I may have paraphrased a bit.
Yes. I also recognize the value of the ignore list.
Well, for those who are not so blinded by their antagonism to the very notion of religious belief that they are willing to ignore much of human history, probably nothing.
On the other hand, there is a well known story that a group of people migrated out of Egypt to the Levant. The story names historical locations in Egypt, the Sinai, and the Levant and many of its principal characters have Egyptian names that continued in use among non-Egyptian people in the Levant. For those with a genuine curiosity regarding human history, discovering the origins of the story, the degree to which the story indicates some historical event, and fitting that story into the record of the (re)settlement of the Levant can be fascinating. Dismissing the study of the origins of the story amounts to threadshitting, since your claim does nothing to bring knowledge to the discussion. Your complaint does not even provide a reason to challenge the hypothesis, only a word game dismissal of the study.
Although I’m just an interested layman rather than any sort of specialist, I agree with this; I also find the mysteries of human prehistory and very early history fascinating. The copper age in Western Europe is another fascinating topic I’ve tried to learn about. My interest is unrelated to religion, except that the the importance of the Jewish religion makes the Hebrew origin more “important”, hence interesting. Changes in religious practices are often a key signal in prehistory and ancient history.
In addition to names like “Moses”, connections between the Hebrews and Egypt are indicated by the temple on Elephantine Island, and the presence of Beta Israel and the Qemant people in Ethiopia. A likely date for the Exodus is so close to the monotheism of Amenhotep IV that one wonders if there is a connection. (And isn’t there some Egyptian document about Aten followers fleeing Egypt after Amenhotep IV’s death?)
Precisely.
Sage Rat:
I wasn’t trying to make a point based on any notion that the veracity of the Bible was to be assumed. I was simply making the point to your prior post (the one I was responding to) which implied that the fact that Israelites were still practicing idolatry centuries after the supposed miracles in Egypt, Sinai, etc was a proof against the Bible’s monotheistic message, when, as a matter of fact, the Bible itself never implies that Israelite idolatry came to an abrupt halt as a result of the reported miracles, and never mind centuries later, even less than two months later the Israelites backslid into idolatry. Clearly the Bible considers idolatry to hold a strong fascination on the human mind (back then, at the very least) and is clear that no matter how awesomely and how recently the Israelites had experienced divine manifestations, they were still susceptible to idolatry’s lure.
Jayhawker Soule:
Took a while for me to find the article. Never let it be said that I am not willing to read up on other points of view.
It’s an interesting theory, but ultimately, it seems (to me) to suffer from the same problem that your OP’s theory about the Levites does. It assumes a priori that the Bible is not literally true, therefore, it then attempts some reconstruction of what the writer (or his antecedents) consider to be plausible, then attempts to re-configure the words of the Bible - which they have already dismissed as fiction or as exaggeration - into something resembling their theory.
What’s more, the one verse (in Judges, chapter 6 - the article cites it as verse 10, but it’s really verse 15) that he cites as implying that “elefs” are of different sizes - according to the Mendenhall article, Gideon says his “elef” is the “smallest” in his tribe - is mistranslated. The word he translates as “smallest” is “dal”, which really means “poorest.” So in reality, there’s no in-text support for the idea that “elef” is a unit of indeterminate size.
Thanks for the response.
I’m not sure what you mean by saying “there’s no in-text support for the idea that “elef” is a unit of indeterminate size.” Both Mendenhall and Plaut are scholars of considerable worth but, as for “in-text support,” the one that readily comes to mind is the JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers and Jacob Milgrom. The JPS renders Numbers 1:16 as
[ul]
[li]אֵלֶּה קריאי (קְרוּאֵי) הָעֵדָה, נְשִׂיאֵי מַטּוֹת אֲבוֹתָם: רָאשֵׁי אַלְפֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, הֵם[/li][li]Those are the elected of the assembly, the chieftains of their ancestral tribes: they are the heads of the contingents of Israel.[/ul] Milgrom writes:[/li]
Let me add that the JPS Translation is widely respected for its scholarship.
Other translations can be seen here, and the Fully Revised Fourth Edition of the New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV) renders the word as “divisions of.”
I hope that addresses your question.
====================================
*Note that the word 'alfei is the plural possessive form of 'elef, i.e., “contingents of.”
On a complete side note, it is awesome to see Rabbi Plaut mentioned - I knew him (well, I met him - I was a kid :D) many years ago, when my mom went to Holy Blossom in Toronto, and I went to religious school there. He often gave talks to the kids.
A great man and a great teacher, from what little I remember. Sadly, he passed in 2012, aged 99.
With regards to Civil Rights, I once heard him compared to Abraham Joshua Heschel. That’s pretty significant praise.
So you’re using a translation to support what the translation should be? This translation is probably based in Mendenhall, whose article I read in the original, from your JSTOR link. Mendenhall’s basis for translating “elef” as anything other than “thousand” are a) a priori dismissal of the possibility that the Biblical numbers, given their commonly known translation, are true, b) comparison based on troop strengths of other ancient national armies, and c) a mis-translated word in Judges 6:15, which I addressed above. Since “elef” is, in most Biblical contexts, clearly meaning “thousand”, as can be attested from the mathematics within the text itself (and which you yourself agreed is the case), the burden of proof is on those who posit an alternative meaning, and I find that proof badly lacking. There is no reason the verse you quoted couldn’t mean “heads of the thousands of Israel.”
