Casper

Lets see, I pointed out something in a fairly innocuous way and got not only a confirmation that I had made the proper correction, but a later note pointing out that I had also introduced a new typo of my own. Ironically, bustophedon was David's spelling...

C'mon David, this really isn't being slapped down and I'm in no way afraid to challenge spin; there are many examples in this forum where I have gone back and forth with him and always come out a "winner" in the sense that my knowledge base has been expanded. Occasionally I can claim a "gotcha" but as in the case above it is generally a petty thing and may even bite me. But I am not keeping any score.

I'm bettting the lurkers on this thread are generally reserving judgement rather than being afraid to get involved. Kick for a goal, don't just get upset and leave with the ball.

I'm walking through your shin/sin argument by starting upstream, and what I see is something that I am not at all convinced indicates your evidence is sound on this. If you convince me, you have convinced only me, but the audience can also potentially be swayed.

I wish you all the best on your future endeavors, but yes, this forum has a lot of amateurs, even what I would consider sub-amateurs (myself for instance). Isn't that a valid group of your intended audience? I hope so.

(a side note, I spent several days reviewing your at-one-time-available Egyptian life tree chart showing the spiraling of myth and the pattern of repitition. You may or may not have something, but I found it quite interesting and something I will not forget).

Duke Leto

In a move towards levity, am I the only person who looks at shishak and sheshonq and pictures Morgan Freeman narrating the story of Tim Robbins' escape from a Maine prison?

spin

Well, way back I did think about this pharaoh getting back Egypt's former possessions as the Shoshenq redemption, but I let it rest.




spin

Roland

I don't get why Rohl identifies the figure of Labaya in the Armana letters with the Saul of the Bible when virtually nothing known about either character would lead one to the conclusion that they are one and the same person.

How they died, where they died and how many sons lived on after them are all radically different for each person.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labaya

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_the_King

Duke Leto

My understanding is that David identifies the Amarna "sons" of Labayu as Ishbaal/Mutbaal and David, David being "son-in-law", properly speaking.

The circumstances of his death are laid out that the El Amarna Gina is identified with a town protecting the gentler approach to the heights above Gilboa where Labayu/Saul fought his last battle. The people of Gina then let the Philistine army outflank him and defeat him.

The latter is obviously a bit more of a reconstruction.

Roland

Duke, do you know of any site that illustrates the differences between the "old" chronology and the "new"? In particular, how the new one makes all the Bible events - particularly the Conquest - suddenly viable? If I'm not mistaken, in Rohl's interpretation, the Conquest would still take place in the 14th Century B.C. but that cities that were once thought to be uninhabited at that time would suddenly show themselves to be inhabited merely by shifting the Egyptian chronology. But, for that to be the case, wouldn't all those cities have to be seen as inhabited at the same time according to the conventional chronology as well, only in an earlier period of the Bronze Age than is now generally thought to be the case? Or am I not understanding all this? In other words, from everything I've read on this subject, at NO TIME BEFORE THE 7th CENTURY BC were all those sites occupied simultaneously. How does merely shifting the dates of the Egyptian chronology change that fact, since the occupation layers at the sites themselves still won't have changed relative to one another? Maybe I'm just not getting it.

spin

Rohl's identification of Saul as Labayu is based on an exercise in cherry-picking.

-	Amarna	bible
Name	Labayu "lion"	Shaul "desired"
Heritage	not habiru	Hebrew
Rank	subservient to Egypt	independent king
Predecessors	father & grandfather servants of Egypt	(none)
City	Shechem	Gibeon
Ruled	Central Israel	Central Israel
Fought	Canaanites	Philistines
Died	killed by citizens of Gina	suicide after battle of Gilboa
Sons	2	4 3 died at Gilboa
Successor	Mutbalu "man of Baal"	Ishbaal "man of Baal"
Ruled	Pella	Israel, 2 Sam 2:9

There is so little overlap it takes imagination to and a stiff closure of the eye. Labayu sets off for an attempt on Megiddo, but is captured. A certain Zurata intending to send him to pharaoh, but Labayu bribes Zurata and escapes. Sound familiar from the story of Saul? Of course not. Very little does.

There is no battle at Gilboa in the Amarna letters and nothing about Gina in the bible. What we see in Duke Leto's screed is the same sort of harmonizing threading together as we see with the Jesus birth narratives.

I'm pretty shocked that Duke Leto could swallow this claptrap.


spin

Duke Leto

Screed? Oh for goodness sake man, can you at least match the taunts to reality? There was nothing in the least bit "screedy" about the above post. A screed is long and monotonous. You can say that about a lot of my posts, but not that one.

Duke Leto

Roland, I've been working on getting the links together on material from basarchive.org to support my position, but have been sidetracked by personal issues. Lemme get back to you after I finish that post. I don't know that there are many good NC websites out there that are "non-denominational".

Ted Hoffman

Duke, I think he meant David Rohl. I think spin's post clearly betrays this. We can chalk it up to a keyboard fart.