David Rohl

Funny that, given the fact that I was one of those who demonstrated with archaeological evidence that Velikovsky was completely wrong in his reconstruction of Egyptian chronology, rather than simply attacking him with dogma and rhetoric as most academics did. The people that Kitchen accuses of being 'sons of Velikovsky' were precisely the people who analysed his chronology in an unbiased way and proved it wanting.

My Obama analogy was taken from an outsider's (European) perspective whereby the UK coverage of the Democratic primaries painted Obama as a Washington outsider (nothing to do with the academic Establishment or his academic standing). What I saw on my TV was an eloquent young black man circumnavigating the Establishment hierarchical machinery by taking his message directly to the people. His popularity then became infectious and Establishment figures within the Democratic party came over to his side. If this is a mistaken perception then it is one that many hold outside the USA.

Duke Leto

No it is understandable. Obama started his rise all the way back in 2004 by speaking at Kerry's nominating convention and he's been playing the inside track since Kerry lost. My point was that part of what got him where he is that he and his people used the system better than the supposed insiders.

bacht

Velikovsky? "Worlds In Collision"? You've got to be kidding

lysår

It seems to me that several comments here have comitted a version of an ad hominem - The Genetic Fallacy, and on both sides.

Now I am not an expert in the discussed fields, but even good (expert) sources may sometimes produce bad results, which can lead to incorrect results when placing your faith in appeals to authority.

It would be nice to see people addressing the data/evidence, rather than attacking the personal character of the opposition.

David Rohl

Reply to Toto (the anonymous moderator):

So let me get this straight. It is 'fair game' to abuse public figures on the internet (to a degree where that abuse, if it appeared in print, might be regarded as potential libel), but it is not okay for those public figures to counter abuse anonymous posters in this discussion group. And, apparently it is not permitted to criticise or question the moderation of anonymous moderators running a public discussion group or the very obvious lack of libel regulation in a very public internet. Hmmm ... an interesting ethical position to take - free-thinking and rationalism shown in its very best light.

But I was taken with a comment you made in another thread where you wrote:

"Why would you even think that you could learn about Arius from what his enemies said about him?"

Interesting!

Duke Leto

I wouldn't pursue this any further, David. Taking a stand against calling people names anonymously over the internet is going to be about as effective as the war on drugs or complaining to the management of a club where your phone number is written a bathroom stall under "For a Good Time Call".

You can't possibly control what people say about you in a public forum, you can control your reactions to it and impress people by being better than the mudslingers.

If you want to defend your ideas in this forum then the best way you can do so is by seriously answering questions about them to the best of your ability, and ignoring the insults. I guarantee you that will win you the respect of the people watching this thread if you do so.

Duke Leto = John Foelster of Conshohocken PA, USA, a poor indentured SQL programmer with pretensions of being a scholar and a writer.

Toto

It seems to help me keep my personal reaction under control if I stay anonymous. But my name wouldn't mean anything to you. I'm just the referee, or at times the playground superintendent.

Libel is tricky. If you think that any criticism of your theories or methods is abuse or libel, you need a thicker skin. If you think that some comment actually qualifies as libel under some applicable law, please report the post or communicate with a moderator.

The best way of countering "abuse" is by demonstrating a civil demeanor and sticking to the facts.

It is always permitted at the right time and place. It is not permitted to drag a thread off topic by discussing moderation, as you are doing here. There is a separate forum for raising issues about moderation - try Private feedback or Ask an Officer. And it's better to use the PM system for these issues.

End of discussion on moderation. Please feel free to defend your theories.

Iskander

To David Rohl

This place is full of peleones.


Enjoy la sangria and the Spanish sun.

Kind regards.

Ted Hoffman

I for one have been following this discussion keenly even though most of it is over the top of my head. I like a good discussion even when its about TIP, the people of Hatti and Ramessids and other things I have no clue about. I would like to see two items addressed through evidentiary arguments. One is linguistic and one regards the dates:

Part of The linguistic argument:

Now gentlemen, could you please conclude this debate?

The Dating /er, the Dates

I am not very familiar with NC and ANE studies but this Kitchen fellow, he actually treats Exodus as an actual event and goes on to date it?
Or is Exodus being dated for the sake of argument?

And David, is it true that you fudged 100 years of the Bronze Age chronology?

David Rohl

Reply to Ted Hoffman:

Thank you Ted for focussing down on these points. Here is my two-pennies’ worth.

The Egyptian hypocoristicon (a familiar shortened form of a name – like Beth for Elizabeth or Di for Diana) which we pronounce as Mose (written simply MS in hieroglyphs) is a very common element in names from the late 13th Dynasty (Dudimose), 17th Dynasty (Kamose), through the 18th Dynasty (Yahmose, Thutmose, Amenmose, Ptahmose) and into the Ramesside period (Ramesses = Ramose). If there was a prince of Egypt of Semitic origin (something only attested in the 13th Dynasty), then it would not be surprising if the biblical tradition shortened his name from something like Yahmose or Hapimose down to simple Mose (this is attested in 19th Dynasty documents). Another reason why this might have been done is because, as spin points out, there is a folk etymology for the name Moses which associates Moshe with the Hebrew verb mashah ‘to draw out’ [of the water] - but I stress that this is a folk etymology and most scholars would argue that the Moses-in-a-basket story was a literary borrowing from the folk-tale of Sargon the Great.

The fact that the Egyptian name Mose transfers into biblical Hebrew Moshe fulfils the requirement of answering Kitchen’s completely inaccurate proclamation that Egyptian S never transfers into Hebrew SH. The same goes for Egyptian Askelana transferring to Hebrew Ashkelon. Spin is quite wrong to argue that this is a reverse transfer because Ashkelon was never an Israelite city but belonged to the Philistines. Therefore we are not going from Hebrew to Egyptian. I am simply demonstrating that it is not true that Egyptian S never transfers to Hebrew SH. I only have to produce a single example to refute this criticism. I am not in the position of having to prove Egyptian SYSW is the same as Hebrew SHYSHK, only that the criticisms raised by the so-called experts on this linguistic point are not valid and do not undermine the thesis. So my identification of Ramesses II, bearing the well-attested hypocoristicon SYSW, with the biblical character Shishak (as spin points out, a consequence of the revised chronology, not its starting point) is not negated by Kitchen’s incorrect linguistic argument.

I have also already noted that the early Hebrew script did not differentiate between S and SH. So this is a rather pointless exercise anyway, but I will complete it for the sake of argument. I have also never stated that ALL examples of Egyptian S transfer to Hebrew SH, so it is misleading to give examples of Egyptian S being retained as Hebrew S - I have never disputed that, only that Egyptian S CAN be transferred to Hebrew SH. Again, that is all I am required to demonstrate.

But there is more. When I stated that the lingua franca of the Late Bronze Age in the Levant was East Semitic Akkadian/Canaanite, spin asked me to ‘supply a few Akkadian texts in the Israeli archaeological record to help your case’. Well that is not at all difficult. A fairly recent scientific analysis of the chemical make-up of the clays used to manufacture the Tell el-Amarna tablets has proven that the tablets were made locally near to the towns of the correspondents from Palestine. In other words, the tablets were produced at the local population centres of the region (e.g., Gezer, Ashkelon, Gaza, Jerusalem, Megiddo, etc) and sent to Pharaoh’s court at Amarna, where they were discovered in modern times. So these qualify as genuine examples of the lingua franca originating from the so-called ‘Israeli archaeological record’. There are now also a number of tablets from the same period which have actually been dug up from the cities mentioned above by Israeli archaeologists.

So, now, let me give you a relevant example of the shift of Egyptian S to the lingua franca SH which, in the New Chronology, would be contemporary with the United Monarchy period in Israel and therefore directly related to both the Shishak question and, incidentally, the name Mose as it was pronounced/written in Palestine/Israel at that time.

In the Amarna Letters, written in cuneiform in Akkadian/Canaanite (i.e. East and West Semitic), the names of several Egyptian officials are mentioned. They are:

(a) I-ri-ma-ia-ash-sha which represents Egyptian Ramose.
(b) A-ma-an-ma-sha which represents Egyptian Amenmose.
(c) Ha-a-mash-shi which represents Egyptian Hamose.
(d) Ha-a-ra-ma-ash-shi which represents Egyptian Harmose.
(e) Ta-ma-ash-shi which represents Egyptian Ptahmose.

You will note that all these Egyptian names end in the element -mose (‘offspring of’ or ‘born of’) which clearly demonstrates that the Egyptian name-element Mose (with an S) was pronounced in Palestine at this time with an SH, giving us Akkadian/Canaanite Mashi/Masha and therefore, logically, in the sister language of Hebrew Moshe.

Spin has asked for examples of Egyptian S written as SH in ‘Israeli’ archaeological contexts, well here are two more from a famous Israelite capital.

On an ostracon excavated from the site of Samaria (c. 780 BC) - the Egyptian name Anmose is written Anmash.

On another ostracon from Samaria – the Egyptian name Kadbes is written Kadbesh.

Also from other textual sources:

The Egyptian god’s name Asar (Osiris) is written in Hebrew as Ashar.

The Egyptian delta district of KS (Kos) becomes Kessan in the Septuagint and Goshen in the Massoretic edition of the OT. The Greek retains the Egyptian S but the Hebrew gives SH.

Both Kitchen and spin have therefore been answered in this particular matter and shown to be incorrect. The argument that Egyptian S cannot become Hebrew SH is fallacious.

Now on to the question of the Exodus.

Spin is getting a bit confused here. The reason why most archaeologists working in Israel and Palestine today reject the Exodus and Conquest as historical events is not because of a consensus rejection of the biblical narrative based on any philosophical or anti-religious stance but purely on the lack of archaeological verification. Over the last two centuries of endeavour, they have simply found no evidence of either an Exodus or Conquest at the time that Kitchen and the orthodox chronologists with a biblical bent claim the events took place - in other words at the end of the Late Bronze Age (the time of Ramesses II). This is absolutely correct. There was no town of Jericho in existence at that time and no evidence of a large Semitic population living in the eastern delta (biblical Goshen) in the 19th Dynasty. That is precisely the point I am making in my books.

But let’s just imagine for a moment that archaeologists had indeed unearthed a Jericho whose walls had tumbled down and which had been burnt to the ground and abandoned for centuries. And let’s imagine that Egyptologists had unearthed a huge Semitic population living in the eastern delta in the centuries prior to the destruction of Jericho. Would scholars then be so adamant that the biblical tradition was a fairy story? Or would they now be saying that the archaeological record was consistent with the biblical tradition?

When did the walls of Jericho fall down with the city being burnt to the ground and abandoned for centuries? In what period was there a king of Hazor called Jabin (the name of the king of Hazor slain by Joshua according to the Conquest narrative). When was there a large Semitic population living in the eastern delta of Egypt? When were slave lists drawn up with Hebrew names on them? Answer: during the Middle Bronze Age (some three centuries earlier than the end of the Late Bronze Age and the reign of Ramesses II). This is the New Chronology position as to the period when the historical events took place upon which the biblical traditions of Exodus and Conquest were based.

I rest my case.