the Joshua city lists.
 
105.  RBT.  That’s Rubutu, which is RB + suffix T.  That comes out as 
Arab/)RB at Joshua 15: 52.  The optional Late Bronze Age suffix has been 
dropped in 
Biblical Hebrew, as usual.  An initial prosthetic aleph/) has been added for 
pronunciation purposes.  [Per Joshua, Arab is located in, or just west of, 
hill 
country.]  Historical Rubutu is located several miles west of hill country, 
in 
the Aijalon Valley.
 
106.  MQRT.  That’s Magaroth at Joshua 15: 59, with the oldest version of the 
Septuagint confirming that the ayin in the Masoretic text is an archaic 
ghayin, hence gamma in the Septuagint and Q on the Thutmosis III list.  This 
is the 
single most spectacular match on the entire list.  [Per Joshua, Magaroth is 
located in, or just west of, hill country.]
 
107.  (MQ.  Literally “valley”, and here meaning “the valley area”, or “
Shephelah”, per Joshua 15: 33.
 
108.  SRT.  That’s SR + suffix T, which comes out as Zorah/CR(H [CR + suffix] 
at Joshua 15: 33.  In the Late Bronze Age, a ssade/C was an emphatic S.  The 
Egyptians had no specific way to represent a ssade/C.  [Per Joshua, Zorah is 
located in the Shephelah.]  I Chronicles 2: 53;  4: 2 has the final T, in the 
form CR(TY.
 
109.  BJRT.  With the R being a lamed/L, and the Egyptian J here representing 
ayin/(, this is identical to the spelling of Baalath/B(LT at Joshua 19: 44.  
[Baalath is located at the western end of the Aijalon Valley, near Mt. 
Baalah.]  
 
110.  BT SJR.  Rather than being Beth Shan, as usually supposed, the 
linguistic, logical and geographical match here is, rather, Beth/BYT Zur/CWR, 
at 
Joshua 15: 58.  Note that the final letter is R, not N.  [So “Shan” does not 
match 
SJR.  Moreover, items #108 and #109 are not located in the Jezreel Valley.  
Rehov, which is far away on the Thutmosis III list at #87, is the big city 
near 
Beth Shan.  The conquest of a place as far away from Egypt as Beth Shan would 
not be put way back here at item #110 on the Thutmosis III list, after Rubutu 
at item #105.  Nothing about #110 matches Beth Shan.]  The ssade/C is an 
emphatic S (like #108 above), and the Egyptian J here functions as a 
vowel-type 
sound, which in this case is vav/W in Biblical Hebrew.  
 
Per Joshua, Beth Zur is located in, or just west of, hill country.  Here, 
archaeology supports the traditional location of Beth Zur as being in hill 
country proper, north of the city later called Hebron (with the phrase “now 
Hebron” 
at Joshua 15: 54 being a 7th century BCE late gloss on Joshua’s Late Bronze 
Age sources for these city lists, reflecting the new 8th century BCE city 
name “
Hebron”).  It is likely that some small contingent of troops of Thutmosis III 
briefly went into a small portion of the western hill country, and recorded 
one or two city names like Beth Zur in the western portion of hill country, 
as 
far south as Beth Zur.  Beth Zur is only about 6 miles southeast of the 
eastern terminus of the Elah Valley.
 
Note that the towns that Professor Yigal Levin is confident (per his recent 
posts on the b-hebrew list) were located in hill country south of the city 
now 
called Hebron are conspicuously absent on the Thutmosis III list.  Maon is 
not 
there.  As discussed in #116 below, the famous Ziph south of the southern end 
of the Dead Sea is not there.  Juttah is not there.  Beth-gader is not there 
(an odd reference by Professor Yigal Levin to I Chronicles 2: 51, having 
nothing to do with Joshua, but in any event Beth-gader is not on the 
Thutmosis III 
list;  Hazor-gaddah, which is listed at Joshua 15: 27 in the Negev Desert, is 
also not on the Thutmosis III list).  Prof. Levin equates the modern Arabic 
village of Kurmul with Biblical KRML/Carmel, but since Carmel is associated 
in I 
Samuel with beautiful Abigail, who marries handsome, dashing young David, it 
is no surprise that a tiny village southeast of the city now called Hebron 
has 
long claimed to religious tourists that its name has always been Kurmul.  
There is no archaeology to confirm that such place existed in Biblical times, 
much less to confirm its name.  Rather, it’s so often the obscure towns on 
the 
Joshua city lists, which Professor Yigal Levin never mentions and scholars 
pay 
little attention to, that show up on the Thutmosis III list -- Ether, 
Jokdeam/Jakeb-am, Magaroth, Baalath, Beth-Anoth, En-gannim and Zior.  There’s 
no way 
that a 7th century BCE author of Joshua could be making up these obscure town 
names, and then they all just “happen” to match town names in the greater 
Aijalon Valley area on the mid-15th century BCE Thutmosis III list!
 
111.  BT JNT.  This is Beth-Anoth/(NWT at Joshua 15: 59.  Here, the Egyptian 
J is once again an ayin/(, and the vav/W is an implied vowel sound in the 
Egyptian rendering.  [Per Joshua, Beth-Anoth is located in, or just west of, 
hill 
country.]  One of the major reasons why scholars have been unable to discern 
these city name matches is because scholars have insisted, without having any 
legitimate basis for such insistence, that (i) every city listed at Joshua 
15: 
52-59 is located in hill country proper (though the text does not say that), 
and that (ii) no soldier in Thutmosis III’s army ever set foot in hill 
country. 
 In fact, several cities listed at Joshua 15: 52-60 are located a few miles 
west of hill country proper, on the eastern edge of the Shephelah, and there 
is 
no reason to suppose that no squadron of soldiers in Thutmosis III’s army 
ever briefly ventured a few miles east of the Shephelah into hill country.
 
