Aristeas is Jewish Apologetics

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Aristeas

Victor Tcherikover (Hebrew University) summed up the scholarly consensus in 1958:

"Modern scholars commonly regard the “Letter of Aristeas” as a work typical of Jewish apologetics, aiming at self-defense and propaganda, and directed to the Greeks. Here are some instances illustrating this general view. In 1903. Friedlander wrote that the glorification of Judaism in the letter was no more than self-defense, though “the book does not mention the antagonists of Judaism by name, nor does it admit that its intention is to refute direct attacks.” Stein sees in the letter “a special kind of defense, which practices diplomatic tactics,” and Tramontano also speaks of “an apologetic and propagandist tendency.” Vincent characterizes it as “a small unapologetic novel written for the Egyptians” (i.e. the Greeks in Egypt). Pheiffer says: “This fanciful story of the origin of the Septuagint is merely a pretext for defending Judaism against its heathen denigrators, for extolling its nobility and reasonableness, and first striving to convert Greek speaking Gentiles to it.” Schurer classes the letter with a special kind of literature, “Jewish propaganda in Pagan disguise,” whose works are “directed to the page and read your, in order to make propaganda for Judaism among the Gentiles.” Andrews, too, believes that the role of a Greek was assumed by Aristeas in order “to strengthen the force of the argument and commend it to non-Jewish readers.”^[7]

It is an intersting article and makes a strong argument to consider the possibility that in terms of antiquity the Greek version of written Jewish scripture matches its counterpart, if not predates it.

It contains one major flaw however in its treatment of what constitutes Greek, both in terms of a geopolitical entity and cultural standard in the era in question.

Greece, in classical times, was never a "country" in the sense that we understand it now. It was a conglomerate of city states and militarised territories united by common beliefs and culture which, through a pattern of shifting alliances often collapsing into internecine civil war but on average leading to greater consolidation, gradually extended that culture throughout the surrounding region. Then, with the Macedonian takeover and the phenomenal success of Alexander's conquests in the east, that intrusion of culture mushroomed in its effect.

We know that Alexander's method of conquest - which largely consisted of following military victory with complete elimination of the old ruling class - created a "top down" vacuum in political power regionally which was filled by Greek input, at first through his own appointments and then as a matter of course under his successors. This created a roll-on effect which lasted several centuries and saw a hellenization of the ruling classes which post-dated even the eventual collapse of Alexander's empire.

Tied to this political effect, and with just as much thoroughness, would have been the hellenization of those agencies with strong dependency on political status. Most notably religion and education (then not separated in any real sense) also followed suit. In a time when writing and interpreting "scripture" was an extremely minority activity in any culture the hellenization of this process - which occurred across the Levant and well into Persia - created a whole new religious world in which cross-transfer of elements of belief accelerated. Population shifts also contributed to this hybridization of religion (matching the top-down effect with a bottom-up equivalent), and it is no coincidence in my view that a period in which those people in the region later to be known as "the Jews" were forcibly exposed to foreign (to them) influence, gave rise to the body of texts under discussion.

The "old testment" therefore unsurprisingly contains a mess of influences, some of which are still identifiably Persian and Sumerian in origin, others which no longer display any obvious pedigree, and some which undoubtedly have origins within the Jewish community.

However I think it is pertinent to point out that they were undoubtedly assembled within that community and for Jewish reasons - to argue otherwise would be plain silly given how they have adapted even that most Persian of fables, the flood, to promote their own narrow values in an inferior manner to its original application.

But to say that this could have happened without the intrusion of Greek politics and culture in the region would also be silly, as would be the notion that Greek language therefore did not play a huge part in that process. That the Septuagint and the Hebrew texts shared a process of origin is therefore also hugely likely, and the survival of the Greek texts from that time is also not a fantastic prospect given the political realities of the pre-Roman Levant and the mild dispersion of Judaic and quasi-Judaic communities outside the Israel of the period. The importance of those texts will have grown hugely with the advent of christianity but there would not have been a need, as the article's author suggests, that at any point the complete body of texts would have needed to be translated in either direction. With minor differences both versions already co-existed.

The author, labouring under the impression that there was negligible or no overlap between the two cultures has drawn an erroneous conclusion from this co-existence, and several other erroneous interpolations therefore from that conclusion. It is not so much a question of "which came first" as it is of "why were there already two versions". Neither version attempted to invalidate the other (having both shared origin and application for so long) and their close similarity meant that reactivation of interest in the Greek version by the Judaic splinter sect of christianity did not lead its devotees to feel the need to alter its substance.

Having said that it is still a good article in that it punctures a widely held presumption, based on no evidence outside of tradition, that the Jewish texts are of an antiquity matching the "history" they purport to express. Both assumptions - that they are very ancient and that they were uniquely and completely originated within the Jewish community - do not stand up to historical assessment.

We have the DSS (dead sea scrolls) carbon dated to 95 BCE-122 CE. I think they contain most of the Jewish Scriptures in Hebrew (or is it Aramaic?).

The DSS are a subject in themselves. There is no known connection between them and Qumran or between Qumran and the Essenes. Such is the power of modern fable.

The carbon dating actually results in three separate time groups over those years indicating three different groups hid/stored them for for different purposes at different times. This is a recent finding. I am looking for the paper to determine which books are in which group.

There are both Aramaic and "hebrew" scrolls but there is no evidence of "hebrew" prior to the scrolls meaning it is mostly an invented liturgical language.

Josephus is the earliest source that the Jewish Scriptures are ancient, and he is not reliable because he was interpolated by Eusebius in the 4th century.

One person has suggested that only the writing on the Judean war was by Josephus and all the rest are forgeries. Be that as it may, at one point Josephus writes that the religion of the Judeans, aka Jews, has only 22 holy books. As a priest of that religion he cannot be easily discounted as having the wrong number. This indicates the canon of the Judeans was not yet established in his time.

Matt Giwer seems to be claiming that around 200 BCE, most of the Septuagint was recorded in Greek from Jewish oral tradition, and then later the Jews translated those parts of the Septuagint into Hebrew with some corrections.

Actually I am saying there was no Jewish religion as we would recognize it until after the Septuagint. The region most likely worshiped both Yahweh and Ashara of which the oldest mention is found in Ugarit. A temple to Ashara existed in Jerusalem until Rome rebuilt the city after the bar Kokbah rebellion. That temple was most likely where the Dome of the Rock exists today as both have/had eight sides. And it would been higher than the Temple to Yahweh else visitors to the latter could look down and see their priests making worshipful love to the priestesses.

