Since the Hittites immediate neighbors were Canaan and the kingdom of Mitanni, both of whom, as we have seen, were administrated by Indo-Aryans, it explains why the Hittites were able to own land in Canaan. The Bible does not make it clear whether or not Abraham journeyed to Egypt, but there is archaeological evidence supportive of such a contention; the Bible does categorically state, however, that his trek took him to Gerar, which is located in southwestern Canaan, in the region known as the Negev. Mention of the Negev has an immense bearing on our narrative, for it is in this region of Canaan that the genesis of the future Israelite nation occurred, according to the authors hypothesis. Not surprisingly, this hypothesis is at variance with those of many biblical scholars, who believe that the earliest Israelite domain was in the hill country of upper Galilee. In order to provide the reader with a balanced perspective, of suggested Israelite origins, it behooves us to briefly examine some of these hypotheses. It is the consensus of contemporary biblical scholars that the Exodus, if it ever occurred at all, and the resultant bloody conquest of Canaanite cities, is an unacceptable historical construct for the dawning of the Israelite nation, since there are too many archaeological and chronological discrepancies: the destruction of individual Canaanite cities spanned too great a lime period to have been the result of Joshuas purported genocidal military campaign. An alternate model was proposed during the 1920s by the German scholars Alt and Noth, who deduced from the previously-mentioned Tel el Amarna texts that the proto-Israelites were the people known as the Apiru, whom they theorized were hostile nomadic pastoralists who eventually destroyed the Canaanite city-states. They suggested that the appellation Hebrew was, in fact, derived from Apiru. The major problem with this theory is that the Apiru were primarily troublesome renegades from affluent Canaanite and Syrian families, who hired themselves out as mercenaries; they were never pastoralists. The term Apiru is not linguistically associated with the term Ibri (Hebrew).(12)
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 05:23:28 +0000
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