Current Biblical Archaeology

[john]

dammit min -

its irrefutable evidence of fred and wilma flintstein.


john

[Guest]

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[Minimalist]

dammit min -

its irrefutable evidence of fred and wilma flintstein.


john

See Cool Links for Lewis Black on the Flintstones.

[Guest]

There are some proto-Canaanite inscriptions floating around and since the Israelites developed from Canaanite refugees (according to Dever, who makes a fairly convincing case) it is only logical that they spoke the same language.

To be completely truthful, all of these languages were interrelated and probably best considered dialects of one another. The majority of people spoke Aramaic as a kind of lingua franca of the times. The primitive "consonant only" script later was surpassed by the Phoenecian alphabet from which derived all the other written languages of the area in a very short time.

he may make an interesting case but; one, that doesn't mean that the israelites came into existence at that time. two, why would they speak canaanite when they were not originally from that area?

your second paragraph coupled with my question got me thinking about what language they would have spoken . since abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees, it stands to reason (unless hebrew was a language of the time) that he would know the native tongue of his land not Hebrew.

thus his wife sarah, his sons and grandsons and their wives would speak the same language as abraham so when they arrived in egypt we could not expect to find any hebrew language as evidence but abraham's mother tongue instead.

I will make a concession, till i find out more, that the hebrew language could have developed later, say during the 40 year wandering as an example, but not as dever thinks.

[Guest]

In essence, the point here is the same as the one in Jerusalem. An anonymous pile of rocks is designated to be the handiwork of some biblical figure because.................. because it is, is the answer

i will not be hypocritical so i will agree with you on this as well. it is presumptuous to say defintely that it is david's palace, but with the supporting evidence we can get an idea of the date.

i will wait for confirmation.

[Guest]

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[Guest]

you have no proof that is true.

since i believe the Bible, he was not a mythic person but viable thinking human being who lived on this earth.

posting links to amazon means nothing nor proves anything except you are too lazy to post quotes and links.

[Essan]

If the Israelites had been living and working in Egypt for some time (generations?) prior to the Exodus and their subsequent invasion of Canaan, surely they would have spoken Egyptian?

At the very least their language would have been strongly influenced by Egyptian loan words.

[Guest]

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[Minimalist]

You know, just last night I was watching a special in which different paleontologists engaged in a full blown pissing contest over the question of; Was tyranosaurus rex a scavenger or a predator? One side insists one way and the other was just as doggedly holding out for the other.

Finally, right at the end, they introduced evidence that much like modern predators....they were BOTH.

So, when Dever and Finkelstein offer different views on Israelite origin in the Eastern hill country, and both make logical cases for their positions, I am inclined to wonder if this is not another example of the phenomena noted above.

Finkelstein believes that pastoral nomads were forced to settle down and grow their own grain after the Canaanite city states which they traded with, collapsed. They did so into hundreds of small villages in the north and a handful in the south (because of more difficult farming conditions) and such settlements mirrored the general layout of nomadic tent encampments. This also accounts for the pastoral history present in Israelite mythology.

Dever maintains that Canaanite refugees fled east and settled in the hill country and that these people had the knowledge of farming and terracing needed to successfully farm that area. Dever maintains that the shepherds would have starved to death waiting for their first crop to come in. In addition to the agricultural technology present, Dever also cites Canaanite pottery.

What Dever overlooks is that the refugees would have starved to death waiting for that first crop to grow, also. There would have been no international relief effort! In addition, they would have been moving into land which the nomads also claimed and so one of two possibilities emerges. Conflict or cooperation. Each side had something that the other needed. The Canaanites had the knowledge to succeed and the nomads had the land and the flocks needed to sustain both groups while they worked out their farming issues.

The one thing that these people seemed to have going for them was the relative lack of enemies. Canaan was destroyed and the Philistines were busy on the coast. Egypt was trying to put itself back together after narrowly defeating the Sea People.

[Guest]

interesting concept, yet i place dever and finkelstein on the same side of the coin, with some varying aspects. i think they have limited their dta or used limited data in coming to their conclusions.

to extend devr's assumption, why couldn't the nomads be the nation that went on the exodus and wandered for 40 years then entered into canaan to settle down?

finkelstein cites evidence that would only come from a stationary populace thus he omits the exodus and wandering because the evidence he wants would not be produced or discarded until they settled down.

i think a lot of assumption is done by both and their interpretation gets stretched to fit their theories.

i noticed you didn't address the abraham issue i raised (i know you don't believe he existed) but it fits. the lack of hebrew inscriptions, the lack of hebrew evidence until much later, and so on all demonstrate that archaeologists are lookng for the right evidence at the wrong time period.

we should be looking for evidence that would fit the biblical record not our modern understanding of what evidence there should be. so since abraham was chaldean, then we should be looking for that evidence not israeli.

nowi n egypt, depending on how jacob and his household lived, which didn't have the mosaic law at the time (except circumcision--remember abrahm obeyed God when He said to circumsized all the males). thus their culture when they entered into egypt (and evidence) would reflect that lifestyle until they were finally placed into bondage and forced to do everything the egyptian way.


it stands to reason that they would become bilingual, holding to their own language so it wouldn't die out, plus learning egyptian because they lived there and needed to communicate. unless of course, chaldean was similar to the egyptian language at the time.