Seems to me people have names for numbers they find useful. A lot of subsistence type tribes don’t have names for numbers beyond say, ten. More than that is “many”. Eminently practical.
If the ancient Hebrews (for lack of a better word) were nomadic sheepherders, however, they could have use for numbers like forty as distinct words. A shepherd has a very practical use for such numbers, he needs to know what he must provide for in terms of grazing and water. Saying one has “many” sheep doesn’t address the issue very well.
But how many individual shepherds have a thousand sheep, and have a practical use for that word, “thousand”? And if there had been a distinct word for “thousand”, if there is no precise practical use for the word by the speakers…then it would soon become synonymous with “many” - being a large number without a practical definition.
“Sam, about this wedding, your son, my daughter…I have four hundred and fifty sheep, how many do you have?”
“Well, Josiah, I have five hundred and seventy, so merging our herds, we would have…many!”
Just a thought. No scholarly infrastructure is implied. Needless to say, any other practical application could work as well as sheep, but who counts fish to get to sleep?
Perhaps, but a fair amount of recent scholarship has rejected that in favor of other terms. My assumption (and, granted, it is only an assumption) is that this scholarship includes considerable expertise in philology in general and Biblical Hebrew in specific.
[quote=“Jayhawker_Soule, post:128, topic:742936”]
The JPS renders Numbers 1:16 as
[ul]
[li]אֵלֶּה קריאי (קְרוּאֵי) הָעֵדָה, נְשִׂיאֵי מַטּוֹת אֲבוֹתָם: רָאשֵׁי אַלְפֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, הֵם[/li][li]Those are the elected of the assembly, the chieftains of their ancestral tribes: they are the heads of the contingents of Israel.[/ul] Let me add that the JPS Translation is widely respected for its scholarship. [/li][/QUOTE]
I have the JPS Study Bible, but I don’t have Milgrom, so sorry if this is uninformed.
But you seem to be cherry-picking the JPS. The question you’re trying to resolve is whether Numbers says there were 600K+ fighting men in the exodus, or if that is a mistranslation.
If the JPS translates “alphi” in Num 1:16 as “contingents,” then that proves that the translators are fully aware that in the proper context, it can mean something other than “thousand.”
Nevertheless, after due consideration, these highly respected translators and commentators say that “alph” literally means “thousand” in the rest of the chapter, where the numbers for the various tribes are given. In my version, they note that while the numbers must be inflated, they are consistent with other references in the Torah. They give no indication that the author meant anything other than “thousand,” literally, in those verses, even though they translated it differently in verse 16.
So your cite of the JPS seems to contradict your thesis.
As you wish. Berlin clearly acknowledges and dismisses Mendenhall. I like her a lot (particularly her commentary on Esther) and she may well be right, but I think not. Her argument that 'elef must mean thousand when dealing with individuals even if it does not necessarily mean ‘thousand’ when dealing with groups strikes me as a bit ad hoc.
What does seem widely acknowledged is that 'elef is an elastic term.
Jayhawker Soule:
And I assume no such thing. The starting point of these “recent scholars” is that the Bible is not true as written and was cobbled together from multiple documents, so they are dismissive of the simple meaning which would be consistent with the usage across the rest of the Bible.
We’re done. :rolleyes:
On the contrary, it’s the only way to make sense of the numbers given.
You brushed this off when CMKeller brought it up; let’s see if I can do better. To make it simple, I’ll just use two tribes.
Judah is listed as having 74,600 fighting men, and Asher as 41,500. Your thesis is that the correct translation should be 74 contingents for a total of 600 fighting men from Judah, and 41 contingents totaling 500 men from Asher, correct?
If you add up the two tribes, by your logic you should get 115 contingents totaling 1100 men, so the total should be 115,1100 (!). If the numbers are treated as normal decimal numbers, you get 116,100.
Expanding this to all twelve tribes, your logic should result in a total of 598,5550. But the actual total given (Num 1:46) is 603,550, which is exactly what you would expect with normal decimal numbers.
There are few things more certain than mathematics. The numbers for the individual tribes can result in the total given in Numbers 1:46, only if the author is using literal thousands, not contingents.
Given that the entirety of the Levant was, at the rough time given for Exodus, actually part of the extended Egyptian Empire which stretched as far as Syria, I see no further need for an explanation as to either knowledge of Egypt or the pervasiveness of Egyptian influence on the Levant at that time or afterwards. Do we question the pervasiveness of Roman motifs in Britain or North Africa? Or the Hellenistic influence on Pakistan via Alexander? Why then should the Egyptian influence on Canaan, which is much closer to its hegemon, be of anything other than routine interest? In-situ influence would explain the things you mention without a need for any volkswanderung.
Much better. While I’ll continue to research the matter, at this point I can do little but accept defeat and thank you for the discussion.