All religions are made-up by somebody. Goat herders sit around the camp fire telling tall tails which evolve and become more elaborate with each telling. The goat herders knew a little bit of Babylonian history, but they even got the names of kings wrong.

There are several ways we know religions appear. The oldest religions were as you say, campfire stories. For those religions there is no dogma. A new story succeeds or fails on its quality not on adherence to dogma so liberties are welcomed if they make a better story.

Then there are the invented religions which appear after the appearance of a particular person which may or may not include the collection of sacred books. Judaism, Islam, LDS and Scientology fit this.

Then there are religions that grow up by committee over centuries. Christianity is one of these and it continues to evolve today. Christianity appears to have been in the Roman tradition of melding gods in that it joined several emerging monotheisms into one.

It would only take about 20 years for the tails and poetry of the Jewish Scriptures to develop. I do not know any reason to think that any of these tribal taboos or ghost stories existed before around 200 BCE.

Many of the sources of the OT have been identified. "May his light shine upon you" is a prayer to Ra of Egypt. Yahweh is Amun, the eldest god of the Egyptians, who made the first people out of clay and being eldest, no other god was before him -- in time.

Further when the Septuagint appears the creators would have had the records in the library at Alexander to draw upon. Alexander "looted" official records.

there is a similar thread on internet infidels

http://www.freeratio.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=255277

This seems to establish that at least Psalms 34, 119 and 145 were originally written in Hebrew. These Psalms could have been written later than some other psalms.

This seems to establish that Hebrew scrolls existed when Nehemiah 8: was written. It could be a later interpolation.

----------------------

Josephus does not mention Nehemiah, but there is a copy in the DSS.

Which books of the Jewish Scripture do you think are most likely to have been originally written in Greek?

Which books of the Jewish Scripture do you think are least likely to have been originally written in Greek?

Firstly: It's not inconceivable that someone contemporary would get facts, even very basic facts, about prominent people wrong. Even very wrong.  It happens pretty regularly today, with the benefit of a world-spanning information repository.  It's not likely, but "could not" is a bit strong.

Secondly: You're right about the OT and epics, but the article made the point that civilizations capable of producing substantial works of literature simply didn't exist in the (presumed) Middle East prior to the Greeks.  This is simply untrue.  Yes, we would expect to find large quantities of mundane writings as well, but "there was no bibleland civilization capable of creating or preserving the Old Testament until the Greek period," is false as an absolute statement.

I don't know enough about this specific subject to discuss it more, I just wanted to point out what I saw as fallacious overgeneralizations. 

Thanks for the visit spin.

You're so damn rude, but you're always contributing good stuff, so I always like to see you around.

To Kavis:

Firstly: It's not inconceivable that someone contemporary would get facts, even very basic facts, about prominent people wrong. Even very wrong. It happens pretty regularly today, with the benefit of a world-spanning information repository. It's not likely, but "could not" is a bit strong.

In this case could not refers to the possibility of an official in the US government getting names of other government officials wrong. Not only getting the wrong names but using names of officials who came after he wrote. Crystal ball? Sort of like in 2003, the Secretary of State mentioning president Obama.

Another problem is back then there was little concern over forgery. In fact attributing something to a famous person was more of the author's opinion of its importance rather than an attempt to attribute it to the person. In those days the written word was considered much inferior to the spoken word so it did not reflect upon the person.

Given that we have a lot of forgeries to deal with. One of the methods of dealing with them is to ruthlessly reject those whose facts are wrong. If this were not done we would have mutually exclusive recountings of many things in history as well as things like the Donation of Constantine considered legitimate.

Secondly: You're right about the OT and epics, but the article made the point that civilizations capable of producing substantial works of literature simply didn't exist in the (presumed) Middle East prior to the Greeks. This is simply untrue. Yes, we would expect to find large quantities of mundane writings as well, but "there was no bibleland civilization capable of creating or preserving the Old Testament until the Greek period," is false as an absolute statement.

If those other civilizations could produce interesting works of literature then let me ask where they are? I have never heard of a single one. If you know of something I have missed please let me know.

Further we do trace the origin of many writing styles to the Greeks. For example Herodotus is considered the inventor of writing history. But if one is a bible believer the bible authors must be credited with inventing writing history. When it comes to telling the history of Egypt archaeologists take inscriptions recording events, battles, conquests and such and try to fill in the events in between the inscriptions. At the moment there are many times more gaps than inscriptions.

Even if there were histories and such written before Herodotus in Egypt or Babylon that would not mean much. Bibleland is of interest for the fact that it contributed absolutely nothing to civilization. No art, literature, science, math, engineering, architecture, noting. It contributed absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Given that fact why would anyone expect them to up to the level of large, advanced civilizations? Unless I have missed something there are no such works of literature. So why would be expect the people from the anus mundi have been ahead of the literary developments of the Greeks when they did NOTHING else?

I don't know enough about this specific subject to discuss it more, I just wanted to point out what I saw as fallacious overgeneralizations.

To me it is not fallacious rather a recognition of the facts of those times. Writing was a rare skill and expensive to maintain. It was limited to the wealthy. There were no public schools nor books to read. Bibleland had only trivial amounts of written materials prior to the time when ruled by the Greeks. To need both hands to count all the written material from bibleland you have to include some modern forgeries. It isn't quite that bad but in comparison clay tablets from Babylon are in the tens of thousands. The tablets are mostly business contracts. Because of papyrus very few survived from Egypt but the rooms where they were stored are huge. There is nothing remotely comparable from bibleland.

And nothing from bibleland in any way confirms anything in the bible.

To patcleaver:

Politeness is not something one ordinarily acquires from public debate. If one cannot be rude, crude and vulgar, what is the point of long distance debate?

That said one has to look at the known history of bibleland.

To the evolutionist bibleland has been continuously inhabited from the time humans left Africa. Before that Orangs, Gibbons and Australopithecus also inhabited it. Several other hominids also did which means all of them except make Neanderthal on which the question is still open. Other African origin animals such as lions also inhabited bibleland.

If we jump ahead to historic times we find Egypt was trading with the outside world almost from their earliest records. And they may have been before they left records. In historic times, bibleland is the primarily land route to Egypt.

