spin

Actually I cited Kitchen's evidence. Beside mentioning Kitchen's work, name one skerrick of an item you can claim might possibly sort of kinda be you know an appeal to authority?

All you've done is project what you've been doing, ie not looking at the evidence, onto me.

I took Rohl on regarding his totally unsupported shift of $w$q from Sheshonq to (Ram)ses. The best he could do was hope that the Akkadian of the Amarna letters might have influenced the Hebrews, pure conjecture. The man is totally evidenceless on the subject.

His attempt at the Ugarit eclipse tablet failed as well. His interpretation needed a specific reading in order to work his way, but there is no reason for that reading to be favored. It's just more conjecture.

And you have the temerity to claim that I consistently appeal to authority. Get a life.

You know that that is speaking from ignorance.

Do you think he will find a way to cut three hundred years out of the Assyrian king list that is not a repeat pull-a-rabbit-out-of-the-hat approach that he used in Egypt. Well, sadly that's all he can do. You exactly the same length of time was taken up due to fictitious parallel dynasties.

Look at the gross blunder over the supposed waw in the alphabet. Does that inspire anyone that he knows what he's talking about in the field??

He just needs help... to build a more substantial position. He's been at this for decades now. He's had lots of semi-academic help. He's had cadres of acolytes adulating over his snarky comments. But he won't sell his book to scholars.

Think of this: Abibaal, the father of Hyram who the bible tells us was friend of Solomon, left an inscription which was on a statue of Shoshenq I. Do think about it.


spin

Ted Hoffman

This, to me, was a clincher. It indicated that David could fabricate an entire argument on a sandy foundation and therefore is not very reliable. Plus, WTF was that about consulting some Dutch scholar?

Ted Hoffman

spin,
This is how I understood part of the argument in this thread:
DR argued that "the early (10th century) Hebrew signs for waw and qoph were identical (see the Lachish VI ostracon and the Izbet Sartah abecedary)."

You responded by saying that was not correct because (1) the Lachish VI ostracon appeared too early to reflect Hebrew because it is dated to the 12th c. and (2) that what DR thought was a qof was actually a (poorly written) resh. And I remember DR conceded by stating that "I therefore take spin's criticism on board that the proposed waw could be resh." As far as I understood it, DR made a claim and tried to support it and you falsified it and DR conceded.

But (assuming I am too ignorant to know the head from the tail in this debate) can your response be taken to mean you (spin) "accepted that the Izbet Sartah qoph was a loop on stem, and the Lachish ostracon shows a waw as a loop on stem."?

Or did I misunderstand the argument? Just state it here so that everyone is clear on this please.

spin

Rohl was arguing about the similarity between qof and waw, both of which feature the same long downward stroke...

Rohl is trying to make the majority Hebrew form $y$q out as the best candidate for a development not from Shoshenq but from the hypocoristic of (Ram)ses, which he now wants to have been Sesw (though Kitchen represents it as Sessi, but Sesw is better for his latest attempt at convincing).

Rohl then argues on two fronts of conjecture:

1) instead of the Egyptian /s/ becoming a Hebrew samek as it documentedly does, it becomes a shin -- just look at what happened in the Akkadian of the Amarna letters with their Canaanite influences.

2) because an early Hebrew alphabet presents the waw and the qof so similarly, a scribe wrote the claimed waw of Sesw, but it got confused with a qof.

And so obviously Sesw became represented in Hebrew as $y$q.

However Rohl's strange waw was actually a resh and we still only have /s/ -> samek. Shoshenq is a superior philological match for $y$q, especially when the second vowel appears to be a waw, ie $w$q.

(And one wonders what twisting of the epigraphy Rohl does for a final waw is, given Kitchen's familiarity with the representation Sessi.)

If his attempt with Sesw/y = $y$q fails, he's left with his pants down waiting to be spanked, attempting to use the bible of all things as one of his key sources, when the bible contradicts him, favoring Shoshenq.

A reliable consultant. One does get professional help in scholarly situations in areas outside one's expertise.



spin

Anat

If Ramesses II or III is the same as Shishaq, does this imply that we have a rather quick transition from Joshua's conquest to Saul/David/Solomon and then several centuries until we have Omri/Ahab/Jehu, all of whom are dated according to extra-biblical evidence to the 9th century BCE? Does the time of the Judges disappear or become very short? How does this chronology account for the time between Solomon and Omri in Israel? In those cities that were destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, is there any sign of invasion of people from Egyptian cultural influence? Is there any evidence for the arrival of a distinct ethnic or cultural group at this period?

That would be cart-horse reversal. One shouldn't prefer an interpretation of archaeology based on which ideology it supports but rather what the evidence supports.

In any case, since there is no support for an exodus/conquest of a nation of a million+ any claim for biblical literalism is dead. A micro-exodus of a couple of families of runaway slaves is impossible to prove or disprove. I suppose you are going for some sort of middle-range exodus, that did not necessarily follow the biblical itinerary, did not stay for a generation time in Kadesh Barnea, and resulted in the conquest of a few cities. I have a feeling you'd have to pick and choose to make the logistics plausible, and any conclusions you will draw regarding the impact on the existing population of Canaan will be sensitive to criticism because of this methodology.

Casper

It seemed like either backpedalling or an incomplete hypothesis that needed further explanation, or just plain old cherry picking. I was hoping for something in the second category. I'm also disappointed that Leto failed to even step in here.

"Castles made of sand..."

spin

If you think of Rohl chopping about 300 years off Egyptian chronology, while maintain Hebrew chronology as the one true chronology, that would put the exodus around, say, the time the Hyksos were expelled. Current conservative chronology puts it either during the reign of Ramses II or Merneptah as best guesses, so three hundred years earlier because that chronology is off by that much...


spin

Anat

Doesn't that chronology add some 300 unaccounted years somewhere between Shishak's campaign and the Omride kings? Doesn't this imply we suddenly have less information of a society that is becoming more politically organized?

Also, how can Rohl place a period like Solomon's reign, which is supposed to be a time of prosperity and increasing international ties in the Late Bronze, which is a time in which the hill country is sparsely populated?

spin

His Egyptian chronology functions through parallel dynasties and compaction. Rohl has two dynasties operating at the same time not too long after Ramses II, so instead of needing to cut out years they pass by in parallel, rather than consecutively.

Levantine chronology is the only one functioning normally, while the other chronologies are wrong.


spin

Casper

I found several interesting link but this one from Brian Colless offers a pretty straightforward identification as well as a possible interpretation of the top rows, relying on the theory that letters could be used as logograms (sounds reasonable to me).

http://collesseum.googlepages.com/abgadary

Colless also offers and interesting tidbit on the subject of the waw, which I am currently looking into:

It is all good reading, I urge anyone still curious to check it out.