Steven Avery

On the Hittites I would like to see if the IIDB thread actually searched out the views of the scholars before the discoveries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Gleason Archer claim is as follows..

"The references [in the Bible] to the Hittites were treated with incredulity and condemned as mere fiction on the part of late authors of the Torah" (A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, 1974, p. 165).

While another site puts it like this.

http://www.mazzaroth.com/TableOfNati...OfNations2.htm
Heth (Heb. heth) is the putative head of the Hittites (called "sons" and "daughters" of Heth Gen. 23:3; 27:46), an unknown people mentioned in the Old Testament sporadically, until the amazing recovery of Hittite civilization by modern Archaeology. A missionary William Wright and Professor A. H. Sayce reconstructed the outlines of the history of the ancient Hittite empire first. Then in 1906-1907 and 1911-1912, Professor Hugo Winckler of Berlin discovered about ten thousand clay tablets at Boghazkeui, the site of ancient Hattushash, an important Hittite capital. This revealed them as a people with an extended empire.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sauron I know there's a thread - I contributed to it. Whittaker's claim that skeptics or "worldly scholars" doubted the existence of the Hittites ...

Yet when we go to the thread I can find your really offer very little. In fact you actually defacto acknowledge that the discoveries change the viewpoint about the Hittites. And there is no discussion whatsoever about the skeptic and liberal critics of the Bible before the discoveries.

You do a classic handwave and claim that the dozens of Bible references are only to a Canaanite tribe and not to the Hittite people. This is your one verse reference.

Genesis 10:15
And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth,

Sauron
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...29#post1436978
2. The Hittites of Anatolia (modern Turkey) were another people, forgotten until excavations at Boghazkoy were begun in 1906. This was the site of tehir capital, Hattusha, containing a palace and temples."

You apparently consider the Bible references as not fitting for the Hittites, although your logic is a bit vague and your language carefully couched to offer wiggle-room.

"little or no part".

Sauron, you don't tell us which of the dozens of references in the Tanach to the Hittites are

"little..part"

references to the Hittite kingdom for which archaeology had its great discoveries in the 19th and early 20th centuries refuting skeptic and liberal harumphing.

So would you please unpack your claim more specifically.
What verses in the Bible are actually fully unrelated to the Hittites whose kingdom extended down from modern-day Turkey so that the Bible references are only to (by your theory) an unrelated Canaanite tribe ?

Oh, you might tell us also why you appear to be claiming an anachronism - if the Hittites references refer to the Hittite kingdom (which of course is the prima facie interpretation).

Specifically tell us what years you date :

a) potentially acceptable references to Hittites,
folks related to the Hittite kingdom
b) the couple of dozen references in the Bible
c) the dates of your Canaanite tribe.

Apparently you feel Bible references to "Hittites"
are only applicable when the kingdom was in a strong
empire position Why .. you will have to explain as well.

So the dates and the logic will be necessary to try
to unpack your theory of 'confusion'.

Thanks.

Saurun
The 2nd group plays little or no part in the OT Bible, primarily because their empire came to an end at about the time of the Sea Peoples. There were several neo-Hittite city states that continued, but the empire was over.

However Bible encyclopedias say that Heth was the ancestor of the Hittites, making your distinction that much more curious.

http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?...s&word=Hittite
a descendant of Canaan, and the ancestor of the Hittites (Gen. 10:18; Deut. 7:1), who dwelt in the vicinity of Hebron (Gen. 23:3, 7). The Hittites were a Hamitic race. They are called "the sons of Heth" (Gen. 23:3, 5, 7, 10, 16, 18, 20)

This gives zilch support to your theory of confusion involving two unrelated people. Note also that Hebron does not fit your Canaanite geography.

Perhaps there is another thread with more substance ?
We have these two posts, where you respond to
the following two references ....

=================

Skeptics have, in the past, held certain parts of the Bible as historically inaccurate because there was no confirmation of them. The Hittite empire is such an example. For years it was believed by skeptics that the empire didn’t exist. Thus, the Bible was clearly in error. However, evidence of the Hittite empire was found, and the skeptics had to drop their objections (Fred Wright, Highlights of Archaeology in the Bible Lands, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1955), 94-95.).

http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no103.htm
Christian Research Journal, volume 27, number 2 pp. 12-19 (2004)
Paul L. Maier, Ph.D. Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University

The Existence of Hittites.
Genesis 23 reports that Abraham buried Sarah in the Cave of Machpelah, which he purchased from Ephron the Hittite. Second Samuel 11 tells of David’s adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. A century ago the Hittites were unknown outside of the Old Testament, and critics claimed that they were a figment of biblical imagination. In 1906, however, archaeologists digging east of Ankara, Turkey, discovered the ruins of Hattusas, the ancient Hittite capital at what is today called Boghazkoy, as well as its vast collection of Hittite historical records, which showed an empire flourishing in the mid-second millennium BC. This critical challenge, among many others, was immediately proved worthless — a pattern that would often be repeated in the decades to come.