The first kingdom of Egypt ruled the Nile and both sides of the Red Sea largely ignoring the Mediterranean. It passed through the Negev and extended an unknown distance up the west coast of the Med. This is the time when they owned the funerary spice trade of what is now Yemen.

We find evidence of silk in Egypt 5000 years ago but certainly by 4000 years ago. Egypt had its main sea trade originating in the Red Sea to points east. Details of this are largely unknown and will remain so until Saudi gets an interest in archaeology. But the silk was definitely over the Silk Road which passed through bibleland. This was also the route of trade with Mesopotamia, Persia and Turkey for want of a better name.

Little is known of the routes through bibleland in the early days. When archaeology picks up we find the city-states of Damascus, Petra, Sidon, Tyre, Askelon and Gaza. The latter four are also involved in sea trade in the Med. So there is a big gap, 1 to 2 thousand years. Likely this is because the trade was not that great until it was expanded to the backwards Acheans and such.

Bibleland has always been inhabited and for all recorded history a habitable strip of land between major civilizations. When we start finding signs of civilization in the region it is the cities I mention above. We find no bibleland cities involved. Percentagewise modern Israel is the most dug real estate in the world. Israeli archaeologists have found nothing of interest.

In all of this time we do find evidence of who ruled in the region. The only independence we find are of the named city-states. The inland areas were always ruled from some place else. By 1600 BC we find Egypt ruling an empire all up the east coast of the Med to the Euphrates. They were always driven back by other conquerors who took over that land and in some cases Egypt itself.

The second last of those in ancient times was Greece under Alexander. Nothing in the chronicles of Alexander's conquests suggests there was any independent kingdom in bibleland. He conquered Damascus, Tyre and then went straight to Egypt. There is no Judah/Judea mentioned in the inventories of his conquests. There is clearly no more evidence Judah/Judea existed than there is that Jesus appeared in the New World after his death in 33 AD or that evil Thetans are controlling us.

Those are the facts. What is known makes it impossible for there to be any truth in the OT.

Now please explain how a collection of books whose centerpiece is a people and a religion and kingdoms which never existed can possibly have had a basis in fact.

Someone invented everything in the OT. The only discussion is who and when.

At the moment believers have retreated to it being created after the return from Babylon. That is just another holding action in the retreat as there is no evidence of any captivity in Babylon. And with that fact the idea of an encounter with Zoroastrianism goes down the tubes. There was no more of an encounter with it than any other people had on the periphery of the Persian conquests. AND no other people picked up on the religion much less adopted it AND totally changed it. That is a nonsense belief without foundation in fact or in reason.

So whenever the OT was created it was after the mythical return. Again we look to the archaeology of the region. Museums in Israel have huge exhibits of Roman era artefacts. They have a trivial number of Greek era artefacts. They have almost nothing prior to the Greeks and what there is is mostly Egyptian. That there is almost nothing prior to the Greeks precludes creation of the OT prior to the Greeks.

And with creation of the OT I mean creation of the religion.

The early Roman records suggest they were dealing with a ruling theocracy in Judea. (The Roman conquest of the region is a story in itself.) So we have about 200 years for the OT be created and the religion invented. During those two centuries the common language was Aramaic and the ruling language was Greek.

Which of those two languages would the OT be created in? Or would it be created in a language for which there is no evidence ever existed as the common spoken language, hebrew?

The lack of mention of something in ancient literature is no indication of non-existence of something, especially something that we have exemplars for much earlier than the time of pseudo-Aristeus. See the third last paragraph of my first post.

The premise is founded on error. Look at this example.

If I give you a document written in English, you can tell it's English can't you? A Hebrew scholar can tell Hebrew when s/he reads it. A number of pre-Exilic inscriptions exist.

Sorry, I don't think this deals with issues that I need to redress.

This is the Hebrew alphabet:

ALEF BETH GIMEL DALET HE WAW ZAYIN TET CHET YOD KAF LAMED MEM NUN AYIN SAMEK PE TSADE QOF RESH SHIN TAW

It's significantly different from the Greek. It also only has 22 letters. The alphabetic acrostics work in Hebrew but not in Greek. Obviously Hebrew is the source.

More of the erroneous stuff about Hebrew being invented. This material is not rational argument. Such material is based on lack of knowledge and molded by ulterior motives.

I'm sorry, I mustn't have been clear. We are looking at purely linguistic evidence about etymological indications in the text. My discussion is and has been only about language, which is the obvious and clear pointer that the Giwer theory is utter rubbish. The Greek doesn't explain the names, but the Hebrew does. You can't give an etymology for adam in Greek other than by using Hebrew words.

Egyptian has nothing to do with translation between Hebrew and Greek.

You know very little. There is a wealth of archaeological data that you might find interesting.

Yahweh and Asherah. Astarte is another goddess. There are two sources of inscriptions with Yahweh and his Asherah. I mentioned them in the last paragraph of my first post. And they are in Hebrew.

You need to catch on on the archaeology. Your information isn't correct.

Here's t he first line of the 6th Lachish letter:

)L )DNY Y)W$ YR) YHWH )-

To lord Yaush, May Yahweh make...

Plainly Hebrew. Dates from 589BCE found in a nice archaeological context which provides the basics of the date. Check it out. And here's that first Lachish letter again.

Except that it is Hebrew by grammar and vocabulary. A language that you fancy doesn't exist

Because there aren't many inscriptions, you think that's equivalent to none.

Erroneous premises lead to erroneous conclusions. The Hebrew language obviously existed in the 9th century BCE with the inscriptions I mentioned previously. The various letters from Arad and Lachish feature Hebrew names, many of which have a Yah- theophoric. From Arad you can find Malkiyahu and Yirmiyahu for example. From Lachish there are Tobyahu and Shelemyahu. Religion, people and language all confirmed.

Please don't accuse me of not knowing the material I use. Henotheism, a term coined in the 19th century, isn't a hidden form of monotheism. It assumes a polytheistic context ( "You shall have no other god beside me" assumes other gods) and a culture which is tied to one deity, as Moab worshiped Moloch.

Please come back on the issue when you know what you are talking about. The evidence has been known for a long time and I am mustering it as an argument here. You are complaining about the number of examples, when you haven't even got an understanding of how much evidence I can muster. This is the case, even though no evidence whatsoever has been put forward for the silly theory that a Greek bible came before the Hebrew. I have to provide extremely simplistic examples so that you have a chance of understanding them.

I don't know what you are talking about, but if you want to communicate with people you need to cite your sources, give the reference to anything you talk about, so one might be able to see what you are saying.