112.  XRQT.  XR + optional Q + standard suffix T.  This is Beth-Horon [XR + 
WN suffix], mentioned 7 times in Joshua, including at Joshua 18: 13-14.  The 
optional Q (discussed below) was dropped, and the suffix T (which was rarely 
retained in Biblical Hebrew) was replaced by WN.  (The “Beth” at the 
beginning 
of this name was optional.)  It is hard to imagine the Thutmosis III list not 
including Beth-Horon, which was essential to securing the Aijalon Valley, and 
this item #112 is the only possible match to Horon (Beth Horon).  The main 
route taken by the Egyptian army went through Gezer into the Aijalon Valley.  
This 
route was sometimes called “the Way of Beth-Horon”, and it led right to 
Beth-Horon, strategically located at the border between the northeast corner 
of 
the Shephelah and hill country, north of the city of Aijalon:  “Upper and 
Lower 
Beth-Horon controlled the valley of Aijalon, up which went one of the most 
important ancient routes between the maritime plain and the hill-country.  
Therefore many armies passed by these towns in biblical times….”  J. Thompson 
at p. 
68 of Bimson’s “Baker Encyclopedia of Bible Places”.  The Egyptians would 
certainly have secured Horon (Beth-Horon), in order to protect their main 
force 
in the Aijalon Valley just to the southwest.  Note that everything northwest 
of Horon (Beth-Horon) was a war zone.  This is the farthest point northeast 
of 
these 27 consecutive items.  As to the Q in XRQT (which does not appear in 
the 
Biblical Hebrew version of Beth-Horon), a qof/Q may at times have been an 
optional suffix in the Bronze Age.  For example, the root of “Aijalon” is Y-R 
(which later became Y-L), yet the only Biblical Hebrew words close to either 
Y-R 
or Y-L are Y-R-W-Q and Y-R-Q, with the former meaning “to be green, as a grow
ing plant”, which presumably is the meaning of “Aijalon”.    
 
113.  (N QN(M.  This is En-gannim/(YN GNYM  at Joshua 15: 34.  [Per Joshua, 
En-gannim is located in the Shephelah.]
 
114.  QB(.  This is Geba/GB(, at Joshua 21: 17.  [Per Joshua, Geba is likely 
west of Gibeon, east of Aijalon.]    
 
115.  DRR (with underlined D, usually meaning a Z-type sound in Biblical 
Hebrew).  This is Zior/CY(R at Joshua 15: 54.  Here, the Z-type sound comes 
out, 
not unexpectedly, as a ssade/C.  The Egyptian version has resh/R twice, 
instead 
of Y(R (probably a slight mistake by the Egyptian scribe);  the sound is 
somewhat similar.  [Per Joshua Zior is located in, or just west of, hill 
country.]
 
116.  DFT = DP + suffix T (with underlined D, usually meaning a Z-type sound 
in Biblical Hebrew).  Dropping off the optional –T suffix, this is Ziph/ZYP 
at 
Joshua 15: 55.  [On 1/12/09, Professor Yigal Levin said that the Ziph at 
Joshua 15: 55 is Tell Zif.  But Tell Zif is located south of the southern end 
of 
the Dead Sea, deep in the Negev Desert.  That Ziph (Tell Zif), being the more 
famous Ziph, is the Ziph at Joshua 15: 24, fittingly recorded in the section 
of 
Joshua that covers the Negev Desert.  The only Biblical reference to the Ziph 
here is at Joshua 15: 55, right after Carmel (#96 above).  That suggests that 
this Ziph is located just west of hill country, between the Sorek and Aijalon 
Valleys.]
 
These Joshua city lists cannot be coming from the 7th century BCE.  No way.  
Rather, these Joshua city lists have amazing accuracy from a period of time 
800 years earlier, in the Late Bronze Age.  27 out of 27 consecutive matches 
mean something.
 
There naturally are some spelling differences.  The Egyptians did not get 
every letter right in these Canaanite geographical place names, and several 
times 
the Egyptians also seem to use a somewhat simplified spelling.  Joshua’s 
oldest Late Bronze Age sources of city names probably are 100 years later 
than the 
Thutmosis III list, so a few city names had changed somewhat from the time of 
the Thutmosis III list.  And although the Masoretic text is remarkably 
accurate, I do see one one-letter transcription error in one city name (item 
#102 
above), by comparison to both the oldest version of the Septuagint and the 
Thutmosis III list.  But all in all, the spelling differences are, for the 
most 
part, both understandable and minor. 
 
The dual scholarly claims that (i) most of the above 27 items on the 
Thutmosis III list are unknown, and that (ii) Joshua reflects “the reality of 
the 
seventh century B.C.E.”, cannot stand.  When 27 out of 27 consecutive items 
on the 
mid-15th century BCE Thutmosis III list match up beautifully to Joshua, as 
being places in or near the greater Aijalon Valley, that’s telling us that 
the 
author of Joshua had genuine, accurate Late Bronze Age sources for the city 
lists that appear in the received text of the Book of Joshua.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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