Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryant J. Williams III" <bjwvmw AT com-pair.net>]

Dear Jim,

Genesis 13:14-18:
    The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, "Lift up your
eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and
eastward and westward; for the land which you see I will give to you and to 
your
descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the
earth, your descendants also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length 
and
the breath, for I will give it to you. So Abram moved his tent, and came and
dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an later 
to
the LORD."

Now, I can see Abram dwelling near a large amount of oaks because Northern
California from about 50 miles South of Redding, CA on I-5 going North has
plenty. Its weather is very much like Israel's with its Mediterranean 
climate. I
can actually picture Abram sitting under a very large Oak (cf. 14:13, 
24;18:1).

Genesis 23:17-20 has Abraham purchasing from Ephron the Hittite a piece of 
land
called the Cave of Machpelah, east of Mamre near Hebron (formerly 
Kiriath-Arba,
vs. 2; cf. also Josh 14:15; 15:13 and Judg 1:10) which had trees. Later, Isaac
with Rebekkah (35:29; 49:31) and Jacob and Leah (50:13; 49:31).

The early to middle Bronze Age is when the events of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and
Joseph takes place. This would be ca. 2000 BC to 1800 BC. It is the wrong
century or centuries that is being looked at. The Pentateuch was written by
Moses (15th Century BC); edited by scribes (Ezra?, ca. 5th Century BC). Even 
if
one should disagree with the dating, the final analysis by which we ALL have 
to
go by is the text itself.

Jim, much of what you write is too speculative. You start out with a premise,
then you proceed to add too many, if this... if this... if this... then 
this....
Should one part of that puzzle proved to be wrong, then the rest of the theory
is wrong. In teaching students about report writing, I make do the research
first regarding a particular subject/topic that interests them. After they 
have
analyzed the information and organized it, then write out a premise that is
based on the information gathered, then write one's conclusion even if that
conclusion leads one to show that the premise is incorrect. At least, one has
interacted with the source material. Many times the methodology is faulty. 
This
means one has to look at the presuppositions behind the sources especially of
late 19th Century-early 20th Century Higher Criticism (especially German) that
was Anti-Semitic, Anti-Creation (Evolutionary), Anti-Supernatural and
Anti-predictive prophecy; not ALL were, but most were.

Finally, the first exiles returning from Babylon (536 BC) and Ezra and his
priestly scribes (457 BC) were able to establish lineages of the various 
tribes
and histories upon return from Babylon. This would coincide with what records
that were still available.

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>
To: <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>; <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] gen. 25 (tam?)


