Chavoux: 1. You wrote: “This is a pretty strong statement to make without any collaborating evidence. To my mind it is much more likely that the actual names
(maybe Hebraized a bit) was used and that the author simply highlighted any coincidental link between an actual name and an incident in that person's life. Are there any other documents from the ANE that presents itself as describing actual historical events, where the names of the persons are simply made up?” We know from the Amarna Letters that a non-royal author [like the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives] did not refer to a living king by the king’s historical name, but rather always used some sort of a nickname. Thus although many princelings complain about Hittite King Suppiluliuma in the Amarna Letters, the only time one sees the actual name “Suppiluliuma” is in the one Amarna Letter that Suppiluliuma himself wrote. Similarly, princeling Ribhaddi in Byblos, Lebanon cannot refer to a pharaoh’s historical name, but rather uses a series of fanciful, fawning nicknames: “king of all countries”, “the Sun”, “Great King”, “the Sun of all countries”, etc. Going back now to Hittite King Suppiluliuma, who had seized the Hittite throne by the nefarious expedient of murdering his own older brother named Tidal/Tudhaliya, note the nasty Patriarchal nickname at Genesis 14: 1 for Suppiluliuma as the despoiler of northern Syria in Year 14: “Tidal”. The early Hebrew author is in effect calling Hittite King Suppiluliuma “Murderer”! Every name of a human being in the Patriarchal narratives is an appropriate nickname. Thus the king of Egypt is not referred to by his historical name, but rather is referred to by the generic “Pharaoh”. The only case in which a Patriarchal nickname of a ruler is almost indistinguishable from that ruler’s historical name is “Abimelek”, who both in the Amarna Letters and in chapters 21 and 26 of Genesis is always complaining to an early semi-monotheist about contested access to water wells. But rather than insulting Pharaoh Akhenaten, historical Abimelek [who had recently been appointed to his position in Sur in GRR by Akhenaten] grovels at his feet by referring repeatedly to Akhenaten’s beloved daughter Meritaten as “Mayati ” in Amarna Letter EA 155, in Year 13 over-the-top lingo: “The king [Akhenaten] ordered that the breath of life be given to his servant and to the servant of Mayati, and water : mi-ma be given for his drink…. [M]ay the king give thought to [Abimelek,] the servant of Mayati, that water be given so he may live. Moreover, O king, since there is no wood, no water, …may the king, my lord, take cognizance of the servant of Mayati, that life be given to him. Should the king, my lord, give water to drink to the servant of Mayati, then I will devote myself to his service and that of Mayati, my mistress, night and day.” That over-the-top lingo is neatly reciprocated in otherwise inexplicable Biblical language at Genesis 20: 4-6 regarding Biblical Abimelek, a pagan ruler who has just had Abraham’s wife in his bedroom the previous night: “Abimelech…said, Lord, wilt thou slay also a righteous nation? … [I]n the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this. And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart….” Then, even though Sarah was in princeling Abimelek’ s bedroom the previous night, Abraham gives Abimelek a fine fertility prayer! “Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bare [children].” Genesis 20: 17. Note the oddly flowery Biblical language here, which at least on the surface says that pagan princeling Abimelek, who had taken Sarah into his bedroom the previous night and would soon joust with first Abraham and then Isaac as to contested access to water wells, was “a righteous nation” who acted “in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands”. That flowery language makes sense only as a response to the similarly flowery language that historical Abimelek used in writing to the early semi-monotheist Pharaoh Akhenaten, trying to curry favor with him by ostentatiously protesting his utmost devotion to Akhenaten’s beloved daughter Meritaten, who as of Year 13 had suddenly become the new leading lady of Egypt: “Should the king, my lord, give water to drink to the servant of Mayati, then I will devote myself to his service and that of Mayati, my mistress, night and day.” Neither the early Hebrew author nor historical Abimelek is fully sincere in using that flowery, over-the-top lingo, yet it all makes complete sense in the historical context. 2. You wrote: “The Late Bonze Age might be the time of the writing of the Torah (perfectly in keeping with the dates assigned to Moses by most archaeologists). Many of the points you make here could still be valid, but that does not place the historical period of the patriarchs in the Late Bronze Age. Can the origin of the name Haran that you suggest here, not just as well fit with the Early or Middle Bronze Age?” The Kassites only ruled southern Mesopotamia in the Late Bronze Age, so if K$-D-YM refers to the Kassites, with K$ as the root of that name having the same meaning as the HR root of the west Semitic name HRN, namely “mountain” [which is the only scenario under which the name “Haran” makes sense], then that can only be the Late Bronze Age, not the Middle Bronze Age. The reference to eastern Syria at Genesis 24: 10 as “Naharim” fits the Amarna Letters time period perfectly in the Late Bronze Age, but that name was not used for northern Mesopotamia in the Middle Bronze Age. In the Middle Bronze Age the Egyptian word pA was not yet in use in polite discourse, and so the name of Joseph’s Egyptian priestly father-in-law at Genesis 41: 45 would be impossible in the Middle Bronze Age: pA wa di.i pA R-e. Moreover, that name’ s blatantly monotheistic meaning of “The One and Only God Gives Me The One and Only Re”, and the fact that it is a monotheized variant of Akhenaten’s own name Wa-n-Re, fits only one time period in Egypt’s long history: the mid-14th century BCE Amarna Age in the Late Bronze Age. The “iniquity of the Amorites” that is referenced at Genesis 15: 16 historically only happened once, in Year 14 of Akhenaten’s reign, when both the Amorite state of Ugarit, and the Amorite state of Amurru, iniquitously sold out to the dreaded Hittites and thereby precipitated the disastrous Great Syrian War in western Syria. Note in that regard the reference to “the 14th year”, implying Year 14, at Genesis 14: 5. [There is a split in scholarly opinion as to whether Year 14 or Year 12 is the historical date of that disastrous war, but the world-famous, triumphalist artwork done in two nobles’ rock tombs in Year 12 at Amarna tends to rule out Year 12 as a proposed alternative date.] Shechem was a Hurrian city in the Amarna Age, but not in the Middle Bronze Age, and only in Year 13 of Akhenaten’s reign was the Canaanite strongman ruler of the Hurrian city of Shechem assassinated, after his son famously consorted with tent-dwellers, under highly irregular circumstances on behalf of, but without the prior approval of, an early semi-monotheistic leader of his people. In the Bible that occurs in chapter 34 of Genesis, in Year 13 tenfold, that is, 130 years after Abraham’s birth, as the Patriarchal narratives frequently give us the exact year [here, Year 13] in which these historical events occurred. Knowing that Akhenaten reigned in Egypt for 17 years, note the parallel regarding the last Hebrew Patriarch, Jacob/“Israel”, as translated by KJV at Genesis 47: 28: “Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years”. Every proper name [each of which is an appropriate Patriarchal nickname in the case of names of individuals], and every indication of year numbers, in the Patriarchal narratives is fully redolent of the Amarna Age in the Late Bronze Age, with pinpoint historical accuracy, whereas virtually nothing fits the Middle Bronze Age. Jim Stinehart Evanston, Illinois _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
