Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Lewis Reich:
 
I hope you were not replying to me off-list (because your comment is of 
general interest), when you wrote:  “The Masoretic pointing may have been set 
down in the Middle Ages, but that doesn't mean the Masoretes simply sat down 
and came up with pointing off the tops of their heads.  They were the 
recipients of a continuous oral tradition of reading that may have gone back 
as much as a thousand years or more.”
 
The Masoretic pointing was done in the Middle Ages.  Using your view that the 
Masoretic pointing may reflect an oral tradition “that may have gone back as 
much as a thousand years or more”, that would get us back to the late 1st 
millennium BCE or so.  But that’s over 1,000 years after (i) Ugarit went 
extinct, (ii) the Hittites went extinct, and (iii) chapter 14 of Genesis was 
composed (based on the majority view of mainstream scholars).  Accordingly, 
for a truly ancient Biblical text like that, the Ugaritic spelling is much 
more relevant than is the medieval Masoretic pointing.  We see 
letter-for-letter spelling accuracy in comparing Biblical TD(L/Tudhaliya to 
the Ugaritic spelling of that Hittite kingly name from the 14th century BCE 
or so.
 
This part of the Bible has incredible historical accuracy.  If we look to 
non-biblical sources from the Late Bronze Age, almost every aspect of Genesis 
14: 1-11 checks out perfectly, once one realizes that a non-royal author 
would be expected to use nicknames for living rulers, per the consistent 
practice attested in the Amarna Letters.  TD(L/Tudhaliya is an appropriate  
n-i-c-k-n-a-m-e  for an historical Hittite king who meets both of the 
following two key criteria:  (i) historically he did everything that Biblical 
TD(L is portrayed as doing at Genesis 14: 1-11, and (ii) it would make 
complete sense for an early Hebrew author to use “Tudhaliya” as this 
historical Hittite king’s nickname (even though his name was nothing like 
“Tudhaliya”).
 
The letter-for-letter spelling accuracy here compared to the Late Bronze Age 
Ugaritic source for this name also suggests that this ancient part of the 
Bible may have been committed to writing much earlier than scholars have 
thought.  This part of the Bible is truly ancient, and very accurate.  It 
pre-dates the medieval Masoretic pointing by 2,000 years or more.  That 
medieval pointing should not be relied upon to try to undercut the pinpoint 
historical accuracy of Genesis 14: 1-11.  Nor should Ezra or Daniel.  Rather, 
the way to check out (and confirm) the pinpoint historical accuracy of this 
ancient Biblical text is to compare it to the abundant non-biblical sources 
we have for the Late Bronze Age.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois