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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: kwrandolph AT gmail.com, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Halhul, Jezreel and Timnah
  • Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2009 16:01:20 EST


Karl:

1. You wrote: “In Biblical Hebrew[, MDBR/midbar was] most likely connected
to the root concerning poking (with a sharp object), stinging or even
injuring, so a MDBR is a
place where such plants and animals dwell. Many of these places in the past
were vast grasslands with cacti and spiny trees interspersed among the
grasses, today they are deserts. While a MDBR could contain a rugged, hilly
area, that was not a defining characteristic of MDBR.”

MDBR in I Samuel primarily means a place where animals could live, but where
large numbers of human beings could not live, so there would be no towns in
MDBR. Many parts of hill country north of Hebron fit that description. The
land was not good enough for farming, and there were few if any sizeable
towns.
But sheep and goats could be grazed there for some periods of time.

North of Hebron, and well west of the Dead Sea, was not a desert, but rather
was MDBR. I agree that in other locales, MDBR would not necessarily be
rugged, hilly pastureland, but that type of terrain north of Hebron is
characterized
in the Bible as MDBR. The typical English translation of “wilderness” is
misleading. It’s not a desert, and it might be semi-decent pastureland in
some
seasons.

2. You wrote: In response to my assertion that "Jeshimon"/Y$YMWN as
used here is the Biblical word for the Judean Desert, a true desert”, you
wrote: “Where do you get these "definitions"? As a verb, Y$M is used once in
Ezekiel
6:6 to refer to a place without inhabitants, the noun to a deserted place.”

Yes, Y$M can be used in various ways, all referring to the concept of a place
being deserted. In I Samuel, it is used as a nifty one-word reference to the
Judean Desert. It makes perfect sense.

3. You wrote: “Where do you get this crazy idea that anyone claims this? 1
Samuel mentions that the Philistines gathered together at )PQ, a town
mentioned in Joshua
19:30. This was in the area alloted to Asher, in central to northern Canaan.
From there they marched to where Saul's army was encamped.”

(a) There is an Aphek located north of Mt. Carmel, in Asher. But the
Philistines were never anywhere close to being that far north, for heaven’s
sake.
The Philistines did not get much further north than Ashdod and Ekron. The
Philistines were basically west of Judah, not north or northwest of Judah.

(b) Some scholars think that the Aphek northeast of Joppa is the northern
extent of the Philistines’ dominions. A poster on ANE-2 just now wrote: “I
have also read in another text a theory that Tel Qasille (Tel Aviv area) near
the mouth of the Yarkon and Aphek at the upper end of the Yarkon River was
the
northern extent of the Philistine occupation. Aphek was destroyed multiple
times and theoretically destroyed in the middle of the 11th century,
presumably
by Israel.”

That Aphek is only a few miles north of the northern Philistine border in any
event. That is likely the Aphek that is being referenced at Samuel 29: 1.
(That Aphek of the Philistines is nowhere near the famous Jezreel in the
Jezreel Valley, and the Philistines never went anywhere near the Jezreel
Valley.)

(c) We know there was a Jezreel in Judah (not the Jezreel in the Jezreel
Valley far to the north in Issachar), because Joshua 15: 56 tells us that. I
Samuel 29: 1 further tells us:

“Now the Philistines gathered together all their hosts to Aphek; and the
Israelites pitched by the fountain which is in Jezreel.”

Furthermore, note that at I Samuel 25: 43, David takes as his second wife a
women from Jezreel, and as his third wife Abigail of Carmel. Joshua 15:
55-57
groups Carmel, Jezreel and Timnah together. The real Timnah is Samson’s
Timnah, located just west of the foothills of hill country in the eastern
Sorek
Valley. That’s where historical Carmel is located, per the Amarna Letters.
Jezreel must likewise have been a border town, south of Aijalon, in or near
the
foothills of hill country, northwest of the city of Hebron. By taking 2nd
and
3rd wives from the border towns Jezreel and Carmel, northwest of the city of
Hebron, David was announcing to the world that David was not content to
continue
hiding out south (not southeast) of the city of Hebron indefinitely, but
rather David was going to seek to gain influence north of the city of Hebron,
both
in hill country and on the eastern edge of the northeast Shephelah as well.

The Philistines did not operate east of the foothills of hill country. All
the clues lead to the same result. Jezreel and Carmel and Timnah and the
Philistines’ attack are at or near the foothills of hill country, on the
border
between hill county and the Shephelah, northwest of the city of Hebron.

The point I keep making is that a-l-l of the southern Hebrews, including
all Biblical authors, knew the geography of southern Canaan like the back of
their hand. There’s no way that Joshua or I Samuel or Judges or the
Patriarchal
narratives could utilize a fictional local geography of southern Canaan. No
way.

