On the Kurkh stele, Shalmaneser III claimed to have defeated King Ahab and Israelite chariots allied with the Syrian King Arad and his chariots and CAVALRY at the battle of Qarqar in 853 BCE. Chariots were becoming obsolete (also see 1 Kings 20), though Israel was notoriously militarily backwards, and hadnt developed cavalry as yet. The oldest excavated chariot is from West Siberia, dated to c. 2000 BCE. According to Baron Renfrew, chariots didnt change the world, but cavalry did, from about 1000 BCE, a bit earlier among the Scythians. Chariots were already obsolete in the Ancient Near East when the horse loving Philip of Macedons son Alexander conquered half the Indo-European world. It was only in barbarous places like Britain that chariots remained into the Christian era. The Bible tells the story of chariots of Pharaoh in Genesis and Exodus up to Solomons day. Ezekiel was hip to cavalry, however. Troikas impress me and Russians, fast horse-drawn vehicles, still used in races. I love royal carriages at royal weddings too. But in battle, horses and WWI tanks would just look like silly big target practice these days. Were I wanting to suggest to a woman I was courting or married to that I thought she was hot, Id not draw imagery from dowdy old-fashioned obsolete things, unless their classiness outweighed that. Indra had his name recorded in a Hittite treaty with the Mitanni. Well before Solomon, the inhabitants of Lebanon had contact with Indo-European speakers, at least as a social elite. Prior even to the advent of cavalry, Damascus had been on a major trade route east-west known as the Silk Road, perhaps for thousands of years. It is even argued by some that Proto-Indo-European contains Proto-Semitic loanwords. The upshot of this meandering is that a love poem ignorant of cavalry would be possible outside the royal court of Judah late into the 9th century BCE just maybe, but even the common footsoldiers of Israel, their wives, children and grandchildren would have heard about cavalry, probably ad nauseum old soldiers being what they are. Im inclined to think, then, that either the Song of Songs is very early 9th century, or late 10th century. And thats a problem, because it would make it kind of what it seems to claim it is. There is another option, and that is that it was so obviously dated in its cultural milieu that it was first issued as an openly historical romance. Theres a problem with that too, because then it would be strikingly accurate and reliable about the era it had never known, but accurately guessed. The second option, a later than Solomonic date seems almost miraculous, so Im more inclined to prefer the first option. Really a lot depends on dialect. Hebrew didnt change gradually into Aramaic, like the book of Daniel, it seems that just like second generation Australians speak English despite their parents trying to encourage memory of other languages, the elite of the Hebrews lost transmission of their language to their descendants, religious scholars aside. Languages can and do change slowly, though whole peoples can adopt new languages in the second generation after migration. Australia is not the only example, modern Israel is another. Siberian technology was way ahead of ancient Israel when it comes to horses, and Britain was even further behind Israel. Syria, Aram, Damascus were on the main global highway of their day. At the time cavalry arrived, documented by accident in the Bible, the Aramaic speaking people had already displaced Indo-European Indra worshippers. I think Im leaning in a different way to many late 20th century biblical scholars here, but then again, archaeology in Russia and China has only been delivering some of the background here, that fleshes out a fuller context, not to mention the genetic data, including the DNA of 8th millennium millet in Europe and China. Even the 1st decade of the 21st century is leading us to be less assertive about what is not possible in dispersal of language and material culture. Please feel free to comment, though I wont see it for about a month, cause I can only get into facebook when Im away from my own computer (this one has a spell checker, woohoo!).
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 09:09:24 +0000
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