Yet your "response" is only to refer to your own earlier
confused and unsubstantiated post above ! And accusing
a professional historian PhD of waving a "magic wand".

Very strange.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...te#post4062744
From a post I made to someone else on the same topic:

Claiming that your confused claim has somehow trumped Maier, a Phd Professor of Ancient History !

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...te#post4065527
Meier has misrepresented the state of archaeology, jumbled a collection of archaeological items together, and waved a magic wand.

We see that Sauron is way out on a limb. Giving no (!) references for his theory of confusion and attacking the professional historians from a base of straw.

Overall, apparently the Hittite claim is actually very true and IIDB folks have avoided addressing it, except for the Sauron couched claim that the Hittites of the Bible are not the historic Hittites.

As far as I can see not even the Skeptic Protection Society has backed up the Sauron claim.

And not surprisingly Amaleq offered no challenge to the dubious Sauron assertion, despite the lack of even a single scholarly reference.

Fascinating.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

spin

Ooh, look, praxeus dabbling in something else he knows nothing about.

Gleason who?

To Sauron:
The reason why the biblical data was not appreciated was because it didn't make sense as to what it says. It still doesn't. Because it didn't make sense, people repudiated it. Not strange. However, there were Hittites, though they were not a group of people living in Canaan. In fact, the Hittites never got south of northern Syria, so you can see why earlier analysts were confused. The biblical data is simply wrong.

This is small comfort to you.

Naturally, none of the biblical references deal with the Hittites of Hatti. All the named biblical Hittites have Semitic names. Sauron rightly pointed out that the bible linked the Hittites to Canaan (Heth = XT, Hittites = XTY, a normal Hebrew gentilic). This is not surprising as, for the bible, they were some of thelocal population in Canaan that the Israelites defeated.

Until you can give a biblical date for the flood, I don't see why anyone should get drawn into your quibbling about dates.

This is just bible dictionaries accepting the biblical data. There is little analysis of the content.

Just incidentally, the Hittites of Hatti were certainly not "Hamitic". They were Indo-European, related to other early Indo-European presences in the region.

I'm not so sure. If the biblical Hittites are not just a gratuitous chioce of name for a traditional population of Canaan, then one needs to explain why the Hittites of Hatti, who never went south of northern Syria (which was the border with the Egyptian territory), suddenly appear in Hebrew traditions about the conquest of Canaan.

What is truly interesting is Maier's silence about the Semitic names for these "Hittites". That should have made him twig to the shallowness of the information he was providing. But he was too happy dealing in apologetics, which is something he is well-known for, so any scholarship seems to have flown at the window while writing the above.

Credentials apparently aren't enough.

I doubt this. Why don't you look at any standard work on the Hittites and check them out, eg books by O.R. Gurney (or via: amazon.co.uk) or G.J. MacQueen (or via: amazon.co.uk). See if they, or any other you might find, will endorse the thesis. Maier might have a PhD, but that's studying Barth and Cullmann which has nothing directly to do with history.

Anyone can find some person with letters after their name willing to say silly things, especially if they are apologists for anything. Again, you need to know something about the field to know what the status quo is. You cannot point to one person with letters and claim status quo.

Well, there were people called Hittites. The ones from Hatti however were never in Canaan.

What exactly would you like to know that's relevant here?


spin

RED DAVE

From Praxeus:
From Hex:
From Praxeus:
Glad you approve.

From Praxeus:
Here comes the nonsense.

From Praxeus:
What evidence? Be specific. Just like there's no evidence for the Sinai, there's no evidence for Saudi Arabia.

From Praxeus:
Valid as there's no reason to look there or in Brooklyn. Since the Exodus never happened, why look in the Sinai or Saudi Arabia? It's the equivalent of looking for Atlantis.

From Praxeus:
Right.

From Praxeus:
Or, more simply, there is no such place.

From Praxeus:
Please start a thread whenever you like. I assure you their reputations are better than the cranks and frauds you quote.

From Hex:
From Praxeus:
As long as its considered as a source of legends, moral tales and distorted history, fine.

From Praxeus:
Paul is not an independent source. He has no source other than the Bible. If Paul was privy to some independent source of information about the Exodus, please let us know.

From Praxeus:
None of these counts as an independent source. All they're doing is proceeding from and commenting on the Bible. And, by the way, would you care to post the references from these five sources: Paul, Josephus, Philo, Eusebius and Jerome.

From Praxeus:
Scarely. You’re dealing with a highly revisionist notion of the Exodus, wandering in the desert, etc. How, for instance, did the 2.5 million get from Saudi Arabia to, say Kadesh-Barnea, whose site is not particularly in dispute, and where there is no evidence whatsoever for large numbers of people ever having lived.

From Praxeus:
References, please.

From Praxeus:
Becaue there’s no evidence. Ron Wyatt was a fraud and a con man.

From anders:
From Praxeus:
Never was an issue. anders misunderstood. The reference to a “diploma mill” was to the place where your other source, Charles Whittaker, was applying for a phony PhD.

From Sauron:
From Praxeus:
Peer review is a fine, if imperfect method of weeding out nonsense. The fact that Lennart Mollar has submitted large quantities of his work to peer review: in his area of expertise: ecology. The fact that he did not submit his book on the Exodus to peer review is telling.

From Praxeus:
Again, Wyatt was a crank and a con man.

From Praxeus:
The charges of fraud against Wyatt are substantiated over and over again in many documents. It’s up to you, now, to resurrect him from the intellectually and morally dead.

From Praxeus:
You’ll have to pull them uo for us. And there is nothing dubious about the collection of documents that tentmakers.org has assembled against Ron Wyatt. He was a fraud.

From Praxeus:
Presumably, you’re talking about some old thread. I have given you substantive evidence from Christian sources, that he was a con man. This crook claimed to have discovered Noah’s Ark, the Ark of the Covenant and who knows what else.

From Praxeus:
Right. Let’s see what you’re talking about.

From Praxeus:
From Praxeus:
No, what he’s saying is that anyone wanting to “do” archaeology has to have solid sources. Whittaker has none.

From Sauron:
From Praxeus:
The Bible is not a legitimate source when trying to prove the legitimacy of the Bible. All it can do is provide the material that has to be proved by independent sources. None of your people are independent sources.

From Praxeus:
Considering your intellectual background as, I believe, an innerantist, I would talk. Sauron’s points are legit. You’re blathering.

From Sauron:
From Praxeus:
That reference to Amaleq is cute. Typical of you, too. When it come to unsupported assertions, you have your own PhD.

From Praxeus:
Get it straight: the claim that the Exodus actually happened is unsupported and needs to be supported, which you haven’t done. Now, to shift the venue with no evidence at all is just silliness.

An nonarchaeologist operating outside his area of expertise, a thesis without field research from a diploma mill and Ron Wyatt add up to nothing.

RED DAVE

Amedeo

The mainstream religion of the Judeans is the religion of Yahweh, the ONLY God promulgated by Moses for his People. (This is the enotheism I spoke of.) But the people of the Kingdom of Judah are NOT the mainstream of Israel, even though they may think so and compiled the Bible from the Judaean standpoint. The mainstream was in the Kingdom of Israel, whose Essenes insisted on being the true Israelites. Anyway, the doctrine of a spirit or soul should be part of the religious traditions. Yahweh's breath [spiritus, in Latin] that made the Adam statue alive comes, along with Yahweh, from the non-Canaanite Levantine tradition that shares the proto-Greek Pneuma* [alias Psyche, in the Orphic tradition]. The inheritance of resurrectionism and the embalming of the dead -- as it was done to Jesus the Galilean -- come from the Egyptians.

In other words, resurrectionism and embalming should not be the only doctrines in the overall Judaic faith.
________________
*
Nishmat chayyim = breath of life. (Neshuma : movement of air.)
Pneuma = a blow, breeze, breath. [Breath and blood were the signs and the agents of life, amongst the ancient Greeks. In pre-agricultural times, a male was a womb-opener, but it was some special breeze or wind that induced the female's generation of an embryo. Later on, in agricultural times, the seed-bearing male was the generator of another human creature. Thus Adam came before Woman, as he is the generator of other humans. The Yahweh-prophet did not have knowledge of genetics, either pre-agrarian or modern. The Elohim-prophet did not commit himself to any specific genetics; their names gave rise a real male and a real female.]

