Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryant J. Williams III" <bjwvmw AT com-pair.net>]

Dear Jim,

You assume that what you are saying makes sense; therefore, must be correct. 
At
this point, you have NOT provided convincing evidence to the contrary. I do
accept all the Torah as historical. I accept that Genesis 14 takes place 
around
2000-2200 BC not around 14th Century BC. In fact, I take the Amarna Letters to
fit better around 1407-1400 BC and the limited Conquest under Joshua.

The major problem for those who do not accept Genesis 14 is that they are
looking in the wrong century. Another problem is the lack of evidence from the
EBA - BA regarding what was going on South of the Dead Sea. I should mention
that most of what we do have is found in Genesis and I accept that until
evidence to the contrary is presented (which is highly unlikely since the text
is all we have; regardless of the discredited and anti-semitc JEDP theory).

I take Abram (Abraham) as being more semi-nomadic than nomadic. The reasoning
being that Hebron is the center of most of his activities from Genesis 17 -
25:11. Up to this time Genesis 12-16 he is nomadic traveling around the land 
of
Canaan.

One final thing. Learn Hebrew. All you have is nothing and have to rely on
scholarly articles and have no means to discern whether that scholarly is
correct or not.

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>
To: <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] 1 Kings 20:14 Who are the young men,princes of the
districts?


>
>
> James Christian:
>
> You wrote:  “Turning back from the mountains of Seir to an oasis/settlement
> in Wadi Paran makes perfect sense. I see absolutely no reason to hypothesis
> the Gulf of Aqaba and this just sounds ridiculous.”
>
> You’re missing the point here.  Both Seir and El-Paran appear in Genesis
> 14: 6.  Then the next word of the text is the first word of Genesis 14: 7,
> which is $WB.  So  a-f-t-e-r  being at El-Paran, the troops of the 4 
> attacking
> rulers “return”.
>
> I agree with your intuition that trying to make “Great Desert”/El-Paran be
> a navigable body of water, the Gulf of Aqaba 100 long miles south of the
> Dead Sea, “just sounds ridiculous”.  But how else can the troops “return”
> /$WB by way of Kadesh-barnea in the Sinai Desert?
>
> The real answer, of course, is that QD$ has nothing to do whatsoever with
> any Kadesh-barnea in the Sinai Desert, but rather is referring to the
> historical QD$ that was located in Upper Galilee.
>
> But if you’re going to stick with the traditional and scholarly view, and
> ignore all inscriptions from ancient history, and claim that QD$ is
> Kadesh-barnea in the Sinai Desert, then you’ve got to claim to see the 
> troops
going
> w-a-y  south of the Dead Sea, all the way to the Gulf of Aqaba or
> thereabouts, or else you’ve got no hope with $WB/“return”.
>
> Why force $WB to try to have a meaning it never has anywhere else in Hebrew?
>
> Why force El-Paran to be a navigable waterway?
>
> Why force the Amorites to allegedly be non-historically portrayed as living
> south of the Dead Sea?
>
> Why force the meanings of all those Hebrew words?  To what benefit?  After
> forcing the meaning of all of those words, both common words and proper
> names, what one ends up with is what Prof. Yigal Levin’s mentor, Anson 
> Rainey,
> says at p. 114 of “The Sacred Bridge”:  there is a “total lack of any link
> with known Ancient Near Eastern sources” for the military conflict reported
> in chapter 14 of Genesis.
>
> Why not instead go with the natural meaning of all the words at Genesis 14:
> 1-11?  Why fight the text?  Look to historical inscriptions from the Bronze
> Age, not to Ezra’s post-exilic Chronicles, and virtually every single word
> at Genesis 14: 5-7 can be verified historically, with specificity.
>
> Why force the meaning of all those words, when that just ends up with
> fiction?
>
> $WB means “return”.  El-Paran means “Great Desert”.  And the Amorites
> historically never lived south of the Dead Sea.  E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g  is 
> north
> of the Dead Sea.  And it’s all historical.  My view does not require the
> meaning of a single word in the Biblical text to be forced.  That’s one of 
> the
> great strengths of my view.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
>
>
>
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>


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