Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 5:40 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>  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:
>
>

And when was that? Science, using the scientific method can’t tell.

http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Scientific_Method_from_science_textbooks

History gives a different answer than those scientists who violate
scientific method.

>
>
> 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….”
>
>
And Seir had already been identified as being in the South, south of where
Jacob planned to dwell after returning from Padan Aram.

>
>
> 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.]
>
>
And the Hebrew idiom can include going beyond where one plans to go, as in
this example.

>
>
> I don’t quite understand why everyone is fighting so strongly to prevent 
> the geography of the Patriarchal narratives from being historical.
>
>
I don’t understand how you cannot understand that by changing the historical
data into dreamland data, that that somehow establishes the historicity of
the narrative. By changing the narrative, you deny that the original found
in Genesis is 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),
>
>
Ezra and the medieval pointing had nothing to do with the writing and
understanding of Genesis.

>
>
> Jim Stinehart
>
> Evanston, Illinois
>
>
Karl W. Randolph.