RED DAVE

I suggest, dude, that, presumably as a Christian, you tread very lightly when you tell Jews what their religion really consists of. It's condescending at best. At worst, it's antisemitic.

(By the way, your last sentence is unintelligible.)

RED DAVE

Hex

Umm ... You know, Lars, just to point out one further point ... The LBIIA level at Jericho does not mean that the Hebrews were -there- at that time. It's just an occupation layer. If I find an LBIIA layer on a site in Turkey, does that automatically mean that the Hebrews were -there too-? Of course not.

I still content you're putting all your eggs on a pretty slippery slope, but it's obvious you're not budging in the face of fact.

NO progress is being made here, unless you count seeing your rants on the screen yet again as more progress ...

:wave:

Hex

Well, when I think it through, I see that there's no basis for such a study. If serious archaeologists, who are willing to put there data, research, artifacts and the like on the table for the rest of archaeology to examine on their own, won't undertake this, there's a reason - lack of substantiating evidence/reason.

But, fine, let's take your proposition as a hypothetical given. These hyopthetical Jews, laden with the riches of Egypt, have to leave Egypt and get to Saudi Arabia. So, what, they fly across the Sinai? They make it through without setting up camp anywhere? Come on.

Even in your hypothetical setting (which, I admit, is not much more fanciful than the Biblical story), still falls short when examining the Sinai penninsula for evidence. No evidence in Sinai still equates with no evidence for the Exodus, even if the destination is a mountain in Saudi Arabia.

No. YOUR qualifications. Many, many scholars with and without University certification have studied the Bible, the Torah, and many other literary works. How come YOU know the truth about the Exodus going to Saudi Arabia, when scholars through the ages have somehow missed that subtle point in these texts?

Like RED DAVE, I'm skeptical that Paul has -anything- to do with how one should read the Biblical account of the Exodus so that it points to Saudi Arabia. I thought that Josephus merely notes that they ended up in lower Syria (Palestine) and gives a date range for the Exodus - there's more?. I am, however, intruiged at what evidence you might have found from Philo, Eusebius, and Jerome that might shed some light on this. Especially since they are writing commentaries and translations some 1300-1800 years after the fact ...

Please, I really would love to see what you think backs this interpretation up. (In some context please?)

- Hex

Amedeo

I am not telling Jews what their religion is or what their beliefs are; I am studying the Judeans, the Christians, the Israelites and other ancient human societies. I know the history of the Jews better than their own fictious chronicles and present-day inventions. // I know that that when anybody says something that does not agree with the Jews, he is considered anti-Semitic. True knowledge is not the concern of the Jews or yours; you judge according to what comforms with or is contray to your orthodoxy. For you to do history -- reserach into your culture or your scriptures -- would amount to a contestation of the god-given truth. He who contests the Jewish dogmas is a DEFAMER or anti-Semite (There is even a law to this effect in the U.S, and in European countries.) Well, I belong to the Age of Herodotus and the philosphers, wherefore I have only contempt for your accusation or insinuation, and for Age of the Gods and Heroes. I have transcended your lot and will pursue my Herodotean Researches, as I say unto you, and my Archimedean circles, as I say to the political hegemonists [ the makers of Semitic laws for the Gentiles] over me. I am a researcher, not a prophet.

By the way, my last sentences referred to the Elohim of Genesis-1, where the divine magician said, "Let there be light." He or they "create" by naming the thing which are to appear. A magician says, "Rabbit!" and a rabbit appear in his hat. The Elohim made a man and a woman, not by constructing them, as Yahweh did, but by naming them: one male and one female, in our image and likeness (as the Elohim said). The Biblical account does not state anything as to whether the Elohim believed that THE FEMALE GENERATES, OR THE MALE GENERATES, OR BOTH GENERATE OTHER HUMANS.

Sven

Umm, no. They are not evidence at all - they are just-so stories, with some unsupported assertions here and there. All you've got is an explanation (albeit weak) how this could have happened without leaving evidence - this is obviously something different than evidence that it happened.

With this, you've lost the rest of credibility. Rennes-le-Chateau?

Please tell me that you are joking!

jgibson000

Researcher, eh?

How many of the languages in which the primary sources for your researches do you read? One? Two? Any?

JG