I guess before the DSS were discovered you'd now be arguing that there was nothing before the ninth century.

I find this hard to believe as you have ignored most of the evidence I have provided you and given nothing in return. Where is your evidence for a Greek bible before a Hebrew one? Nothing. Not a skerrick. For someone who takes the evidentiary approach, you seem to have lost your way.

You are changing the subject. We are dealing with whether the bible was first written in Greek or in Hebrew. There is no evidence to support a bibloe written first in Greek, but there is a lot of evidence that it was written in Hebrew. The language existed before the exile. The religion existed before the exile. That means the people existed before the exile to have those names and speak that language. The Hebrew bible cannot be explained from the Greek, but the Greek can be explained from the Hebrew. Please go back and deal with all the evidence I've presented and if you like I'll present you with some more. But while you're at it, try to present something that argues for a biblical text first written in Greek. As I know the evidence available, I know you cannot.

Please don't call it the OT, ie the old testament. This is a christian appropriation of the Jewish literature made second class by a new testament. It is merely cultural theft that you support by calling it that. Try Tanakh, or the Hebrew bible (HB). You don't want to be maintaining christian hegemony.

It is clear that the production of the bible can be placed in Judea mainly between the exile and the Hasmonean period, though it contains some traditions from before the exile. The names of a few Israelite and Judean kings have been mentioned in Assyrian and Babylonian chronicles. Ahab was part of a confederation which fought against the Assyrians. The earliest carbon-14 dated text from Qumran goes back to the 3rd c. BCE, before the reputed time of the events in pseudo-Aristeas. Pseudo-Aristeas though does accept the notion that the Hebrew text came first.

If someone wants to seriously argue for a Greek bible written first, they have to provide evidence for it. So far nothing has been proffered, so I don't really have to provide any myself. I just have to say, "rubbish, demonstrate it or forget it!" But I've given you some to think about. I won't hold my breath waiting for evidence to the contrary.

spin

Making that agnostic an atheist. An agnostic does not exclude the possibility, the atheist discounts the probability.

They are not mutually exclusive terms.

And atheism is not a "belief" in the same sense as theism, despite how similar the expressions might sound in English. The atheist may indeed "choose" to believe that there is no god but it is a choice dictated by reason and rationality, and in truth it is a "choice" that reverts them to their original stance before educated to believe in the supernatural. Some people, fortunate never to have been fed fantasy as fact at a suggestible age, don't even have to make the choice. Common sense alone inures them against the particular fallacy that is religious faith. Describing atheism therefore as "just another belief" shows a huge disregard for truth, fact and intelligence.

Spin, do you realize how silly you sound?  Are you even aware of the common usage of the terms agnostic and atheist?  They are not mutually exclusive.  A cursory internet search and a look at wikipedia should provide you with enough material on both subjects to know that they are not mutually exclusive and that you're not abiding by the common usage of the words.

An atheist is only a person who does not believe in god, the strength of that position is variable.  If you do not hold an active belief in god, you are atheist.  Belief is binary.  Either there is belief or there is not.  If you do not believe in god(s) you are atheist.  It's very simple.  Agnosticism is a claim about knowledge, not about belief.  A person can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist.  A person could be a gnostic theist or a gnostic atheist.  Put another way atheism can be split into 'strong' and 'weak' atheism.

I, personally, don't care to make a knowledge claim about gods at all.  I contend, rather, that all god-concepts are inherently incoherent and thus gods cannot exist and therefor do not exist (with the exclusion of Einstein's god, which is rather a silly and confusing thing to call the universe).

You may want to look into articles on the terms atheism, agnosticism and the incoherency of god-concepts that people here have written.  You might also want to look elsewhere and without of a dictionary to educate yourself before you continue on an get told by everyone you come across that you're wrong.

Of course, if you don't take the opportunity to educate yourself and you continue to believe otherwise about the use and meaning of atheism and agnosticism you're going to find it difficult to continue on here.

Merriam Webster: one who believes that there is no deity

Dictionary.com: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

Your Dictionary: "a person who believes that there is no God"

Cambridge: "someone who believes that God or gods do not exist"

Wordsmyth: "one who believes that there is no God or gods."

UltraLingua: "One who denies the existence of any deity." (Insert the word on the page.)

Cambridge American": "someone who believes that God does not exist"

AllWords: "A person who does not believe that deity, deities exist; one who lacks belief in gods."

And so on. But you can ignore them. They're just books that define the word. You also get the looser definition:

American Heritage: "One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods."

Do try to project your belief systems on me. Obviously I won't wear them, but it's an understandable recourse for nothing more useful. Some atheists get so defensive about their beliefs.

spin

For someone who, just a few posts back, chastised patcleaver for a poor understanding of Greek and Latin, you seem to have neglected the log in your own eye.  The words "atheist" and "agnostic" literally define themselves.

a (without) theism (religious belief)

a (without) gnosis (knowledge)

I fail to see how these two terms are mutually exclusive.  I am an atheist, being a person without religious belief; I am also an agnostic, being a person without knowledge of God.  I am an agnostic atheist.

Edit for spelling.

You should know that etymology has no necessary direct connection with meaning. It is a blunder to rely on etymology that way. Meaning is determined by usage. The dictionary tries to keep in touch with that usage. You'll have a better hope of understanding words via a dictionary.

spin

Read Bertrand Russell.

I don't think so. He or she doesn't.

spin

The subject line was chosen because schmagnostic does not easily roll over the tongue. I presume we all know the importance of tongue rolling.

One wag said an agnostic is a an atheist in fear of eternal punishment for denial.

As always the burden of evidence is upon he who makes the positive assertion. In this case the burden of evidence is upon the theist. But it is a hopeless task.

No matter how much evidence is presented there is no way to discriminate between more than one and just one. That brings us back to the observation of a hint of superiority of the belief in only one instead of many.

The issue arises only in the 2.001 major religions. (Not 3. the 0.001 represents Judaism and over half of them are atheist/agnostic anyway.) These religions require a conversion ceremony. Others are just belief systems with no particular particular membership criteria beyond observing the rituals consequential to those beliefs. So we observe these are about the only religions and are also the ones which insist upon only one god. They are also the ones that fight over religion.

Stamp out monotheism!

Certainly not as easily done as said. When it comes to the presumed superiority of monotheism it is clearly contrary to the evidence. Monotheists have the strange idea that their religions are separate from the people who profess to believe in them. This is a leftover from Platonic idealism; the religion is perfect but its practitioners are not. It apparently makes them feel better to believe that sort of rubbish.