>
> Each of George Athas and Rob Acosta has asserted that my theory of the
> Patriarchal narratives fails to take account of climate change, and that
greater
> Canaan in the Patriarchal Age was much nicer than the same place is today
> in terms of climate.  True, tremendous deforestation was wrought by the 
> hands
> of man in Roman times (but that is not climate change).  A much better
> approach to this important topic is to examine Late Bronze Age burials in
> Canaan, which are very helpful in checking out the geographical locales in 
> the
> Patriarchal narratives, since I view the Patriarchal Age as having been the
> Late Bronze Age.
>
> Per Genesis 13: 9, 11, we should rightly expect that wealthy Abraham
> sojourned west of Bethel [the opposite direction from Bethel as Lot, who is
stated
> to go east], in the northern Shephelah.  If in fact there were wealthy
> owners of huge flocks of sheep and goats in the northern Shephelah, then we
> would expect to see some of that wealth in Late Bronze Age burials there.
> Scholars, assuming that Abraham is fictionally portrayed as sojourning at 
> the
> mountainous city of Hebron [south, not west, of Bethel], don’t expect to see
> any significant wealth in Late Bronze Age burials in rural areas of the
> northern Shephelah.  Note the total shock of the #1 expert on Late Bronze 
> Age
> burials, Rivka Gonen, as she reports with incredulity as to Late Bronze Age
> burials at Khirbet Humra, immediately west of the Aijalon Valley:
>
> “[A] cemetery of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages was found….  The rich
> collection of vessels and objects of glass, faience, ivory, and gold is
> exceptional in burials of the LB II period in Canaan.  The objects point to 
> a
high
> standard of living, which enabled this population to come closer to the
> model of Egyptian burial ensembles than was normally possible.  We do not 
> know
> the source of this wealth, especially because no settlement was found 
> nearby.”
>   “Burial Patterns and Cultural Diversity in Late Bronze Age Canaan”
> (1992), at pp. 93-94.
>
> On the other end of the spectrum, Biblical scholars try to tell us that
> first Abraham, and then Isaac, sojourned for many years at or near Beersheba
in
> the Negev.  No Late Bronze Age burials have been found at Beersheba in the
> Negev, but they have been found at Tell el-Far(a[S], about 10 miles or so
> southwest of Beersheba in the Negev, on the same wadi, the Wadi Besor.
> Although Rivka Gonen presumably was not expecting too much in that very
marginal
> locale, nevertheless she seems taken aback by the remarkable lack of wealth
> there:
>
> “The burial gifts were meager….  …sixty-six simple burials in this cemetery
> ….  The pottery ensemble in these simple burials was meager….  There were
> only two imported vessels…. “  P. 97.
>
> This is objective evidence that claims of dramatic climate change should be
> taken with huge grains of salt.  In fact, the Late Bronze Age burials
> examined by Rivka Gonen all make perfect sense on the basis of there having
been
> very little climate change at all in comparing the Late Bronze Age to the
> present [although humans, not Mother Nature, have deforested most of Canaan
> since Biblical times].  Indeed, if the Late Bronze Age is the time period of
> the Patriarchal Age [my view], then we know from “historical precipitation
> rates based on data from the Soreq Cave (Bar-Matthews, et al., 1998)” that 
> the
> Late Bronze Age was abnormally dry.  A. Isaac, Mattanyah Zohar, “Climate
> Change:  Environment and Civilization in the Middle East” (2004), at p. 186.
> So in the Late Bronze Age, there’s no way that the Patriarchs would choose
> to sojourn near or in the southern wilderness on the southern edge of 
> Canaan,
> as today’s Biblical scholars would have it.
>
> The point is that if the locales where the Patriarchs are said by today’s
> Biblical scholars to be portrayed in the text as having sojourned make no
> sense at all based on what those locales are like today, then these Late
Bronze
> Age burials throughout Canaan strongly suggest that Biblical scholars must
> be looking at the wrong locales -- locales not in fact being referenced by
> the text.  True, huge forests have disappeared, leaving almost no modern
> trace, such as the MDBR P)RN/dense forest of trees immediately southwest of
> Beersheba of Galilee in the Late Bronze Age.  But otherwise, the climate of
> Canaan in the Late Bronze Age may not have been all that different from 
> today’
s
> climate.  The city of Hebron is no place for a huge flock of sheep and
> goats, Beersheba in the Negev is no place to hunt big game, an unattested
place
> between Gaza and Beersheba in the Negev is no place to get rich growing
> wheat, and no sensible Patriarch would choose to sojourn for 30 years in the
> eastern Sinai Desert.  That was true in the Patriarchal Age [which I see as
> being the Late Bronze Age, being an abnormally dry time], just as it is true
> today.
>
> If scholars were right that the Patriarchal narratives were composed by
> multiple authors living in the 1st millennium BCE, then when those multiple
> scholars looked back to a prior age, they would logically have remembered 
> the
> dryer-than-normal Late Bronze Age.  That is to say, the Negev Desert and the
> Sinai Desert were more inhospitable in the Late Bronze Age than they were in
> the first half of the 1st millennium BCE.  In fact, there was more rain in
> Canaan about the year 1000 BCE than there had been for a thousand years!
> That is to say, to 1st millennium BCE authors, “old times” would presumably
> have meant “dry times”, when the Negev in particular was much worse than it
> was early in the 1st millennium BCE.  Thus it does not make logical sense to
> think that multiple 1st millennium BCE authors would all choose, on a
> fictional basis, to portray Patriarchs as sojourning in areas which were
somewhat
> desert-like in their own day, and which they presumably would have known
> had been considerably worse during the previous 1000 years.
>
> If the Patriarchal narratives either were composed in the Late Bronze Age
> [my view], or more or less accurately manage to reflect the world of the 
> Late
> Bronze Age [a view that was a fairly respectable minority view among
> Biblical scholars until about 1970], then the geographical locales where 
> today
’s
> Biblical scholars tell us that the Patriarchs are portrayed in the text as
> having sojourned cannot possibly be right.  The wealthy Patriarchs are not
> marginal desert people.  Rather, the Patriarchs sensibly chose to sojourn in
> the two best places in Canaan for tending a huge flock of sheep and goats in
> the dryer-than-normal Late Bronze Age:  the Shephelah and Upper Galilee.  
> Not
> only is that logical, but it also fits what the Biblical text says, as
> nicely confirmed by Late Bronze Age burials throughout Canaan.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
> _______________________________________________
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> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>


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