Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Gabe:

On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>wrote:

> To all who answered my post about Philistines and Samaritans:
>
> The attempt to make the Philistines of Genesis&Exodus into a different,
> completely unknown group is motivated only by awareness of the
> anachronism.


Yes, it is an anachronism, if you assume that modern historians are correct.
But are there good reasons to believe that modern historians are wrong?
Questions have been raised for over half a century, based on archaeology and
surviving documents.


> No ancient scholars thought there needed to be two groups,


Do you suppose it is because the ancients never considered what the moderns
call "Philistines" were the same people? Or that there may have been a
misidentification by modern historians? Or that the timing is way off?

>
> nor, I would guess, does any modern reader unaware of the anachronism.
> Therefore Occam's Razor would certainly come down on the side of there
> being only one referent for the word "Philistines", even though the way
> they are pictured in Genesis has little in common with the historical
> Philistines. If you had any plausible historical candidates for the
> Genesis "Philistines", that might rebalance the scales, but no one does.
> (In particular, the "invaders" Jim postulates do not fit the texts that
> refer to the "land of the Philistines". How can "invaders" be considered
> owners of the land?)
>

In Europe we have examples of peoples and countries going by very different
names, depending on the language spoken, e.g. Nemyetski, Allemand, Tysk,
Deutsch, etc. all for German. So why should we assume that the Egyptians had
the same ancient name for Philistine as did Abraham? In other words, the
supposed anachronism is merely a case of mistaken identity?

>
>
> As regards 2Kings17, it is amazing to me that you can read it to say
> that 90% of the people remained (that would NOT be just Karl's "poorest
> of the poor"), as archaeology shows (27K out of about 300K deported) .
>

Where do you get your figures?

>
> 2Kings17: 18  "... there was NONE LEFT (lo nisha'ar) but Judah alone"


This is a mistranslation. Go back to the Hebrew.

>
> 2Kings17:20   "And Yahweh rejected ALL THE SEED OF ISRAEL (kol zera'
> yisra'el), and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until He had
> cast them out of His sight."
>

Again you are adding to the text. As written, it doesn't support your
claim.

>
> Not only does the text seem clear, in stating that NO ONE in conquered
> Israel knew Yahweh


Where in the text is that claim made?


> (thus a priest had to be imported to stop the lions),


Is it that no one knew, or that the imported people would listen only to a
priest?

>
> but once again you are going against the unanimous ancient understanding
> -- especially that of ancient Judaism, which used 2Kings17 as proof that
> the Samaritans were in no way descended from the Israelites.
>

Does the Bible support that ancient tradition? Or does it come from another
source? Hasn't the Bible been misused by many people to push their pet
projects? So why would this be different?

>
> In both these cases the fundamentalist reading has to do a lot of
> reaching and postulation of epicycles in order to save the text. But
> those who seek to understand the Bible according to the same standards
> they would apply to the Vedas,  Gilgamesh or the Book of Mormon do not
> have to come up with any far-fetched explanatory mechanisms.
>

What are epicycles as applied to the text? What makes you think I am not
using the same standards for the Bible as I would apply to the Vedas,
Gilgamesh or the Book of Mormon?

>
> The general point then is that while we are indeed working in an area in
> which definitive proofs are hard to come by, it is only a matter of
> logic, not ideology or the "religion of naturalism", that leads us to
> strongly suspect  that the Biblical text sometimes misrepresents the facts.
>

How much of your logic is based on misreading the text, as in your example
above? How much of your logic starts with the religion of naturalism and
builds from that? And how much of your logic is simply mistaken, being based
on error like mistaken identity?

Logic doesn't work in a vacuum.

>
>
> Gabe Eisenstein
>
> Karl W. Randolph.