Biblical Hebrew Forum

[rob acosta <robacosta AT hotmail.com>]

Jim
 
   You refer to the "luxuriant Aijalon" many times the reason why Abraham 
would have supposedly chosen to live there versus
"modest" Hebron.
 
  
 
   One brief recap of human settlement patterns in Palestine is in order.
   You should read " The Geography of the Bible" by Denis Baly"
 
   According to Mr Baly:
 
    " early inhabitants avoided the forests and marshes and confined, 
therefore, to the Southern Coast Plains and the foothills. They avoided the 
forests and marshes of Sharon, the forests of Ephraim and Judah and the 
swampy lowland of Esdraelon."
 
    The reason is , forests take a lot of work to clear if you hadn't 
noticed. 

 
       Says Baly:
   "Even in prosperity the villages kept to the foothills and houses were 
never built upon cultivable land."
 


 
    There are several reasons people in the Levant settled first along the 
central ridge.
 
    1. Defense. A village is defenseless at the bottom of a valley. So is a 
shepherd. Like everyone else, Abraham would have
kept to the ridges and moutain sides for safety.
 
    2. Water. Most conveniently a line of springs ran along the central ridge 
from about Shechem to a point south of Hebron and
       the people were smart enough to build their villages on them.
 
   3. Open land. The hills were less densely forested than the valleys and 
Shephela, yet they were fertile. The earliest civilizations always
       inhabited hillsides first because of the difficulty, and 
danger...remember, this is a land teeming with lions, aurochs
  and bears,  in clearing dense forests .
     If you wanted to venture down the hill with an axe to clear land you 
weren't likely to have a lot of company...
     This is true even for US settlement patterns  from the 1600's to the 
1800's.  Scottish Highlanders penetrated the dense forests of Kentucky 
primarily out of  a desire to get away from the tax on moonshine imposed by 
President Washington. Now they had the proper
motivation....
  
    The Aijalon may have been rich and lush, but it was also densely covered 
by forests, it wasn't the wide open space we see today.
    Abraham would have had to clear the land he wanted...any land already 
cleared was obviously owned by someone else.
    Nor would he had lived on the valley floor, no one did. This would have 
left him on a ridge as before. 
      Yes, northern Canaan had denser forests than the south, as well as a 
good deal of maquis....and that was the problem.
      Too much work...and much more dangerous. Bandits, marauders, and all 
manner of hooligans lived in those dark forests and they
do many such areas around the word...ever heard of the "Valley of the 
Bandits" just north of Bethel?
     Mt Carmel was famous as a hide out for murderers and thieves.
    The pollen in soil cores show the northern forests, by and large, weren't 
cut down on a large scale by the Hebrews. Massive
deforestation took place much later.
 
  Rob Acosta