judge

No you ignored it. Joseph wants his family near him. You still need to provide an explanation for them being near. You have not done so.


No one has to get Egypt from Joshua. It is not needed. We have Goshen in Genesis, clearly in Egypt.


Here is David's words again. You ignored the thrust of his argument. You failed to address it.


This doesn't make his whole theory right. It does mean that presently he has got the better of you on this one point.

andrewcriddle

Hi David

I think this is a misunderstanding of what Manning is argiung. Manning does suggest that the (current) conventional dates for the early 18th dynasty may be up to 25 years too low, and has been attacked by Egyptologists over this. However his dating of the Thera event to shortly before 1600 BCE does not involve dating the beginning of the 18th dynsty that early. Manning is arguing (rightly or wrongly) that the appearance of Theran pumice in Egypt first occurs decades after the Thera event.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

There is a real problem with the Iceman but it is not about him being pre-Chalcolithic. We have quite widespread European radiocarbon evidence (quite apart from the Iceman) for the smelting of copper before 3500 BCE (older than the Iceman).

The problem is that on stylistic grounds the Iceman's axe appears to be a product of the Remedello culture which seems clearly to be later than 3000 BCE (maybe 2700 BCE). This is a real problem but it is not that the Iceman had a copper axe; it is the type of copper axe.

Andrew Criddle

spin

Brief destruction of David Rohl's claim regarding the source of $w$q:

1) The name has to be $y$w or he fails.
2) The evidence points to $w$q being the original Hebrew form (see below).
3) The location name Raamses (directly derived from Ramses) exists and is transliterated into Hebrew not with two shins but two sameks.

Why on earth should he believe that the shortened version of the same name should be treated differently??

Now, on with Rohl's efforts...

There is a basic problem with the incoherent ravings of David Rohl here. He seems to think that because an Egyptian word has an /s/ and a similar looking Hebrew word has a SH, then obviously the Hebrew word comes form the Egyptian. Yet at the same time there is plain evidence that many of his attempts are from the same Semitic source as the Akkadian cognates. The Akkadian word and the Hebrew word is ultimately derived from the same word which changed through time into the two separate languages. There is just no room for his Egyptian conjectures.

Then we go on to the blunders regarding the Amarna material. Not one of his examples was relevant for Jerusalem. They were written in Akkadian which has different linguistic requires from Hebrew. The best Rohl can do here is conjecture that, well, just maybe, the Egyptian names were carried over into Hebrew from the Akkadian letters. These letters would only ever have been handled by scribes with the knowledge of Akkadian within the walls of the local palace. Was there ever more than one or two in any court throughout the Levant in the Amarna age?? Just consider the one-horse towns mentioned in the Amarna letters. Rohl has outlandishly high expectations.

Rohl relying on expert opinion is still banging the drum over the Egyptian source of Moshe. Well, let's just ask simply how can he verify the supposed etymology? Obviously, he can't. It's just one of those non-linguistic cases of "gee it looks similar" that sensationalists try to sell people who know no better.

Still going on with Ashkelon and my statement that "Why [is he] going in the wrong direction? [His] claim regards Egyptian to Hebrew. Ashkelon is irrelevant for your trajectory..." I see that he got the wrong idea from my statement. The name Ashkelon got into Hebrew directly from contact with Ashkelon and clearly, blatantly, obviously not from Egypt. It is the wrong direction, so "Ashkelon is irrelevant for [his] trajectory." He just misunderstood "wrong direction" to mean "reverse".

Just so that people know. When certain scribes came across words in the text that they didn't understand, they left them, but added what they considered what a more likely reading, so as not to lose the text they found. The original form is known as a Ketiv form. The Ketiv form in 1 Kings 14:25 is $w$q and $y$q was added as a reading considered my likely. Text scholars know the notion that the more difficult reading is the more likely. I can understand why Rohl doesn't like that principle. (Anyone interested can get the idea from Lectio difficilior potior.)

But as I pointed out from the Greek transliteration of the name, it was always sousakim, despite the fact that $y$q is far more common in the current Hebrew text than $w$q. The more difficult reading receives full support from the LXX.

Rohl so far has refused to provide any of the source materials for his claims such as in an early Hebrew script the qof and the waw were confusable.

Rohl is as muddled as ever. Has anyone seen an example of a Hebrew word derived from Egyptian which has a shin for an Egyptian /s/? He gave examples of words that looked similar in both languages, but the Akkadian showed that the Hebrew was not derived from Egyptian.

You are stretching the notion of lingua franca to include

And, ahh, how many Hebrews does anyone think ever laid their eyes on one of these Akkadian letters if they could read them? It is at best an extremely weak hope that the Akkadian letters had any orthographic influence in the mother tongue writings of the various Canaanite nations.

It's good to know that the clay has been sourced. However, Ashkelon is of no help to him regarding his claim that Hebrew received a word from Egyptian which featured a shin where the Egyptian had an /s/.

A claim which has simply no basis in fact.

David Rohl has difficulty seeing the difference between his examples and relevant ones.

Once again... The Goshen that Joshua capture was certainly not in Egypt. This means that the writers understood a Goshen that was not in Egypt. There is no reason to believe that the name referred to in Joshua was derived from the Egyptian, so the name "Goshen" was part of Jewish tradition. All that is required is a writer's confusion between the Egyptian Kos and Goshen, and we have Goshen being used for an Egyptian location.

