September 05, 2007 04:26PM
|
Registered: 19 years ago
Posts: 784
|
Thadd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As far as extra-biblical evidence goes (iirc) the
> second one you mention actually disagrees with the
> biblical text [...].
I have no qualms with that. That's essentially the point I was making in my previous post. The fact remains, though, that a period of 350 years exists between the first extra-biblical mention of an entity named 'Israel' on an Egyptian monument and the second attested extra-biblical mention of 'Israel' (or more correctly, the forces of 'Ahab the Israelite') on an Assyrian monument.
> which would be contrary to the
> ability of the Israelites to field such a large
> army. 1 Kings 20:15 and 20:23-25 [...].
Perhaps related to the fact that it's long been recognised that there are significant problems with large chunks of the material in I-II Kings as they relate to the Omride dynasty? The stories of the three battles between Ahab and Ben-hadad form part of a corpus of prophetic narratives about the prophets Elijah and Elisha. It's been suggested that the named protagonists were probably anonymous originally, and only had names attributed to them as they were collected together and inserted into the biblical corpus at a later date.
In his 1999 aticle, "The Contribution of Royal Inscriptions for a Re-Evaluation of the Book of Kings as a Historical Source", Nadav Na'aman has analysed ancient Near Eastern royal inscriptions alongside the biblical account in the Books of Kings, and has concluded that the evidence indicates that the biblical author(s)/compiler(s) had better sources for the history of Judah in the 10th-9th centuries BCE than for the history of its northern neighbour, Israel:
"[...] Like other historians of the old world, the author of Kings composed his work on the basis of the available sources, and the differences in detail and precision between the histories of the two kingdoms reflects the difference of available sources.
"[..] The author of Kings made an ample use of prophetic stories for writing a continuous history of the kingdom of Israel in the ninth century BCE. He integrated them in his composition and wrote some of his own texts on their basis. By the integration of prophetic stories he tried to overcome the shortage of sources available for him for the history of the Northern Kingdom. A comparison of these stories with royal inscriptions reveals their possible contribution to the historical reconstruction, on the one hand, and their grave limitations, on the other" (p. 13).
> Additionaly, the battle itself goes unmentioned
> in the biblical text.
A classic case of Judean bias in the surviving biblical texts towards the Omride dynasty of the kingdom of Israel, and not particularly surprising given that Assyria itself isn't mentioned in the biblical account of either Ahab or his son, Joram.
The biblical compilers had no particular interest in celebrating the deeds of the Omrides. None of their achievements are recorded, apart from a brief mention of the fact that Omri built a new capital (Samaria) for the kingdom of Israel, and I Kings 22:39 which states, "Now the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the ivory house which he built, and all the cities that he built, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?".
That aside, the battle of Qarqar itself might go unmentioned in the biblical text, but the biblical text does portray the kingdoms of Judah and Israel as being united by a treaty of marriage at more or less the same time, which has led some scholars to suggest that Ahab the Israelite might have led a coalition force at Qarqar consisting of troops from both Israel and Judah, and possibly Moab and Edom as well (none of which are mentioned in the Assyrian record of the battle, but all of which were under the influence of Israel at the time).
