Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Hello Karl,

I would like to make some things clear.

1) I consider it more reasonable that the lecturer you heard to have
been correct in what he said, and you to have misunderstood him
or otherwise not correctly remembered what he said.  In the end,
though, it doesn't really which of you got it wrong.  The facts you
describe are simply flat out wrong.

2) It appears to me that the theory that the lecturer you heard was
advocating is the Wiseman theory.  This theory depends on the
use of colophons.  This theory also accepts the standard dates
for Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim.  In this sense, the theory the
lecturer you heard was advocating is incompatible with the theory
on this website.  However, I consider it unlikely that the theory
originally made any difference in date about literary conventions
that took place before or after 1500 BCE.  It is quite clear that if
all the Old Babylonian materials are dated after 1000 BCE, then
we have no comparative evidence for literary conventions and
we are left to date the verses in Genesis on the material in
Genesis alone.  Furthermore, if all the Old Babylonian materials
are dated after 1000 BCE, then we have plenty of evidence for
the *LATE* use of whatever literary conventions you think were
compatible with Genesis.

3) I think it is in your interest to reject unconventional theories
and not just accept any unconventional theory that happens to
footnote its claims.  I could give you standard text critical
scholarship and it would have footnotes and you would reject
it.  But you appear to accept any guy who thinks he can prove
the Bible if only he could show that the name Ploni was the
same person as the name Almoni.  Just because a website
has nice footnotes does not mean it is dependable.  Even
wikipedia has footnotes.

4) Thutmosis III is not Shoshenq, no matter what Velikovsky
thought.

While I respect your interest in checking up on what your
lecturer said, I really hope that this does not mean making
use of this website.  The website is ridiculous.

Yitzhak Sapir