Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi Jim,

with all due respect Jim the archives of this list show that we have all
(including Yigal) been considering your theory for the full 3 years you've
been presenting them. You have consistently brushed aside the refutations
without handling them properly and this has led to us not being convinced.
What more do you want from Yigal? He's looked at your theory and seen that
the foundation is faulty.

James Christian

On 30 April 2010 17:35, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>
> Dear Professor Yigal Levin:
>
> You wrote:  “Please do not put words in my mouth. I have never claimed that
> Hazazon Tamar is the same as the Roman Tamar, at Hazevah south of the Dead
> Sea. In fact, if you look at 2 Chr. 20:2, you'll see Hazazon Tamar
> identified there with En Gedi, which makes perfect sense. This, however,
> does not
> make either Gen. 14 or 2 Chr. 20 ‘historical’.”
>
> I certainly do not want to put words into anyone’s mouth, especially when
> such words undercut my own position.  Here is what you wrote on 2/15/10,
> and
> what I was referencing:
>
> “Hazazon-Tamar in mentioned once more in the Bible, in 2
>  Chr. 20:2, identified there with En-Gedi. En-Gedi, on the shore of the
> Dead
>  Sea, is well-known, and one of the ravines in the area is called Wadi
>  Hassassa. "Tamar" as a place-name, is attested (in the Bible and in
>  "secular" Roman-period documents) as being south of the Dead Sea
> (identified
>  at today's Hazevah).”
>
>
> Did I misinterpret what you wrote on 2/15?  I thought you were agreeing
> with Anson Rainey and Israel Finkelstein, and seeing XCCN TMR at Genesis
> 14: 7
> as matching to the Roman-era village south of the Dead Sea, rather than
> matching to Ezra’s post-exilic II Chronicles 20: 2, which sees a XCCN TMR
> on the
> shore of the Dead Sea.  As I presume you know, the modern scholarly trend
> is to go with the Roman-era village, and abandon Ezra.
>
> I guess what you literally said is that Tamar is a place-name that is “
> attested…in
>  ’secular’ Roman-period documents as being south of the Dead Sea
> (identified
>  at today's Hazevah)”.  You didn’t literally say that you match that
> village of Tamar with XCCN TMR at Genesis 14: 7.
>
> So if I misinterpreted what you said on 2/15/10, I sincerely apologize.
> Based on what you said today, I understand now that you disagree with both
> Anson Rainey and Israel Finkelstein, who identify XCCN TMR at Genesis 14: 7
> as
> being the Roman-era village Tamar, and instead you identify XCCN TMR at
> Genesis 14: 7 with Ezra’s post-exilic XCCN TMR of En-Gedi on the shore of
> the
> Dead Sea.
>
> But why would you trust a post-exilic book of Ezra in identifying a
> geographical place name in a composition that many scholars see as dating
> all the
> long way back to the Late Bronze Age?  You are a well-known scholarly
> expert
> on Ezra.  Why would you, of all people, think that Ezra knew the identities
> of geographical place names in the truly ancient chapter 14 of Genesis?
>
> As I mentioned in a prior post, many scholars point to many aspects of
> chapter 14 of Genesis that suggest the Late Bronze Age in general as the
> composition date, and the mid-14th century BCE in particular.  Without
> repeating
> that whole long post, let me briefly summarize that scholarly evidence I
> previously referenced that points to chapter 14 of Genesis as having been
> composed almost 1,000 years before Ezra’s post-exilic Chronicles:
>
> The word XNYKYW at Genesis 14: 14, referring to Abraham's armed retainers,
> is not present in the secular record after the 15th century BCE, and is
> never used elsewhere in the Bible.  The word %DYM only appears in chapter
> 14 of
> Genesis.
> HRRM is an archaic plural of HR or HRR that is only found in the Bible at
> Genesis 14: 6.   “[T]he number 318 in [Genesis] 14: 14 is analogous to the
> number of Hurrian handmaids plus the bride [from the Hurrian state of
> Naharim/Mitanni] in an Egyptian scarab of Amenhotep III”.  Gary A.
> Rendsburg.   The
> number 318 is the number of taxpaying citizens in Jerusalem (“porters”)
> referenced at Amarna Letter EA 287: 53-59 by Abdi-Heba.  Note also that
> both
> such aspects of the number 318 have a Hurrian connection, in the latter
> case