[Guest]

I had hoped you would be willing to educate yourself

i am well educated.

It is called homework lad.

you want me to read those books, you buy and send them to me at your expense and i will get to them. i have my own reading to do and i have done my homework, you just don't accept my point of view.


unless you have serious and constructive input or questions i will not be addressing you as i am involved in a serious discussion concerning the israelites.

[Minimalist]

interesting concept, yet i place dever and finkelstein on the same side of the coin, with some varying aspects. i think they have limited their dta or used limited data in coming to their conclusions.

Data is always limited. That's the nature of archaeology. You never get as much as want.....which applies to lots of things aside from archaeology!

to extend devr's assumption, why couldn't the nomads be the nation that went on the exodus and wandered for 40 years then entered into canaan to settle down?

Because there is no hint that they were ever in Egypt. Unlike bible-thumpers they do not go 'looking for evidence to fit their pet theories' (which they always find!). They take the evidence that has been accumulated from other digs as well as their own and try to make sense of it. It is a subtle difference. It's why Ark Fiends find solid rock shapes and announce that they have found the 'petrified remains' of the ark.

finkelstein cites evidence that would only come from a stationary populace thus he omits the exodus and wandering because the evidence he wants would not be produced or discarded until they settled down.

You don't know what evidence Finkelstein has cited because you haven't read the book. Try not to rely on my shorthand version. It is much deeper than that....and it has happened repeatedly throughout history in the ME.

i think a lot of assumption is done by both and their interpretation gets stretched to fit their theories.

Whereas the bible is the literal word of god, huh?

i noticed you didn't address the abraham issue i raised (i know you don't believe he existed) but it fits. the lack of hebrew inscriptions, the lack of hebrew evidence until much later, and so on all demonstrate that archaeologists are lookng for the right evidence at the wrong time period.

Right. Abraham is merely another fictitious character, invented by priests to make a point.

There would be no 'hebrew inscriptions' until after the 'hebrews' learned to write which would have been after the Phoenicians invented the alphabet. There were Canaanite inscriptions, and Egyptian inscriptions and even a little later on Philistine inscriptions...but your shepherds had no need of a written language until much later on.

we should be looking for evidence that would fit the biblical record not our modern understanding of what evidence there should be. so since abraham was chaldean, then we should be looking for that evidence not israeli.

Only bible-thumpers are looking for evidence (and, as events have shown, they will find what they are looking for and have it denounced by real scholars who do not share their agenda. As Dever points out, no reputable archaeologists are even considering the patriarchs or exodus as historical events any longer.

nowi n egypt, depending on how jacob and his household lived, which didn't have the mosaic law at the time (except circumcision--remember abrahm obeyed God when He said to circumsized all the males). thus their culture when they entered into egypt (and evidence) would reflect that lifestyle until they were finally placed into bondage and forced to do everything the egyptian way.

Here's a listing of Hyksos kings of the 15th and 16th Dynasty.

15th Dynasty Hyksos Kings
Salitis
Sheshi
Khian
Apopis
Khamudi

16th Dynasty Hyksos vassals, contemporary with the 15th Dynasty
Anat-Her
User-anat
Semqen
Zaket
Wasa
Qar
Pepi III
Bebankh
Nebmaatre
Nikare II
Aahotepre
Aaneterire
Nubankhre
Nubuserre
Khauserre
Khamure
Jacob-Baal
Yakbam
Yoam
Amu

I'm kind of surprised you didn't wet your pants with Jacobovici's presentation of Manfred Bielak's "Jacob seals." As you can see, Jacob-Baal (a little irony right there, eh!) was a Hyksos king...not a slave. Jacobovici tried to gloss right over that. Anyway, it would appear that ole Jacob was doing pretty good for himself. And I bet he didn't have a couple of inches clipped off his tool to do it.

it stands to reason that they would become bilingual, holding to their own language so it wouldn't die out, plus learning egyptian because they lived there and needed to communicate. unless of course, chaldean was similar to the egyptian language at the time.

Or, hebrew as a distinct dialect developed later on. I think that works better, linguistically.

[Guest]

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[Minimalist]

Do not fight reality. It always wins.

Not in our last two elections it hasn't!