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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] $WB, Gen 14 and Amarna 197
  • Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:30:37 EST


Yigal Levin:

First, I apologize for calling you “Professor” and for repeatedly
mentioning your peer-reviewed publications (two of which I have read numerous
times). No disrespect was intended. In fact, I honestly consider you one of
the
most open-minded professors I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.
(Please, please refer to me as “Jim”.)

Second, thank you for your post, which as usual is honest and informative,
and well represents the middle of the academic mainstream (which, as far as
I can tell, is the case for most all of your posts).

Your post amply confirms, however, my central assertion, namely that you
know of no inscriptions from the secular history of the ancient world that
would place any of the following 7 key names of peoples and places at Genesis
14: 6-7 south of the Dead Sea: (1) Horites, (2) El-paran, (3) QD$, (4)
En-misphat, (5) Amalekites, (6) Amorites, (7) Hazezon.

Given that startling fact, why aren’t you interested in looking to see if,
as I have asserted, 6 of those 7 names (all except El-paran) are
well-attested in Late Bronze Age secular historical inscriptions from north
of the Dead
Sea?

I hope that people on the b-hebrew list may now realize that you and I have
an honest difference of opinion. Instead of me being hopelessly
misinformed or uninformed, our dispute is, rather, what should be made of the
objective fact that 0 of 7 of the above names are attested south of the Dead
Sea in
the secular history of the ancient world. My view of that, as directly
opposed to your view, is that we should look for those names north of the
Dead
Sea. In my view, Ezra’s II Chronicles (together with the medieval pointing
that follows Ezra, to the extent that medieval pointing of geographical place
names in the Patriarchal narratives is accurate at all) was meant to fool
the Persians as to the allegedly ultra-southerly geography of the Patriarchal
narratives. I for one do not criticize Ezra for that. But in my view,
what is said in the post-exilic II Chronicles should not preclude our efforts
today to recover what geography the author of the Patriarchal narratives
actually originally intended. My own controversial view is that the text
never
portrays the Patriarchs as sojourning south of the Aijalon Valley, and often
portrays the Patriarchs as sojourning in Galilee (GRR/“Galilee”), and that
no one in chapter 14 of Genesis is portrayed as venturing south of Jazer.

Even despite the fact that you recently explicitly characterized my views
of such a northern geography as being “fantasies”, I have nevertheless been
dreaming that you yourself, or perhaps one of your students, might honestly
be interested in researching to see if most of those 7 names are
historically attested in the Late Bronze Age north of the Dead Sea. That
geographical
investigation could potentially revolutionize the study of the Patriarchal
narratives. However, I guess I should understand from your most recent post
that you have zero interest in such an endeavor. I honestly do not
understand why you are not curious about this topic (which to me is a
super-exciting
topic), but if you’re not excited about the topic, or even interested in it
at all, then there’s probably little reason for me to continue posting on
it.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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