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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr, kwrandolph AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] H-XT-Y at II Samuel 11: 3
  • Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:28:16 EDT


Dr. Arnaud Fournet:

You wrote: “I'm also quite confused that you now seem to defend a truly
Semitic


identification of these "Hittites" when you previously referred to a
suggestion they were not.”

This thread is not about my ideas. Rather, this thread is limited to (i)
examining the mainstream scholarly view of who the Biblical “Hittites” are,
and (ii) finding out what people on the b-hebrew list, such as yourself and
Karl (and anyone else who has an opinion on this matter), think as to who
the Biblical “Hittites” are.

So far, no one (especially me!) who has posted on this thread seems
inclined to defend the semi-unanimous mainstream scholarly view that the
Biblical
Hittites are non-historical Canaanites in hill country south of the Jezreel
Valley, who have west Semitic names.

Let me say that I agree completely with the following assertion by Karl: “
One of the problems we have in reading the text is that we don’t have vowels
written (those that we have are from a tradition far later, not original,
and demonstrably sometimes wrong), thus the apparent Semitic sounding names
may be mispronunciations of non-Semitic names.”

Something seems amiss here. Karl is sounding so reasonable regarding this
issue. Yet let me re-quote what the #1 scholar in the world on this issue
says: “Apart from the expression ‘the land of the Hittites’, which
sometimes denotes Syria, all other references to ‘Hittites’ in the OT are to
a
small group living in the hills during the era of the Patriarchs and
descendants of that group.” H.A. Hoffner, POTT, pp. 213-214

If I may be so bold, you seem blissfully unaware of the h-u-g-e
consequences that are riding on this issue. One reason why mainstream
scholars give
little credibility to the historicity of what purports in the Bible to be
the early history of the Hebrews is because of this very issue. The Hittites
from eastern Anatolia were never in hill country in south-central Canaan,
that’s for sure. And nothing in history supports there ever having been a
Canaanite tribe called the Hittites [H-XT-Y] either. Does that make the
Bible
non-historical? Or is the problem that modern scholars have not figured out
what the Bible is saying?

The names of these XT people in the Bible make no sense on a west Semitic
basis. So logically we on the b-hebrew list should do what not a single
university scholar has ever done: consider, first and foremost, which
non-Semitic people are historically attested as constituting, albeit for a
fairly
brief length of time, much of the ruling class of cities throughout Canaan.
Yes, university scholars are well aware of this historical phenomenon, and do
not deny it per se. But they absolutely refuse to give any serious
consideration to this well-documented historical phenomenon when considering
the
question of who the Biblical “Hittites” were. How can it be right for
university freshmen to be taught that this stuff is Biblical fiction, when
university scholars are unwilling to consider the most likely historical
candidate
for being the Biblical “Hittites”? Until and unless some mainstream
university scholar is willing to address this issue head on, I myself give no
credence to their constant written, published assurances that all this stuff
is
Biblical fiction.

What we need to do is to convince at least one mainstream university
scholar to look at what actually happened in Late Bronze Age Canaan. Then if
such
open-minded scholar would compare what actually happened in Late Bronze Age
Canaan to what the Bible says about the Biblical “Hittites”, a refreshing
new dialogue about the historicity of this part of the Bible might well
ensue, to the benefit of one and all.

But for now, the top scholars on earth as to the matter of the Biblical “
Hittites” -- Trevor Bryce, Harry A. Hoffner, and Gordon Wenham, being the
absolute top three guys in this field -- see the Biblical “Hittites” as being
non-historical Canaanites with west Semitic names who are fictionally
portrayed as living in hill country south of the Jezreel Valley. If we don’t
challenge that indefensible scholarly view of the Biblical “Hittites”, we’ll
never recover the historicity of the Bible. With Hebrew language issues
being
the main concern of the b-hebrew list, the logical focus in an examination
of this scholarly view is the question of whether people on the b-hebrew list
see the following as being west Semitic Hebrew names, as opposed to being
non-Semitic names rendered in Biblical Hebrew: ’WRY-H; ‘PR-W-N; CXR;
H-XT-Y.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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