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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: jkilmon AT historian.net, if AT math.bu.edu
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The meaning of Beersheba
  • Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:49:11 EDT


We can now sum up our examination of Beersheba in chapter 26 of Genesis,
and the related locales of Beer Laxi-Rai and Gerar.

1. Beer Laxi-Rai

Since Isaac sojourns for 30 years here, and there is never any talk of
hardship in this locale (until a widespread famine-drought hits the area),
the
conventional view cannot be right that Beer Laxi-Rai is located in the truly
bleak eastern Sinai Desert. Rather, everything that is said in the Biblical
text about Beer Laxi-Rai fits the Lachish Valley perfectly, including Laxi
having a similar sound to Lachi in Lachi-sha. It makes no sense to think
that lovely young Rebecca was taken all the long way from Naharim in eastern
Syria through lovely Canaan and then dumped in the eastern Sinai Desert,
where Isaac was walking in one of his fields. There are no fields in the
Sinai!
Rather, Rebecca was rightly and proudly taken to the fertile Lachish
Valley in Canaan proper, the agricultural heartland of the future state of
Judah.

2. Gerar

Since southwest Canaan is not a wheat-growing region and there’s no place
with a name like GRR there in the ancient world, the conventional view cannot
be right that Isaac gets rich growing wheat at an unattested place in
southwest Canaan. Rather, GRR is gararu, being the Late Bronze Age spelling
of
Galilee. Note that (a) GRR/Upper Galilee is far away from where
drought-famine hits Beer Laxi-Rai/the Lachish Valley, but equally
importantly, (b)
b-o-t-h such places are in the Promised Land of Canaan proper. Genesis 26:
1-6
requires that. Although there are wells south of Beersheba of the Negev
and south of Gaza, there are no wells between the traditional site of Gerar
and Beersheba of the Negev. Thus unless each of Abraham and Isaac
unexpectedly made a huge swing way to the south in leaving the traditional
site of
Gerar [rather than, as expected, heading toward Beersheba of the Negev,
turning
a 20-mile route into a 40-mile route, in an area where only seasonal wells
can be dug], they could not have dug a series of wells between the
traditional site of Gerar and Beersheba of the Negev. By stark contrast,
some of the
best wells in modern Israel have been dug along the edge of the foothills in
western Upper Galilee: “a chain of…wells…along the western Galilee
foothills”. Gerald De Gaury, “The New State of Israel” (1952), at p. 216.
The
text works perfectly if Abraham and Isaac proceeded south by southeast from
Sur/Tyre on the northwest corner of Upper Galilee, dug a well about every 6
miles, and ended up digging the 4th named well up at Beersheba of Galilee,
with known wells being all along that expected line of the Patriarchs’
movements. Instead of having to force the text [with there being no known
wells
between the traditional site of Gerar and Beersheba in the Negev], the text
neatly foreshadows precisely where modern Israel has in fact built a whole
series of important wells in western Upper Galilee.


3. Beersheba

We know from the blessing sequence in chapter 27 of Genesis that it was
absolutely routine for Esau to bag savory big game at a “Beersheba”. That
could not happen at Beersheba of the Negev, which is in a semi-arid locale
where wild game was not a significant part of the diet, but it makes perfect
sense at Beersheba of Galilee, which adjoined a dense forest/MDBR P)RN. [It
was that dense forest that stopped Isaac from going further south.] The text
then tells us that Isaac goes “up” to Beersheba, which fits Beersheba of
Galilee perfectly, since it is located “up” in the foothills of western Upper
Galilee. But Beersheba of the Negev is located in the bottom of a drainage
basin, so one would not go “up” to that southern Beersheba. [Also,
Beersheba of the Negev is located southeast of the traditional location of
Gerar,
so one would not be figuratively going “up”/north toward Canaan if one took
anything resembling a normal route from Gerar to Beersheba of the Negev.]

The bottom line is that the conventional view is completely wrong about the
location of all three of these places. Until and unless we get the
geography right, these stories in the Patriarchal narratives do not make good
sense.

Please note that in terms of what the text of the Patriarchal narratives
says in describing the key characteristics of these three places, there is
n-o-t-h-i-n-g in the text that fits the traditional locales. N-o-t-h-i-n-g
.
0 for 3. Nada.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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