We can compare the polytheist Romans to Christians. They only took out after one religion, the Druids. The persecution of Christians is part of Christian mythology. Rome added the gods of the people they conquered to their pantheon either directly or by melding their gods with the Roman gods. Other than the Druids we have no examples of their fighting anyone for religious reasons.

But if the most interesting thing to discuss is the meanings of agnostic and atheist far be it from me to step on anyone's fun.

This is the Hebrew alphabet:

It's significantly different from the Greek. It also only has 22 letters. The alphabetic acrostics work in Hebrew but not in Greek. Obviously Hebrew is the source.

I have not claimed the Septuagint/OT was invented out of whole cloth. I have shown where it has borrowed from material and traditions available locally and, if needed, in the library at Alexandria. Thus there are other possibilities such as Aramaic and Phoenician.

In any event the bottom line is this is only one example from a very large quantity of material. I can point to the "may his light shine upon you" Psalm and equally say it shows the ENTIRE OT is of Egyptian origin because of this prayer to Ra. It is equally credible that the book of Job is between Amun and Ra yet that does not make all the material of Egyptian origin.

If I give you a document written in English, you can tell it's English can't you? A Hebrew scholar can tell Hebrew when s/he reads it. A number of pre-Exilic inscriptions exist.

As previously noted, almost nothing exists. "pre-Exilic" is a meaningless term as there is no evidence of any exile. And there is precious little which is declared "hebrew" and that is spread over centuries. So you are asking me if, using a handful of inscriptions totally maybe 1000 words spread over five centuries if I can tell if one more inscription is 16th c. Portuguese instead of 16th c. Spanish. Pardon if I do not see it as that simple.

This spread over centuries is why I raised the absence of official spelling and grammar. Without them there is no rigorous way to determine which language it is. And in this case, given the absence of any Judea/Judah or people or religion as in the OT it seems very strange to me people insist upon the existence of the language. It is as if someone where insisting upon identifying a language as Atlantean, the language of a mythical people living in a mythical land who existed only in Plato's imagination. But the language is real some insist. How strange.

And it leads to

More of the erroneous stuff about Hebrew being invented. This material is not rational argument. Such material is based on lack of knowledge and molded by ulterior motives.

There is no evidence of any Hebrews in archaeology. There is no Judah/Judea until Roman times. The people and religion did not exist when Herodotus visited and if they existed in the time of Alexander they were so insignificant and of such small numbers that no one mentioned them. Yet you would have it that a people too few to be mentioned and otherwise insignificant maintained a separate language. How is this possible?

I'm sorry, I mustn't have been clear. We are looking at purely linguistic evidence about etymological indications in the text. My discussion is and has been only about language, which is the obvious and clear pointer that the Giwer theory is utter rubbish. The Greek doesn't explain the names, but the Hebrew does. You can't give an etymology for adam in Greek other than by using Hebrew words.

As for linguistic evidence you have given exactly one psalm. Do you have anything which addresses a significant fraction of even the book of psalms? I can give you the Egyptian psalm against your hebrew pslam. So the Egyptian prayer was translated into this hebrew.

Can you address a significant fraction of the books of the OT? YHWH is clearly the Egyptian god Amun. Depending upon how one reads it there is also the god whose title is Lord of Hosts. There is the Hebrew first commandment, I, Adoni, am your god.

You know very little. There is a wealth of archaeological data that you might find interesting.

That is an odd statement as I do come at this from the scientific point of view, the archaeological approach. I have seen all that is presented as evidence in support of the OT and none of it does save by circular reasoning with reference to the OT.

But perhaps you could point out to me the evidence you find compelling and tell me why you find it so. You might take a look at http://www.giwersworld.org/ancient-history/index.phtml to see if you have anything better.

Yahweh and Asherah. Astarte is another goddess. There are two sources of inscriptions with Yahweh and his Asherah. I mentioned them in the last paragraph of my first post. And they are in Hebrew.

The following names are applied to local variations of a single goddess, Ishtar, Isis, Ashara, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus. These are the same not just by name similarity but because the fundamental myths about them are variations upon the same story. The same applies to the male gods.

The following names are applied to local variations of a single god, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Tammuz, Mithras and as we shall see, Jesus. Under the first five names legend attributes him great physical beauty and hunting skills. Jesus by tradition had perfect physical form and was a fisher of men.

You can look up the myths associated with those names and find local reimaginings of the same story associated with them. Reimagining is a Hollywood term that replaces remake when it comes to movies.

When it came to gods it was the story that mattered.

You need to catch on on the archaeology. Your information isn't correct.

Of course I invite you to point out what I have missed. Here is a modest collection of images of the votaries to Yahweh and Astarte. http://www.giwersworld.org/ancient-history/ashara-images/

Here's t he first line of the 6th Lachish letter:
)L )DNY Y)W$ YR) YHWH )-
To lord Yaush, May Yahweh make...
Plainly Hebrew. Dates from 589BCE found in a nice archaeological context which provides the basics of the date. Check it out. And here's that first Lachish letter again.

As the deities Yahweh and Ashara are found in the records of the gods found at Ugarit dated to the 13th c. BC, I presume you do not mean the mention of YHWH makes it Hebrew. As that is not the case, just what are you referring to?

Except that it is Hebrew by grammar and vocabulary. A language that you fancy doesn't exist

I have no problem with it existing per se. If it does it will be a language spoken by a mythical people from a mythical kingdom. It will be an interesting discovery.

Because there aren't many inscriptions, you think that's equivalent to none.

I think that a small selection of Spanish over five centuries would not be particularly helpful in separating it from Portuguese. But if it is found in Portugal it has to be Portuguese, right? So also if it is found where the OT says the Jews ruled then it must be Hebrew. But we are left with the problem there is no archaeological evidence for the bible good guys existing. So what do we do?

Erroneous premises lead to erroneous conclusions. The Hebrew language obviously existed in the 9th century BCE with the inscriptions I mentioned previously. The various letters from Arad and Lachish feature Hebrew names, many of which have a Yah- theophoric. From Arad you can find Malkiyahu and Yirmiyahu for example. From Lachish there are Tobyahu and Shelemyahu. Religion, people and language all confirmed.

Contains Hebrew names? That is circular reasoning. Similar names are found in the OT therefore they must be Hebrew names. It is of course impossible similar names were used by anyone else in the region.

