Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 6:24 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:
> Karl wrote:  “Genesis 20 referred to a completely different city, in the
> south, not Tyre in the north of Canaan. Further, Abimelekh was the king of
> GRR, not CR….”
>
> For 2,500 years now, all scholars have agreed with Karl’s view that Genesis
> 20: 1-2 refers to a locale south of Gaza.  But many people may be surprised
> to find out that there is nothing in the secular history of the ancient
> world to support that traditional, non-historical view, even though no
> scholar has ever challenged it.
>
You repeatedly ramble on about secular history here, secular history
there, all the while ignoring that your view of “secular history” is
based on the religious works of an Egyptian priest Manetho
supplemented by a few other materials. And in ancient Egypt the
purpose of “history” was to make Egypt and its pharaohs look good. In
Manetho’s time, his purpose was to make Egyptian history look more
ancient, hence of greater value, than Greek history, so he padded
centuries into Egyptian history, when compared to archaeology, Greek
history, Biblical history, etc.

Your “secular history” isn’t really secular.

In contrast, Biblical history, while it concentrated on the spiritual
life of the people and kings, had as its main purpose an accurate
recording of the events, including the bad. Just like modern, secular
historians.
>
>
>
> 3.  As previously discussed (being a modified version of an idea I picked up
> from Karl), the seafaring people of Tyre may have compared the “rolling”/GRR
> hills in Upper Galilee to their east to the “rolling” waves of the
> Mediterranean Sea to their west.

This is an example of selective reporting on what others say.

There is no evidence from the patriarchal accounts that Tyre even
existed yet in the Early Bronze Age, or if it did, there is no record
of any contact between the Patriarchs and Tyre.

Secondly, and more importantly, the patriarchal accounts were written
from a landlubber’s POV (point of view), hence would not use a
nautical term.

Thirdly, you continue to treat Semitic languages as if they were the
same as ancient Egyptian, which they weren’t.

>
> 4.  As we have been discussing on this thread, %WR in the unpointed text of
> Genesis 20: 1 is one possible, albeit non-standard, spelling of Tyre/Ssur.

Only in your mind. Every Hebrew scholar on this list and elsewhere
disagree with you here.

>
> 5.  The name Abi-MLK at Genesis 20: 2 is the same as the name of the
> historical ruler of Tyre in the Amarna Letters.  The people of Tyre, unlike
> most other people, honored the famous pagan god Baal under the name
> MLK/“King”.  Virtually the only place in secular history where one would
> expect to see the name Abi-MLK is Tyre.  Surely the author of the
> Patriarchal narratives knew that!
>
Where is your Early Bronze Age “secular” historical source to back that one 
up?
>
>
> 6.  Although NGB at Genesis 20: 1 has traditionally been thought to refer to
> the Negev Desert, there in fact is no secular historical inscription
> pre-dating the common era to support that traditional view.  The only NGB we
> have in ancient secular history is item #57 on the T III list, which
> probably is referencing a place in northern Canaan, likely located on the
> west coast of the Sea of Galilee.
>
This is so off the wall it’s not even worth discussing.
>
>
> 7.  We see that there is not a single secular historical inscription
> pre-dating the common era to support the traditional, non-historical
> southern view of the locale of Genesis 20: 1-2.  By stark contrast, all 5
> proper names in those two Bible verses have close matches to secular
> historical inscriptions from Bronze Age northern Canaan.  QD$, NGB and
> Abi-MLK are exact, letter-for-letter matches.  GRR is probably (though not
> certainly) a letter-for-letter match to the KRR on the T III list.  The only
> non-ideal linguistic match here is %WR as possibly referencing Tyre, which
> is what we have been discussing on this thread.  Though %WR is not the ideal
> rendering of Tyre, neither is the CR (which as a common word means “enemy”)
> that is used in most of the Bible to reference Tyre.  The sound of %WR is
> quite similar to CWR in a Bronze Age context, differing only in that the
> initial S-sound is not emphatic in %WR.  If one is willing to admit that all
> spellings in the ancient world were not absolutely uniform and rigidly
> standardized throughout the millennia (especially before written Hebrew is
> even attested), then perhaps one may be willing to consider %WR as possibly
> being an early, archaic, non-standard spelling of similar-sounding
> Tyre/CWR/Ssur.
>
Here are your nested “if”s that put your whole conclusion between
tendentious to science fiction. Seeing as some of them are n-o-t
accepted by a majority to totality of Hebrew scholars, that makes your
conclusion unbelievable.
>
>
>
> Jim Stinehart
>
> Evanston, Illinois

Karl W. Randolph.