> because “Heba” is a Hurrian goddess.  Ezra knew nothing about the
> long-extinct Hurrians.  XCCN TMR makes perfect sense in Hurrian as meaning
> “the wisdom
> of nine”.  The Hurrians were only prominent in the Late Bronze Age, not
> earlier or later.  $N(R likewise makes perfect sense in Hurrian.  I
> disagree
> with Anson Rainey’s scribal error theory of a name similar to this
> inscribed
> on the inside of a chariot buried with Akhenaten’s grandfather, where
> absent
> a scribal error the meaning would be as I have asserted -- Syria, not
> southern Mesopotamia.  Finally, chapter 14 of Genesis concludes in vintage
> Ugaritic fashion (strongly influenced by the Hittites), circa the end of
> the first
> year of the Great Syrian War in the mid-14th century BCE, when Abraham
> promises not to take either “a string or a sandal lace” for returning
> Sodom’s
> looted goods.  In the context of the Hittites oppressing Ugarit and using
> this
> type of peculiar nomenclature, I quoted Victor P. Hamilton, “The Book of
> Genesis Chapters 1-17” (1990), at p. 414.  In the context of the Hittites
> oppressing the Hurrians and using this type of peculiar nomenclature found
> at
> the end of chapter 14 of Genesis, I quoted Yochanan Muffs, “Abraham the
> Noble
> Warrior:  Patriarchal Politics and Laws of War in Ancient Israel”, The
> Journal of Jewish Studies London, 1982, vol. 33, no. 1-2, at p. 84.
>
> Prof. Yigal Levin, I presume you would agree that chapter 14 of Genesis
> contains bona fide Hurrian and Hittite names.  For example, “Tidal” is a
> Late
> Bronze Age Hittite name, and “Arioch” is a Late Bronze Age Hurrian name,
> just for starters.
>
> With all those indications, noted by respectable mainstream scholars, that
> chapter 14 of Genesis is truly ancient, why then would you look to Ezra’s
> post-exilic Chronicles to identify XCCN TMR, instead of considering a
> Hurrian
> analysis of that name?  If chapter 14 of Genesis is as old as many scholars
> think it is, how can you see such an ancient text as being dead wrong as to
> the geographical locale of the Horites/Hurrians at Genesis 14: 6 and the
> Amorites at Genesis 14: 7?  By the way, I agree with you that the many
> parts of
> the Bible that were composed much later than chapter 14 of Genesis
> routinely get both the Horites and the Amorites wrong, but that’s because
> those
> parts of the Bible were composed, as I am quite sure you would agree, long
> after
> the Amorites and the Hurrians had gone extinct.
>
> But that’s not the case for the truly ancient chapter 14 of Genesis.
>
> Is there a “Big Secret” that university scholars are keeping from us?  Why
> look to a post-exilic work like Chronicles to identify a place referenced
> in the Late Bronze Age composition of chapter 14 of Genesis?  Why never ask
> what the )RYWK means, what )LSR means, or what XCCN TMR means, in various
> non-Semitic languages?  If, as you insist, chapter 14 of Genesis is not “
> historical” (in a Late Bronze Age context concerning the Great Syrian War,
> which
> potentially threatened to wipe out the early Hebrews), then why the great
> scholarly reluctance to discuss those 3 non-Semitic names?  And why oh why
> do
> you trust Ezra, of all people, to identify peoples and places in the truly
> ancient chapter 14 of Genesis?  I understand why Karl trusts Ezra, but why
> do
> you, as a mainstream university scholar, see Ezra as being a good source
> for
> identifying peoples and places in chapter 14 of Genesis?  If you look at p.
> 15 of Anson Rainey’s “The Sacred Bridge”, you can see that Rainey does not
> use Ezra to identify XCCN TMR.  If chapter 14 of Genesis is truly ancient,
> as many mainstream scholars think is indeed the case, then why would it
> place the Amorites non-historically south of the Dead Sea, immediately
> before a
> reference to a XCCN TMR that is never mentioned again in the Bible until
> Ezra
> ’s post-exilic Chronicles?
>
> I will reiterate my 3-year-old plea for you to spend 20 minutes looking at
> Late Bronze Age historical inscriptions  n-o-r-t-h  of the Dead Sea in
> analyzing Genesis 14: 6-7.  Everything’s there, and it’s fully historical
> in a
> mid-14th century BCE context, if only you would glance  n-o-r-t-h.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
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