More than that the names have meanings as words.

And if you make a case on bible names then there is no connection between the NT and OT as they do not have the same names.

You really do want to believe.

Please don't accuse me of not knowing the material I use. Henotheism, a term coined in the 19th century, isn't a hidden form of monotheism. It assumes a polytheistic context ( "You shall have no other god beside me" assumes other gods) and a culture which is tied to one deity, as Moab worshiped Moloch.

"You have no god older than me." "No other gods before me in time." Amun/Yahweh being the first god was only asserting that fact. That a single god is assumed and a translation created to support that assumption is clear. It is not a prohibition against having other gods. Later there are only condemnations of the gods of their enemies not of all other gods. The people were clearly polytheists.

Today only fundies think the big ten were created by the bible chronology. They are very primitive for their time even if by the bible chronology. Nearly a thousand years earlier is the code of Hamurabi which is almost modern.

Please come back on the issue when you know what you are talking about. The evidence has been known for a long time and I am mustering it as an argument here. You are complaining about the number of examples, when you haven't even got an understanding of how much evidence I can muster. This is the case, even though no evidence whatsoever has been put forward for the silly theory that a Greek bible came before the Hebrew. I have to provide extremely simplistic examples so that you have a chance of understanding them.

I do invite you to present all the evidence you have. As I have been at this for several decades I doubt you will bring up anything I have not seen, evaluated and dismissed. I look forward to you presenting something I have not seen.

As to the Greek coming first, I again point out there is no archaeological evidence of a people who might have created it before the Greeks took over the region. Shall it be,
A language without a people for a people without a language?

I guess before the DSS were discovered you'd now be arguing that there was nothing before the ninth century.

The DSS are significant for the first example of the use of the squared script that is used today for Hebrew. There is no indication of why this script was created. Prior to that the Phoenician alphabet was the only one in use. The later Mishna and Talmud are also in that script with the latter in Aramaic.

I find this hard to believe as you have ignored most of the evidence I have provided you and given nothing in return. Where is your evidence for a Greek bible before a Hebrew one? Nothing. Not a skerrick. For someone who takes the evidentiary approach, you seem to have lost your way.

Let me try again. You have an arguement from one psalm about a language for a people who did not exist.

As to the Greek being first, it is the first known in history with the claim of a Hebrew original coming later. As the "hebrew" version appears in history after the Greek and it appears in a time when forgery was so common the written word was considered inferior to the spoken word I see no reason to accept religious tradition.

Religious tradition is that there was a biblical Israel and Judah yet there is no sign of either as far as archaeologists are concerned. (Biblical archaeologists are a phenomenon unto themselves.) How does one get a language for a people who never existed to write about events that never occurred?

You are changing the subject. We are dealing with whether the bible was first written in Greek or in Hebrew. There is no evidence to support a bibloe written first in Greek, but there is a lot of evidence that it was written in Hebrew. The language existed before the exile. The religion existed before the exile. That means the people existed before the exile to have those names and speak that language. The Hebrew bible cannot be explained from the Greek, but the Greek can be explained from the Hebrew. Please go back and deal with all the evidence I've presented and if you like I'll present you with some more. But while you're at it, try to present something that argues for a biblical text first written in Greek. As I know the evidence available, I know you cannot.

Those statements are the problem. It is woven around events that never occurred (exile) to people who never existed. Certainly there is evidence the land was inhabited but nothing showing they were the good guys of the bible. It is not possible to deal with arguments which depend upon mythical events and people.

Please don't call it the OT, ie the old testament. This is a christian appropriation of the Jewish literature made second class by a new testament. It is merely cultural theft that you support by calling it that. Try Tanakh, or the Hebrew bible (HB). You don't want to be maintaining christian hegemony.

It has to be called something. OT is as good as anything else. It surrounds something that doesn't really pass as a religion these days. It imposes a ritual/taboo life style where all the rewards and punishments are in this world and without an afterlife. The fact that it is nothing but a set of rituals and taboos is perhaps the only thing which argues for its antiquity. Problem is even if it did start around 1200 BC it was primitive at that time in comparison to the other religions of the near east. It is difficult to see how such a primitive religion could have survived for so long while sitting on the crossroads of commerce since 3000 BC.

It is clear that the production of the bible can be placed in Judea mainly between the exile and the Hasmonean period,

Again, the exile is a myth.

though it contains some traditions from before the exile. The names of a few Israelite and Judean kings have been mentioned in Assyrian and Babylonian chronicles. Ahab was part of a confederation which fought against the Assyrians. The earliest carbon-14 dated text from Qumran goes back to the 3rd c. BCE, before the reputed time of the events in pseudo-Aristeas. Pseudo-Aristeas though does accept the notion that the Hebrew text came first.

Actually only some vaguely similar names have been found BUT there is no reason to suggest the creators of the OT did not know of those records and incorporate the stories into their OT. Just because they were discovered in modern times is no reason to assume they were unknown 2000 years ago.

If I remember correctly the Ahab story is the one where Ahab all those iron chariots. Of course chariots are not made of iron. So it can be taken either allegorically or as the authors had no idea how a chariot was made. I tend to the latter as it is simplest.

If someone wants to seriously argue for a Greek bible written first, they have to provide evidence for it. So far nothing has been proffered, so I don't really have to provide any myself. I just have to say, "rubbish, demonstrate it or forget it!" But I've given you some to think about. I won't hold my breath waiting for evidence to the contrary.

One may forget it but one has to explain how a people who did not exist could have created records of events which never occurred to people who never lived.

As for bibleland not being mentioned by other people, one has to explain how the strangest people in all the world, people with only one god, could go without mention.

That's where the story is.

Several defenders of the faith felt the necessity to do battle for the honour of their lady and you tell me to relax. But I think we've said enough....

spin

spin,

Thanks for your insight in this thread.  While I do not always agree with what you have said (you said, for example, Asherah and Athirat were not the same deities because they existed at different times, but Mark S. Smith and Bill Dever would probably disagree with you; and they are pretty considervative in their perspectives compared to others I could mention), you have no said anything thus far that I disagree with.  I was initially not happy with this thread (not that my opinions matter much in the context of it all); I am not a philologist but I am pretty certain (as one can be) that Judah did exist by the seventh century BCE.  Lester Grabbe's very useful book "Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know it" should be something everyone should consider picking up as it is a great overview of the data available on "Ancient Israel" (to put it as Davies does).  I do think that some arguments put forth by Niels Peter Lemche and Emanuel Pfoh in their publications in the next few months should be considered once they are published, and perhaps (particularly in the case with Pfoh) some opinions might need to be adjusted where the data concerns the state of existence of Judah at the period in question and before.  But overall I find your arguments quite astute overall. 