Damian
Subject |
Author |
Posted |
|
jhemmestad |
August 29, 2007 03:55PM |
|
Byrd |
August 29, 2007 05:22PM |
|
Doug Weller |
August 29, 2007 11:33PM |
|
Ritva Kurittu |
August 30, 2007 03:23AM |
|
Mihos |
September 26, 2007 07:46PM |
|
Thadd |
October 01, 2007 10:48AM |
|
Hermione |
August 30, 2007 05:08AM |
|
Doug Weller |
August 30, 2007 01:52PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
August 30, 2007 07:18PM |
|
Doug Weller |
August 31, 2007 12:39AM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
August 31, 2007 12:28PM |
|
Thadd |
September 03, 2007 10:27PM |
|
Thadd |
September 03, 2007 10:25PM |
|
Pacal |
August 31, 2007 08:27AM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
August 31, 2007 12:32PM |
|
Byrd |
August 31, 2007 02:35PM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 01, 2007 01:49PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 02, 2007 10:19AM |
|
Rick Baudé |
September 02, 2007 11:38AM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 02, 2007 04:58PM |
|
Thadd |
September 03, 2007 10:34PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 04, 2007 09:42AM |
|
Thadd |
September 04, 2007 09:56AM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 04, 2007 03:44PM |
|
Thadd |
September 04, 2007 08:35PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 05, 2007 09:41AM |
|
Thadd |
September 05, 2007 01:15PM |
|
jhemmestad |
September 06, 2007 09:05AM |
|
Jammer |
September 06, 2007 11:00AM |
|
Hermione |
September 06, 2007 11:13AM |
|
Jammer |
September 06, 2007 11:19AM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 06, 2007 02:16PM |
|
jhemmestad |
September 06, 2007 04:37PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 07, 2007 11:44AM |
|
Thadd |
September 08, 2007 06:26PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 13, 2007 03:00PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 14, 2007 06:17PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 01, 2007 12:47PM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 01, 2007 03:00PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 01, 2007 03:44PM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 02, 2007 01:38AM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 02, 2007 12:10PM |
|
Hermione |
September 02, 2007 12:32PM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 02, 2007 02:11PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 03, 2007 04:07AM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 03, 2007 01:03PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 04, 2007 11:12AM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 04, 2007 03:31PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 05, 2007 09:14AM |
|
Pacal |
September 06, 2007 01:27PM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 06, 2007 02:19PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 06, 2007 04:37PM |
|
Thadd |
September 08, 2007 06:30PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 02, 2007 12:42PM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 02, 2007 02:21PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 02, 2007 05:06PM |
|
Thadd |
September 03, 2007 10:39PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 04, 2007 09:46AM |
|
Thadd |
September 04, 2007 09:53AM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 04, 2007 11:36AM |
|
Thadd |
September 04, 2007 08:37PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 05, 2007 09:03AM |
|
Thadd |
September 05, 2007 01:19PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 05, 2007 04:26PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 05, 2007 09:44AM |
|
Thadd |
September 05, 2007 01:23PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 05, 2007 02:25PM |
|
Thadd |
September 05, 2007 05:27PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 06, 2007 09:57AM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 06, 2007 02:19PM |
|
Thadd |
September 08, 2007 06:39PM |
|
Pacal |
September 06, 2007 01:41PM |
|
jhemmestad |
September 07, 2007 09:10AM |
|
Hermione |
September 07, 2007 09:18AM |
|
Thadd |
September 08, 2007 06:42PM |
|
Pacal |
September 12, 2007 09:52AM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 14, 2007 06:23PM |
|
Thadd |
September 17, 2007 07:42PM |
|
Thadd |
September 08, 2007 06:54PM |
|
Pacal |
September 12, 2007 10:33AM |
|
jhemmestad |
September 12, 2007 11:02AM |
|
Hermione |
September 12, 2007 11:16AM |
|
Thadd |
September 17, 2007 07:52PM |
|
Roxana Cooper |
September 02, 2007 10:29AM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 02, 2007 03:23PM |
|
Doug Weller |
September 02, 2007 03:43PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 07, 2007 11:47AM |
|
Thadd |
September 03, 2007 10:24PM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 07, 2007 11:54AM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 07, 2007 11:42AM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 07, 2007 02:46PM |
|
jhemmestad |
September 08, 2007 05:11PM |
|
Doug M |
September 09, 2007 06:08AM |
|
Thadd |
September 09, 2007 08:23AM |
|
Doug M |
September 09, 2007 08:11PM |
|
Pete Clarke |
September 13, 2007 06:54AM |
|
Damian Walter |
September 13, 2007 03:02PM |
|
Mihos |
September 26, 2007 08:45PM |