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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: jkilmon AT historian.net, bjwvmw AT com-pair.net, kwrandolph AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org, LBReich AT alum.mit.edu
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Patriarchal Narratives was TD(L
  • Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:46:15 EDT


Jack Kilmon:

For b-hebrew list purposes, the best way to date the composition of the
Patriarchal narratives is by examining the proper names it uses. On this
thread
we have so far seen that TD(L and NHRYM are vintage Late Bronze Age
nomenclature that fit the mid-14th century BCE perfectly. In this post we’ll
look
at K$-D-YM and MLK (LM. Those four names don’t fit the Early Bronze Age
(Karl’s view), or the 1st millennium BCE (the scholarly view as to most of
the
Patriarchal narratives). Let’s now examine your linguistic comments as they
would apply to a mid-14th century BCE composition date for the Patriarchal
narratives.

1. You wrote: “There was no Hebrew script at this time when
proto-alphabetic acrophonic systems in Egypt and the Sinai were just emerging
but
certainly there was a Canaanite language.”

Pre-Canaanite is attested prior to the mid-14th century BCE in the
Shephelah. So at least the key names in the Patriarchal narratives could
have been
recorded, in writing, using pre-Hebrew script from day #1, given a mid-14th
century BCE composition date for the Patriarchal narratives.

2. You wrote: “Aramaeans settled in Aram around the 13th century BCE….”

But who cares about the 13th century BCE? The Patriarchal narratives are
talking about the mid-14th century BCE. The word “Arameans” is
well-attested in the mid-14th century BCE: “[R]eferences to individual
Arameans occur
in the Ugaritic texts along with a reference in a fourteenth century
cuneiform text to eqleti aramima, ‘the fields of the Arameans’.” John Van
Seters, “
Abaham in History and Tradition” (1975), at p. 30.

3. You wrote: “…and Abraham is reported to have been born in Sumerian UR
(not of the Chaldees).”

There’s no Biblical reference to “Chaldees”! No, the reference is K$DYM,
meaning southern Mesopotamia under Kassite rulers in the Late Bronze Age.
K$ means “Kassite” in Kassite. Based on Sanskrit, dun or du- or tu-, or
even just d- or t-, means “to overpower” in Kassite. –YM is a standard west
Semitic suffix [having nothing to do with the Kassite language], comparable
to –ite in English. So K$-D-YM means: “the Kassite overpowerer people”.
[The original Kassite form of the name of their own county was
Ka-$ra-du-ni-ia$ (where the R is a comparative in Sanskrit/Kassite, and the
final suffix
means “land” in Kassite). The meaning probably was “the land that has been
overpowered by the wondrous Kassites”. Because the consonant cluster was
not pronounceable by most non-Kassites, non-Kassite Akkadian scribes dropped
the first $, which is why this name comes out as “Karaduniash” in the Amarna
Letters. (Unless one knows to imply back in the omitted $, that particular
rendering of the name of Kassite Babylonia makes little sense, which is why
scholars have been unable to explain the derivation of that word in the
Amarna Letters. The Hebrew author made a much better choice here: he wisely
dropped out the relatively unimportant R, while keeping the $, so that his
Hebrew audience would understand the reference, which in Hebrew nicely starts
with K$, meaning “Kassite”.) But they’re all simply three different
versions of the same basic name. The only two differences are that (i) most
non-Kassites could not pronounce that consonant cluster, so either the R or
the $
had to be dropped, and (ii) the Hebrews (not surprisingly) dropped the
Kassite suffix and substituted a Hebrew suffix.]

4. You wrote: “Numerous anachronisms occur in the OT simply from the
account being written centuries after the events.”

But not in the Patriarchal narratives! Nothing of what you said is
anachronistic in a mid-14th century BCE historical context. Rather,
everything
that you said on the linguistic front fits a mid-14th century BCE composition
date perfectly.

5. Since this thread is being closed, I only have time to give one more
example of wording in the Patriarchal narratives that fits the mid-14th
century BCE perfectly, but that was unknown in both the Early Bronze Age and
the
1st millennium BCE: Chedorlaomer’s kingly title. Although the received text
has MLK (YLM, the original spelling almost certainly was MLK (LM. The
kingly title MLK (LM, meaning “King Eternity”, is historically attested in
only
one place in 5,000 years of human history, concerning a title for a living,
human king: at Late Bronze Age Ugarit. The six-letter-for-six-letter
total accuracy is quite amazing. Here’s a snippet of a fine scholarly
analysis
of MLK (LM at Ugarit: “Gaal, like most commentators, noticed the occurrence
of mlk ‘lm in Ugaritic as an epithet of [Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep
III] Nmry (Ni-im-mu-a-ri-ia)… …mlk ‘lm = hk3d.t/nb nhh [Egyptian epithets of
Akhenaten]. …The idea of divine eternity did not flower in Mesopotamia as
it did in Egypt during this period.” Alan Cooper, “MLK ‘LM: ‘Eternal King’
or ‘King of Eternity’”, in “Love & Death in the Ancient Near East”,
edited by John H. Marks and Robert M. Good (1987), at pp. 1-3, 7.

Unfortunately, Biblical analysts of the story of Biblical “Tudhaliya”
ignore the foregoing Late Bronze Age historical facts completely, and analyze
Chedorlaomer’s title exclusively on the basis of what is said in the
post-exilic Book of Daniel. But for anyone brave enough to cast a glance at
non-biblical sources from the Late Bronze Age, the pinpoint historical
accuracy of
the Biblical story of Hittite King “Tudhaliya” is truly breathtaking.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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