Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

James:

Genesis and Numbers both recognize a Kadesh that is separate from the Kadesh
Barnea that you visited.

While Kadesh Barnea was fairly well known and sometimes simply called
Kadesh, the other site was named only a couple of times in the context of
being a station along the Kings Highway east of the Rift valley. Moses was
not at Kadesh Barnea when he asked for Edom’s permission to cross his land.

Seeing as there were two sites in the south with the name Kadesh, and others
up north (How common was that name?), we have no problem with the report as
given in Tanakh.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 2:38 PM, James Christian
<jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> just got back from a trip to Isreal and the Sinai peninsula. I've had
> reservations before but now I'm more than ever convinced that I have real
> problems with the identification of Kadesh-Barnea. It just doesn't seem to
> make any sense whatsoever. Moses asks Edom permission to cross his land
> along the King's Highway while at Kadesh-Barnea but modern identification
> of
> Kadesh-Barnea is over a hundred km from it across the desert. It is also
> very far from the red mountains we associate with Edom with yellow Negev on
> all sides and yet from Kadesh-Barnea Moses told Edom that he was at his
> borders.
>
> James Christian
>