Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Jim,

1. It makes perfect sense for messengers to be sent ahead even to 50-100 miles
ahead since Esau/Edom is clearly SOUTH of the Dead Sea. Remember that the
wrestling with the LORD by the Jabbok River occurred just before meeting Esau.

2. It is time to drop this line of argument. You are not making sense.

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>
To: <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>; <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 5:40 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Seir


>
> Karl:
>
> 1.  You wrote:  “Yet in that denial, you referenced information that at one
> time Saudi Arabia was forested, which brings up the question, when did
> those forests dry up?  Isaiah indicates that at least some of it was still 
> in
> existence when he lived, ca. 700 BC.”
>
> The scientific evidence is that northern Arabia has not had forests since
> the last Ice Age:
>
> “During the last Ice Age, Saudi Arabia was wetter and cooler. A
> Mediterranean climate prevailed from Palestine to Yemen and across into the
highlands
> of Ethiopia and Somalia. As the weather changed to its present, far warmer,
> condition, whole plant communities retreated to areas climatically capable 
> of
> supporting them - to "islands" of cooler, wetter weather found at higher
> altitudes and separated by warmer, dryer valleys. Thus, honeysuckle and
> pistacia are no longer found anywhere between Taif and Palestine. That 
> juniper
> species now has three distinct populations, isolated from each other - one 
> in
> the 'Asir, one in the highlands of northern Oman, and the other confined to
> the mountains of Somalia and Ethiopia. Even in the 'Asir, juniper cannot be
> found below 1,800 meters altitude (5,900 feet), or more than five kilometers
> (three miles) inland.”
>
> _http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198904/arabian.forests.htm_
> (http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198904/arabian.forests.htm)
>
> 2.  You wrote:  “Wrong again. He sent for Esau as a prophylactic, to
> prevent later conflict.”
>
> The key passage is Genesis 32: 4 [Genesis 32: 3]:
>
> “And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of
> Seir….”
>
> Almost all the translations say “before him” or “ahead of him” or “ahead”
> .  [Darby oddly says “before his face”, which is probably too literal a
> translation, though such a super-literal translation is nevertheless 
> helpful.]
>
> Karl, how are you translating this verse?  Doesn’t it say that Jacob sent
> messengers ahead, before him, to near the place where Jacob himself would
> soon need to travel?  How can you read it that Jacob sent messengers upwards
of
> 100 miles or so out of the way, way down south, south of the Dead Sea?
> Jacob was way up in northern Gilead, east of Shechem.  The point of sending
the
> messengers was to get advance warning as to how Esau might react, so that
> Jacob could craft a plan to deal with Esau, if necessary.  Jacob  does  
> n-o-t
>  do this  “as a prophylactic, to prevent later conflict.”  On the
> contrary, the very minute that Jacob finds out that Esau means Jacob no
physical
> harm, Jacob immediately takes his leave, and makes no attempt whatsoever to
> reconcile with Esau “to prevent later conflict”.
>
> With all due respect, it seems to me that your reading is doing violence to
> what the text quite clearly says.  By contrast, on my view, if Seir is
> Shar/Jazer, located where Jazer was located later in the 1st millennium BCE,
> then the entire text reads naturally.  But if Seir is south of the Dead Sea,
> then the text has to be contorted to try to make it fit that geography.  
> Jacob
> sent the messengers ahead of him, before him, to Seir/Shar/Jazer, knowing
> that Jacob’s entire large entourage would soon have to pass fairly close to
> Seir/Shar/Jazer in going to Shechem, so that Jacob could not possibly sneak
> that large entourage into Canaan without Esau hearing about it.  On my view
> of the historical geography, the text reads very naturally, and the story
> makes perfect sense.
>
> I don’t quite understand why everyone is fighting so strongly to prevent
> the geography of the Patriarchal narratives from being historical.  If we go
> with historical geography, based on Bronze Age inscriptions (and ignore
> entirely both Ezra and the medieval pointing done in the Middle Ages), then
the
> stories make perfect sense, and nothing in the text needs to be forced.  The
> story of Jacob sending messengers ahead to meet with Esau is a perfect
> example of what I’m talking about.  Genesis 32: 3, and Genesis 14: 6, both
make
> perfect sense, both historically and textually, if and only if Seir is
> Shar/Jazer, located where Jazer was located in the 1st millennium BCE, in 
> the
> well-wooded hill country of Gilead in the Transjordan, just east of the 
> Jordan
> River, and not too far from either Shechem or Jerusalem.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
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>


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