Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:25 AM, <jimstinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>  Karl:
>
> 1.  I wonder if I may take that comment of yours as implying that you agree 
> with me that if QD$ at Genesis 14: 7 meant Kadesh-barnea on the border of 
> the Negev and the Sinai Desert,
>
>
Wrong, wrong, wrong. There was another place that was named Kadesh, which
was to the south and east of Moab. It is also mentioned in Numbers, in a
context that places it not far from Sodom and Gomorrah south of the Dead
Sea. Because there were two places, one named Kadesh, and the other
Kadesh-Barnea, the rest of your argument is moot.

I don’t care how many “experts” you line up trying to converge the two
places into one, the text of Tanakh clearly indicates that they were two
places.

>
>
> If I am understanding the Hebrew words $WB and GM correctly, the 
> conventional and scholarly view of Genesis 14: 7 [where QD$ = 
> Kadesh-barnea] is simply impossible, based on linguistic and geographical 
> considerations alone.
>
>
Here you answered my question to you, “What do you define as “conventional
understanding”?” as being a common university teaching. I follow the
linguistic meaning of the text *as written* as the way to understand the
text. When one reads the text according to its linguistic and literary
structure, both what you call “conventional and scholarly view” and your
theories are equally impossible.

See above that Kadesh ≠ Kadesh-Barnea. There is no way they can be the same.

> Jim Stinehart
>
> Evanston, Illinois
>
>
One of the things I noticed when reading Genesis and other books written
during the Bronze Age is that some of the Bronze Age place names were
remembered until today, others were forgotten. Some of those forgotten names
were the same as later, different places. Some of those names were forgotten
even as early as the early Iron Age, so the Iron Age Tell Amarna letters
don’t mention them.

The only way for your theories to stand is to twist the text to mean
something other than what was written, and to ignore archeology.

Karl W. Randolph.