Karl wrote: “Esau [at Genesis 25: 27 is] pictured as a one-sided man of hunting and the outdoors.” I agree. And going beyond that, what Esau was doing was big game trophy hunting, rather than supplying meat to the community of shepherds that was led by his father Isaac. The selfish, unattractive nature of Esau’s hunting can be seen by comparing the older brothers of three early monotheistic leaders, all of whom hunted using bows, and none of whom won the grand monotheistic prize that instead went to his younger brother. 1. Esau Genesis 27: 3 says that Esau hunted with a bow, meaning that Esau is an archer. By contrast, younger twin brother Jacob does not do hunting. If Esau is, as I have asserted, associated with the Lachish Valley, then the hunting enthusiasm of pharaoh Amenhotep III was known, and emulated, at Lachi-$a [which I see as being Biblical Beer Laxi-Rai]: “[T]he Lion Hunt scarab, which was found at the Fosse Temple at Lachish[, where wild game sacrifices were also found,]…records the lion-hunting exploits of Amenhotep III”. Carolyn R. Higginbotham, “Egyptianization and Elite Emulation in Ramesside Palestine” (2000), at p. 250. From Late Bronze Age burials at Lachi-$a, we know that wild game was an insignificant component of the people’s diet there. Rather, as at Gaza in this time period, nobles did big game trophy hunting for recreation, aping the decadent Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, the so-called “King of Kings”, who never tired of bragging about his legendary exploits as a big game hunter. The closest Late Bronze Age burial site to the other place where Esau in my view hunted wild game, Beersheba of Galilee, is at a place with the modern nickname “Persian Garden”, northeast of Acco. What was found there includes: “…62 arrowheads and spearheads. The arrowheads and spearheads were found in groups, each group perhaps the content of a quiver. …Other interesting finds were…Egyptian jewelry, including a silver ring bearing the name of Amenophis III, [and] an arrowhead with an Egyptian hieroglyph incised on its base…. All objects conform well with a date in the first half of the fourteenth century B.C.” Rivka Gonen, “Burial Patterns and Cultural Diversity in Late Bronze Age Canaan” (1992), at pp. 84-85. While Jacob is being TM and helping out the community/family clan by being a shepherd, Esau is selfishly off pretending to be a nobleman who, like Amenhotep III, spends his idle time hunting trophy big game with bow and arrow. T-h-a-t is the contrast between the two boys that is being made at Genesis 25: 27!
2. Ishmael Genesis 21: 20 says that Ishmael was an archer, meaning that he hunted with a bow. By contrast, younger half-brother Isaac does not do hunting. 3. Thutmose Amenhotep III’s firstborn son [Akhenaten’s older brother], Thutmose, is associated with many outdoor activities, including hunting with a bow: “Very interesting is the detail that to the tomb equipment of Tutankhamun a whip grasp belongs which the name and titles of prince Thutmose mentioned together with the addition chief of the archers.” Klaus Finneiser, the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, Germany. By contrast, younger brother Akhenaten was a rare pharaoh who did not do hunting: “Amarna tableaux rarely feature hunting, suggesting that Akhenaten abjured the sport of kings.” Dan Richardson, “Rough Guide to Egypt” (2003), at p. 314. Note that both at Amarna and in the first two Patriarchal successions, the firstborn son who loved to hunt using a bow [Ishmael, Esau, Thutmose] did not become the leader of the next generation of early monotheists. Rather, that great honor instead went to a younger son who never went hunting: Isaac, Jacob, Akhenaten. Thus what is portrayed in the Patriarchal narratives parallels with pinpoint historical accuracy exactly how the first monotheistic ruler in non-biblical sources succeeded to power: a younger son who never went hunting, and who was not his father’s favorite son, although his father nevertheless ended up giving him everything, whose mother was his father’s original main wife #1, whose own original main wife #1 was a firstborn daughter, and who would prove to have a difficult time siring his own proper male heir. Note how redolent of the Late Bronze Age these verses in the Patriarchal narratives are. None of this relates to anything in the 1st millennium BCE. Firstborn son Esau is castigated at Genesis 25: 27 for doing trophy big game hunting, instead of helping with the all-important flock of sheep and goats like younger son Jacob, and otherwise being an integral part of the community of which their father Isaac was the leader. In the Patriarchal narratives, reflecting with pinpoint accuracy the peculiar circumstances of the mid-14th century BCE, the firstborn son always gets the shaft, and properly so. The o-n-l-y time period when Genesis 25: 27 makes sense is shortly after Amenhotep III’s death, when princelings in Canaan were aping the decadent lifestyle of the “King of Kings” re hunting, and the o-n-l-y geographical locale where Genesis 25: 27 makes sense is a place like the Lachish Valley, where [unlike the eastern Sinai Desert] big game hunting was doable, but [unlike Luz/Laish/Dan] it was insignificant in terms of what the people there ate. The text is t-e-l-l-i-n-g us when and where these Biblical stories happened, namely the “timeframes and geographical parameters” [to use George Athas’s helpful lingo], if we only will pay close attention to what the text s-a-y-s . If we can understand Genesis 25: 27, we can understand the bulk of the Patriarchal narratives. Jim Stinehart Evanston, Illinois _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
