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  • From: jimstinehart AT aol.com
  • To: jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Kadesh-barnea
  • Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:43:00 -0500


James Christian:

There are actually two very distinct issues that are raised by your question.

1. Books in the Bible after Genesis refer to a desert oasis on the east edge
of the Sinai Peninsula as Kadesh-barnea. Geographically, there are 2 or 3
places that would seem to fit the bill. There is an immense scholarly
literature out there on the question of which one of these places is the
actual Kadesh-barnea. Prof. Yigal Levin is fully conversant with all of that
literature, because he wrote an artice concerning Israel's borders, about
half of which is devoted to Kadesh-barnea.

2. But now consider this.

(a) There is no place on the Sinai Peninsula that, in the secular history of
the ancient world, is attested by the name QD$ or Kadesh-barnea.

(b) By contrast, we know from Ugaritic literature that the exact spelling of
the famous, well-documented city of Qadesh of Upper Galilee in Ugaritic was
QD$.

(c) Scholars have, most unfortunately, relied heavily on the medieval
pointing of QD$ at Genesis 14: 7 and Genesis 20: 1, believe it or not, to
assert that the QD$ in those two passages cannot be historical Qadesh of
Upper Galilee. Yet if the medieval pointing is unreliable as to anything, it
is certainly unreliable as to identifying geographical place names in the
Patriarchal narratives. The proper approach is to ignore the medieval
pointing altogether in evaluating QD$ at Genesis 14: 7 and Genesis 20: 1.

(d) No scholar for the last 2,500 years, to the best of my knowledge, has
been willing to consider the ordinary meaning of $WB at Genesis 14: 7. The
ordinary meaning of this Biblical Hebrew common word would be, as we know
from 393 other occasions in the Bible, "return". $WB cannot possibly mean,
as scholars would have it, "and then they made a very wide turn to the
right". In the context of Genesis 14: 5, which tells us that this military
operation began at Ashteroth, the natural meaning of $WB at the beginning of
Genesis 14: 7 would be: "And then they returned (to the Ashteroth area)".
After returning north to the Ashteroth area, the next place this military
party would come to, as it continued to move north, would be Qadesh of Upper
Galilee, and Genesis 14: 7 indeed references QD$, which is historically
attested in Ugaritic literature as the exact spelling of Qadesh of Upper
Galilee. Qadesh of Upper Galilee is an "eye" on Baal's divine "seat of
justice", that is Mt. Hermon, which dominates the view from Qadesh of Upper
Galilee, hence the second name given for this place is En Mishpat. Having
returned north to the Ashteroth area, it would be impossible for the military
party to then launch a nonsensical attack on the tiny desert oasis of
Kadesh-barnea (unattested historically by that name) in the Sinai Desert.

3. The key to understanding and appreciating the amazing historicity of the
Patriarchal narratives is to give the Biblical Hebrew common word $WB its
ordinary meaning at Genesis 14: 7, while ignoring both II Chronicles and the
medieval pointing as to the issue of identifying geographical place names in
the Patriarchal narratives. If $WB is given its ordinary meaning of
"return", then the QD$ at Genesis 14: 7 is Qadesh of Upper Galilee, having
nothing to do with any Kadesh-barnea in the Sinai Desert. On that basis,
virtually every single word of Genesis 14: 7 can be historically verified by
reference to Amarna Letters EA 177 and EA 175.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois






-----Original Message-----
From: James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>
To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thu, Feb 11, 2010 8:15 pm
Subject: [b-hebrew] Kadesh-barnea


Hi all,
I've seen several discussions on this list implying the location of
adesh-barnea as a given. What basis do we have for our identification of
adesh-barnea?
thanks
ames Christian
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