Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Jim,

several issues here. Firstly, this thread is about the Amorites. Please
don't polute with a discussion about the Horites versus Hurrians. There's
another thread for that discussion.

Secondly, please stop presenting arguments against an identification of
Kadesh-Barnea or the Gulf of Aqaba. The last I checked nobody is disagreeing
with you on this. Qadesh was a common name.

Thirdly, we had a thread about El Paran and the evidence is against your
theory of Oak tree. Alon means Oak tree. Tereminthos means turpentine tree.
But please don't polute a discussion about the reach of the Amorites with
these kind of issues.

Finally, you eventually said something on topic. You have singled out one
particular period in one particular Amarna letter EA175 and limited the
Amorites to Hasi in the Beqa Valley. The Amorites were primarily nomadic and
their reach was far beyond one particular city in one particular valley.
They were all over the place causing an annoyance to neighbours in all
directions. They were so abundant that the Term Amorite was almost perfectly
synonymous with the term Canaanite. You seem to have gotten hung up on one
particular source and be trying to make the story fit into that source in a
time period which doesn't even align well.

In short, if you want to continue a discussion about the reach of the
Amorites in various periods then I'm happy to continue analysing the data
with you but please stay on topic without relying on massively embedded if
clauses and circular logic.

James Christian

On 8 May 2010 05:37, <jimstinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>  Dear Everyone:
> 1.  Hurrians
> If the author of Genesis 14: 6 wanted to reference the historical Hurrians
> who historically lived in the Transjordan in the Late Bronze Age (per Amarna
> Letter EA 197), the most he could be expected to do is to refer to
> XRY/Horites/Hurrians, and use three words that are redolent of the
> Transjordan:  (i) HRRM/hill country;  (ii) %(YR/Seir/well-wooded;  and
> (iii) )YL/a magnificent, mighty oak tree.
> 2.  Qadesh
> If the author of Genesis 14: 7 wanted to reference historical Qadesh of
> Upper Galilee, an important city in the Late Bronze Age, the most he could
> be expected to do is to use the historically-attested exact spelling from
> Ugaritic literature, QD$, and pair it with a reference to (YN M$P+/En
> Mishpat/Eye on Seat of Justice/Eye on Mt. Hermon/Facing (the Radiance of)
> Mt. Hermon.
> 3.  Amorites
> If the author of Genesis 14: 7 wanted to reference the historical Amorites
> who, per Amarna Letter EA 175, historically were at Hasi in the Beqa Valley
> in the Late Bronze Age, the most he could be expected to do is to refer to
> )MRY/Amorites, after the troops of the 4 attacking rulers had “returned”/$WB
> from the central Transjordan to the Ashteroth area and then came to Qadesh
> of Upper Galilee, going north into the Beqa Valley where the Amorites
> historically lived at Hasi.
> Genesis 14: 6-7 is fully historical in a Late Bronze Age historical
> context, and uses fully historical nomenclature.  It’s a perfect match to
> the world of the Amarna Letters in Year 14, a world that knew no wilderness
> of Zin and no Gulf of Aqaba, no troglodyte cave-dwellers south of the Dead
> Sea, and no Kadesh-barnea.
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>
> To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Fri, May 7, 2010 2:05 am
> Subject: [b-hebrew] The Amorites
>
> Hi,
>
> the Amorites are identified with the Martu of Akkadian literature. Here is
> an example of the way they were viewed by their Sumerian neighbours:
>
> *The MAR.TU who know no grain.... The MAR.TU who know no house nor town, the
> boors of the mountains.... The MAR.TU who digs up truffles... who does not
> bend his knees (to cultivate the land), who eats raw meat, who has no house
> during his lifetime, who is not buried after death.*
> *
> *
> The Amorites were primarily a nomadic people. They did not respect
> territorial boundaries and wandered wherever they pleased so their cattle
> could eat whatever the land offered. Civilised neighbours who worked and
> cultivated the land obviously did not take a liking to Amorite tribes
> wandering in and eating the fruits of their labours.
>
> The assumption that the wandering Amorites never reached as far as Oases to
> the South of Dead Sea is not only baseless but almost certainly incorrect.
>
> James Christian
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