A_nony_mous,

These are my opinions, so please take them for what they are.  While I respect you as a poster and enjoy your comments as well, you should reread this discussion and carefully examine the evidence spin provided for his case.  i would very much enjoy it if you could provide evidence in a similar vein for your suggestions.  While linking to articles online may be fine in a nonacademic setting (which this forum really is), your discussion on this subject should hold to a more academic one, as spin has set the bar to that level.  Perhaps a simple perusing through a book on the evidence would benefit you more than using a nonacademic website.  This is just a suggestion. 

I will now bow out.

To: Rook_Hawkins

I have been at this for decades trying to make sense of how the OT could have been created by a people who contributed absolutely nothing to civilization and left no traces such as we find for other cultures. Most of that time was spent inventing ways this could possibly have happened. Every approach I came up with and all of those of others which I examined failed to explain its existence.

I spent a lot of time in taking away the parts that do not pass the giggle test as do most believers and that failed to explain the OT. If you have a favorite explanation I can show you how it fails if you are willing to express it.

It was six or seven years ago now that I realized the problem was in piecemeal taking away and took the scientific, bottoms up approach. That way the OT does not become evidence of a modestly impressive culture. In a moment of insight it was clear that was circular reasoning.

Rather I ignored the OT and looked for the culture first. It simply was not there. You will note I have just asked Spin to tell me about the physical evidence he has evaluated which leads him to believe such a culture did exist. I have looked and have found none. I do not think it is an extreme requirement to at least have some other culture mention it by name. Maybe there is something I have missed.

However I doubt it. We have found several versions of the epic of Gilgamesh. Every place it has been found it is a trivially small amount of the total written material recovered or which clearly existed where found. Given the size of the OT there should be millions of words worth of written material found in this kingdom of Judah.

This kingdom would have been wealthy. It would built monumental structures. It would have had armies.

But all I find are a very few things found in bibleland from that time and a bible story told about what is found. That is not acceptable evidence. Finding an inscription with similar names is worthless as evidence as whoever created the OT could have read the same inscription. If we were to accept them then we would have to accept all historical fiction as true. Neither King Ahab nor Horatio Hornblower are necessarily real people because they are associated with real events. It is required to find evidence of the people and things in the story themselves not simply a congruence of stories.

Why is it believers and pretend non-believers have retreated to the mythical return from the mythical captivity in Babylon to salvage a belief in the bible folk?

They want the religion created after this mythical return. The entire substance of this religion occurs in the certifiable myths of Abraham, Moses and Exodus, and marginally in David and Solomon. Those people never lived. Those events never occurred. The religion invented the people and the events as part of inventing the religion.

Without the religion there was no "people" any more than there were Mormons before the Book of Mormon.

You'd say in the future that there was no America because Johnny Appleseed, John Henry, Paul Bunyan and Tom Sawyer didn't exist, despite there being evidence that it did. The wild west was a myth, so America didn't exist. The American religion based on the worship of money, democracy and freedom is obviously fraudulent so America didn't exist.

spin

Thanks for your comments, Rook. Just for clarify, I don't remember saying that Asherah and Ashtoreth existed at different times, but that wouldn't be too helpful a datum. Athirat¹ and Athtart² existed at the same time. This is evident in the narrative texts from Ugarit. And see Smith, The Early History of God, p.129. I'm not a great fan of Dever in his general views and it's strange that you mention him when you seem to read his usual literary targets, Davies et al.

spin

¹ Athirat, the Ugaritic form of Asherah, was consort of El and mother of the gods. (The "th" indicated in the name is a Ugaritic phonetic variation.)

² Athtart, Ugaritic for Ashtoroth or Astarte, was wife of Baal.

It appears that you have looked past what I have written.

There are no Hebrews in archaeology. They are part and parcel of the pack of lies which is where they were invented as part of a religion.

I have a problem with "predating" a language by naming it after a later creation.

Further we know this pack of lies refers only to the Yahweh cult and that there was an Astarte cult which had a temple in Jerusalem until the 2nd c. AD when Rome rebuilt it.

So not only is it predating writing with a name invented centuries later it is picking a name from one of at least two cults that were popular in bibleland in Roman times and possibly earlier.

We are reasonably confident that this cult did not exist in the time of Herodotus. We are even more confident this cult did not exist in the time of Alexander as he did not conquer it nor is it listed in either of the inventories of his conquests.

Calling this language Hebrew falsely implies there were people who identified themselves as members of a group and that they were the ancestors of the people who created the mythical people called Hebrews.

So I am not passing over your assertions at all. Lets look at what you have said.

I haven't used the Hebrew bible for the existence of the Jews in 600BCE: I have pointed to inscriptions at Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom which are in Hebrew and talk of Yahweh and Asherah, so we do have language and cultus.

We have gods which were common in the region. They are even have the same stories associated with them as Isis and Osiris and Egypt ruled the land from about 1600 to 900 BC. It is quite difficult to have "Jews" at any time when the name derives from simply meaning the people who lived in Judea. And we have no evidence of any place called anything like Judea until Roman times. We have Alexander to show it was not worth conquering and Herodotus to show the people called themselves Palestinians.

I have pointed to the letters from Arad and Lachish also in Hebrew, which feature Yahwistic names in the area associated with Judah during a time of conflict with Assyria. This epigraphy is physical evidence.

The images of the letters I have seen show a Phoenician alphabet. "Yahwistic" means nothing to me other than common names in the region. It is no different from finding names relating to Amun in Egypt. Yahweh has the same characteristics as Amun. Prayers in the region and even today in Christianity are ended with his name but spelled with an E as in Amen.

The issue is not that it is physical evidence. The issue is what is it physical evidence of? The people who created the pack of lies used old names. The same trick is used today when people write historical fiction. Using old names gives verisimilitude to historical fiction.

To me the question comes down to the choice between the OT fiction written in the 6th c. BC or in the 2nd c. BC. It is fiction, a pack of lies, in any case.

This epigraphy is physical evidence. Assyrian inscriptions show that there was Assyrian campaigning in the area at the time and mention Judah. The ruins from the destruction of Jerusalem is physical evidence which when read with the Babylonian chronicle dealing with the destruction of "the city of Judah".