Rohl rohls over once again and acts dead.

But that's the thing about continuous settlement: it shows no sign of this supposed ethnic cleansing. What era provides evidence of a widespread destruction of the small sites at a similar time documented by Israeli archaeologists??

In fact, David Rohl is simply assuming his conclusion. Nothing new there. Nothing needs a response.


spin

(When you use the [quote][/quote], you can add the name of who said it like this: [quote=David Rohl].

And you can put quotes inside quotes

[quote=you]
[quote=me]My philological gems[/quote]
Your philological gems[/quote]

thus:

)

spin

I get the idea, judge, that you aren't going to consider the fact that the name Goshen is applied outside an Egyptian context and so there is no reason to believe that it has an Egyptian source. It is irrelevant then that a writer might reuse the name Goshen for an Egyptian place with nominal similarities. If that still doesn't make sense to you, then that's too bad.


spin

Roland

This whole conversation is pretty much beyond my comprehension, but I do have one question. In most of what I've read on the subject of ancient Israel from authors like Finklestein and the like, there is no time prior to the 7th Century BC when ALL the cities that Joshua and his Israelite army supposedly conquered were occupied simultaneously.

If Rohl's revised chronology were shown to be plausible, would that still be the case or would it somehow solve that "problem," thereby lending credence to the conquest story?

Thanks

Petergdi

There are many signs that the first edition of Judges through Kings was compiled at the time of Josiah. There are also many signs that that the text uses older sources. The writer could have intended history, but because she only had bits and pieces to work from her account contains many anachronisms. I am not at all supporting Rohl here, but simply pointing out that while the presence of anachronisms certainly helps us identify the period in which the history was compiled, and it tells us that the writer had rather imperfect knowledge of the past, it does not indicate that the writer did not intend to write history or that she had no knowledge at all of the past.

Peter.

judge

It is not that the fact can't be considered. Sure, one can consider it. But why would one follow your convoluted alternative explanation, where you are second guessing what the translators of the LXX might have thought when,

1) Genesis itself, within one chapter, indicates that Goshen was near to Joseph and thus in Egypt not Arabia.

2) An area in Egypt was called the Arabian Nome when the LXX was being written.

Compare this simple explanation (above) to your convoluted alternative (below).

Gen 45:10 LXX says clearly Gesem Arabias, ie the Greek translator understood an Arabian location rather than some place in Egypt. Joshua (Josh 11:16) took the land of Goshen -- obviously not Egyptian, but south of Judah, in what could be considered Arabia. Goshen, turns up in Gen 46:34, in the power of the pharaoh, so looking for something in Egypt proper the closest thing one finds is Qos near the delta. What we see is confusion in the minds of the Hebrew writers as to this Goshen and modern scholars attempting to make sense of the confusion by fixing the data. One could of course try to separate this Goshen into two separate locations in the same general area, but one can understand that this would merely appear expedient.

Toto

Thread on C14 dating question in Science forum

David Rohl

DR: When scientists take samples for C14 dating they retain part of the sample, they do not destroy it all. It was the highly respected American scientist Raymond Rogers (who was anti-authentic-shroud) who gained access to the retained samples and found the Medieval cotton.

DR: No idea. Why don't you ask him? Or perhaps he is fantasising? After all he is a scientist and human, just like the rest of us. But remember that 'examining does not mean removing a piece from the Shroud - just that they had visual (microscopic) access to the artefact.

DR: Not testing but examining.

DR: Well, it has now come to light that all the C14 laboratories had noticed the cotton in the samples sent to them for testing but they simply went on with the tests they were asked to perform!

Here are some quotes from a web site which I cannot vouch for but, nevertheless, gives the details:

P.H Smith, while examining threads from the sample at the Oxford University Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory found similar indication of cotton. To him it seemed like material intrusion. In an article entitled "Rogue Fibers Found in Shroud," published in Textile Horizons in 1988, Smith speaks of his discovery of "a fine dark yellow strand [of cotton] possibly of Egyptian origin, and quite old . . . it may have been used for repairs at some time in the past, or simply bound in when the linen fabric was woven." This should have concerns.

Edward Hall, the head of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory, also noticed fibers that looked out of place.

Gilbert Raes, when he examined some of the carbon 14 samples, noticed that cotton fibers, where found, were contained inside threads, which could help to explain differences in diameter of some of the fibers. This may also explain why the carbon 14 samples apparently weighed about twice as much as expected.

Giovanni Riggi, the person who actually cut the carbon 14 sample from the Shroud stated: "I was authorized to cut approximately 8 square centimetres of cloth from the Shroud…This was then reduced to about 7 cm because fibres of other origins had become mixed up with the original fabric …" And Giorgio Tessiore, who documented the sampling, wrote: “…1 cm of the new sample had to be discarded because of the presence of different color threads.”

Al Adler at Western Connecticut State University had found large amounts of aluminum in yarn segments from the radiocarbon sample, up to 2%, by energy-dispersive x-ray analysis. The question should have been asked, 'why aluminum?' It is not found elsewhere on the Shroud.

DR: As far as I know, neither he nor his Los Alamos team are 'believers'. Raymond Rogers (now deceased) certainly was not.