The Aphek way up in Asher has nothing to do with anything. We’re talking
southern Canaan here.

Likewise, the desolate western extension of the Judean Desert southeast of
the city of Hebron has nothing to do with anything either. All of the
Biblical
authors, and all of their audience, knew that there were no towns in the
desolate wasteland southeast of the city of Hebron. I Samuel 30: 26-31
confirms
that even young David as a bandit refused to spend time southeast of the city
of
Hebron, instead usually staying south of Hebron, and occasionally venturing
north of Hebron, but never southeast of Hebron. There’s no there there
southeast of Hebron, as all the southern Hebrews well knew.

4. You wrote: “Why dream up a second Timnah northwest of the city of Hebron?


There’s only one Timnah. That’s Samson’s Timnah, northwest of Hebron, in
the east end of the Sorek Valley. See Judges 13: 24-25; 14: 1.

There is no Timnah in the desolate wasteland southeast of the city of Hebron,
as Anson Rainey and other scholars hypothesize. No way. There’s no Timnah
there, or any other town there.

5. You wrote: “2 Chronicles 28:18 mentions that Timnah was either in the
Shepalah, or to the south. Since it wasn't in the Shepalah, it was to the
south.”

Here is what II Chronicles 28: 18 says:

“The Philistines also had invaded the cities of the Lowland [SPLH/Shephelah],
and of the South of Judah, and had taken Beth-shemesh, and Aijalon, and
Gederoth, and Soco with the towns thereof, and Timnah with the towns thereof,
Gimzo
also and the towns thereof; and they dwelt there.”

Beth-shemesh, Aijalon, Gederoth, Socoh, Timnah and Gimzo were all located in
the Shephelah.

Everyone agrees that the real Timnah was located in the Shephelah, just west
of the foothills of hill country, in the eastern Sorek Valley. The question
is whether there was a second Timnah, with the same name, located southeast
of
the city of Hebron, in the desolate wasteland where there were never any
towns
at all. That is the second, fictional Timnah that scholars have dreamed up
out of whole cloth, based on their profound misinterpretation of Joshua 15:
55-57.

There’s no Timnah southeast of the city of Hebron. There’s nothing
southeast of the city of Hebron.

The Biblical authors aren’t talking geographical nonsense. No way. All the
Biblical authors knew there was nothing southeast of the city of Hebron.

6. You wrote: “When Solomon died, Pharaoh Thutmosis III / Shisherka / $$Q
maneuvered to get his puppet Jeroboam installed as king over the break away
Northern Kingdom. Then he had an excuse to protect his investment (and gain)
in
Jeroboam. Why would he mention an area that he got by guile instead of force
of arms?
Would that count as a great, heroic victory? Of course he would still
benefit from that acquisition, and to make sure his puppet stayed loyal, set
up garrison towns. But wouldn't his boasting be for the cities he conquered
by force of arms in heroic battle, in the confines of Judea and Benjamin,
mostly in the hill country, and other areas outside the control of the
Northern Kingdom? So why invent fictional duplicate towns in areas like the
Jezreel valley and the Shepela to fit your fictional history?”

(a) Thutmosis III and Shishak are two completely different pharaohs, in
completely different time periods. Yet we know from their lists of conquered
towns in Canaan that both of them made a beeline for the relatively wealthy
Aijalon Valley, in the northeast Shephelah. In southern Canaan, that’s where
the
wealth was. Neither pharaoh paid any attention to the desolate wasteland
southeast of the city of Hebron. No one paid any attention to the desolate
wasteland southeast of the city of Hebron.

(b) All of Thutmosis III’s actual conquests of hostile towns in Canaan are
set forth prominently in the first two-thirds of the Thutmosis III list.
That
makes perfect sense for propaganda purposes. Then in the last third, largely
as padding, Thutmosis III threw in every single town in the greater Aijalon
Valley area, even though that was non-hostile territory. But his scribes had
written down all those 27 places, where the Egyptian troops had assembled for
the conquest of central Canaan. So why not throw those 27 places in near the
very end of the list? That’s exactly what he did.

If you want to know what names places had in the greater Aijalon Valley as of
the mid-15th century BCE, they’re all there, in 27 consecutive items at #90 -
#116 on the Thutmosis III list. And all such 27 consecutive items also
appear in Joshua, showing that Joshua had fine, authentic Late Bronze Age
sources
for his city lists.

All of those 27 consecutive items are in or near the Shephelah, and not a one
of such items is in or near the Jezreel Valley, or southeast of the city of
Hebron. No one ever paid the slightest bit of attention to the desolate
wasteland southeast of the city of Hebron. As I believe I may have said,
there’s no
there there. In particular, there’s no Jezreel, Carmel, Timnah or Ziph or
Maon, or any other town, southeast of the city of Hebron. There’s nothing
there.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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