That is an example of the problem. Your quote "the city of Judah" implies the THEE itself city, Jerusalem. There are no proper articles in the language so "a city" is an equally valid translation. There is also no way to get Judah out of the record without reference to the pack of lies. The so-called destruction of Jerusalem is a bible story around the evidence of a fire. And all of this in place of direct evidence from bibleland itself of the existence of bibleland.

It is interesting people do not find it odd that they have to go hundreds of miles from bibleland to find evidence of it but not finding evidence of it in a land which had such prolific writers that it created and preserved the OT. One local building inscription to the effect of "built by king XXX to the glory of Yahweh" would settle all the questions. Finding synagogues would not hurt.

What I haven't seen is anything which requires a rethink regarding the existence of Judah and its people.

And I have seen no evidence of their existence which could stand if there were not OT for people to use. I do see material that does not rise above the level of historical fiction but I see no evidence of any "people." The OT is nothing more than a religion. There are no "people" involved in it.

As you seem to have no evidence against that which is already available, you need to come to terms with Judah's existence and stop the specious arguments based on errors to support an equally specious claim that the Hebrew bible was written in Greek.

In this response I have repeated what I have said in other posts in showing why these things do not constitute physical evidence of the actual existence of a kingdom of Judah in the 6th c. BC. If you are satisfied with what you have presented fine with me. I do not find it sufficient for the reasons I have given.

All the substantive parts of the OT which deal with the religion are clearly a pack of lies. Believers would have the lying stop at some point in time and switch to recounting facts. But when Greeks come to the region there is no sign of these people and in fact Palestinians are there. These Greeks leave no records of any Judah or Judea not even of the Maccabe revolt if it really occurred.

You've been chanting this mantra from before I came to the thread. You are working from your lack of knowledge of the evidence, evidence which I have pointed you to.

If you don't want to call the language of the bible as manifested in the Arad and Lachish letters or the Mead Hashavyahu ostracon or the Ketef Hinnom benediction or the Khirbet el-Qom and Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions something other than Hebrew, go ahead. Playing with names won't change the fact that we have a culture that spoke the biblical language, used biblical names and lived in the bible land. To me that is evidence that you cannot deal with, so you ignore it.

More of the same mantra. Stuff that has no justification to be repeated as it totally lacks evidence.

You've made it clear you're in a state of denial, not even willing to listen to the Assyrian and Babylonian records which talk about Judah.

Until you acknowledge the data, to me you are no different from all the religionists you are rebelling against. We work from evidence, not dogma. Deal with the evidence and stop shutting your eyes: it won't go away.

Regarding Yahweh this is simple conjecture.

And you think that changes the fact that there was a Judah on 600BCE? Sorry, you're off beam. Besides, the Turks had control of Greece for centuries, so you would deny that there were any Greeks at that time and worse, using your logic there were no Greeks after that time. Hegemony over an area doesn't tell you about the inhabitants.

You're arguing as if you are fighting the bible. Try to concentrate on the archaeological and epigraphic evidence for a Judah in 600 BCE.

Rubbish. You were told about the Assyrian and Babylonian data namimg Judah and even supporting some of the biblical material about the period from Hezekiah onwards.

This has little to no relation to the evidence for Hebrew spoken in the late 8th c BCE by people with Yahwistic names. Your reveries about Amun and Yahweh don't change Hebrew speakers who believed in Yahweh in Judah.

More mantra. The ostrich with its head in the sand put it there of his own accord.

Unfortunately, no, the logic is not correct. ^URU Ia-a-hu-du is quite specifically the city known to the writers as "city Judah". It is not "a city of Judah". The Babylonian chronicle also talks about the capture of the king and the appointment of a new pro-Babylonian king. We later find in Babylonian texts provisions for the sons of the king of Judah, who is known as Ia-ku-u-ki-nu, Yehoakin, of Ia-ku-du, Yehudah.

I'm sorry, I thought the Babylonian record is relatively self-evidence. What's wrong with it?

So, it doesn't matter if the Assyrians and Babylonians talked about Judah, because they don't know what they were talking about, but you do.

If you won't look at the evidence which is not the Hebrew bible, then I can't help you. You've had inscriptions and letters from Judah written in Hebrew by people with Yahwistic names. You've had Assyrian and Babylonian records which deal with tribute from Judah and operations against Judah. I can add the letters from the late 5th c. BCE from Elephantine from a Jewish colony, "the Jewish garrison which gave money to the god Yaho". One letter by Yedoniah is written to the Persian governor of Judah and talks of "the high priest Johanan and his colleagues the priests in Jerusalem". There is evidence from Assyrian times, Babylonian and Persian for Jews in Judah. BUt you will continue to deny everything as a "pack of lies". You have no evidence to refute this material. You simply go into denial. Great response.

Yet you have no reason to doubt the evidence.

This seems to be your catechism.

You obviously haven't read of the archive of Zenon, an agent for a high official under the Ptolemies who traveled through Judah.

I see no effort by you to look into the available evidence for the things you claim to have been dealing with for decades. You don't know any of the primary sources and you have a fixation with the bible which shields you from real data. You have not made a case for your initial claim that the Hebrew bible was first written in Greece. You have no evidence for it. When asked to give evidence for your theory, you instead talk about how the Jews didn't exist before the 2nd c. BCE and call all evidence a "pack of lies". There is no way to deal with someone who will not even look at the evidence available for the opnions s/he holds. They don't want evidence and couldn't handle it when given it.

I don't think readers will have difficulty seeing that you haven't made a case for your Greek first Jewish literature. It merely seems like veiled racism, wanting to negate the existence of the Jews in history before the 2nd c BCE despite the plain evidence for their existence.

I'm sorry, as you have nothing to say other than your mantra, you have failed to do your job.

spin

(For simplicity, I have used "The Ancient Near East", James B. Pritchard, Princeton U.P. 1958, for most of the texts referred to in this response. For the Arad and Lachish letters I've used "Ancient Aramaic and Hebrew Letters", James M. Lindenberger, SBL 1994. For Kuntillet Ajrud, I'm working from memory of articles written by Judith Hadley, who also mentions Khirbet el-Qom -- as there is no Wiki entry for K.A., I'll try to supply one at some stage. Comments on the Zenon archive are based on the Cambridge History of Judaism, W.D. Davies et al.)