Comments by "John Luetjen" (@jehl1963) on "Historical Origin of the 12 Tribes of Israel" video.

  1.  @fordprefect5304  Hermann Genz has documented how the Hittite finds in Palestine from the Hittite Empire period are comparatively numerous compared to other areas outside of central Anatolia. Amihai Mazar also notes several artifacts in his book "Archaelogy of the Land of the Bibile: 10,000-586 BCE". In 1976 a mortuary building was excavated at the Amman Airport which appears to have been used for adult cremation. The structure dated to the empire period and showed Hittite influence. Cremation was unknown among the people of Canaan, but was practiced by Indo-Europeans, including the Hittites. Other artifacts also have been found. There is for example "The Deeds of Suppliluliuma" which tells of how in the past "the storm-god took the people of Kurusutamma, sons of Hatti, and carried them to Egypt". Sayce also documented via "trichromatic Cappadocian ware" the presence of Hittites in the Southern Levant as early as the 12th Dynasty of Egypt. Fundamentally, you seem to base your conclusion on "the complete impossibility (of Hittites in the Levant) as Egypt controlled Canaan and they were mortal enemies". But were they? We all know about the battle at Megiddo, but the conflict between the Egyptians and the Hittites occurred over about only 200 years in time. We're talking about a 1000 years of history. You seem to exclude the possibility of individuals living in each other's territory before or after that period. You also are assuming water-tight borders, which I'm not sure the evidence supports. In fact there are later Hittite texts that suggest that they had issues maintaining control over borders. Certainly after the treaty of Kadesh there were friendlier relations between the two powers. There are also numerous attestations of individuals or small groups migrating to another territory -- whether it be Abram moving from the Chaldean city of Ur to Canaan, all the way up to Roman times. For example Joshua and Judges describes that the children of Israel dwelt among the Cannanites, the Hittites, Amorites, Periizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, and took their daughters to be their wives and gave their own daughters to their sons. Whether it be traders leaving a delegation in a foreign land, to farmers looking for new land to settle, ancient people seem to have been far more mobile than we give them credit for. Given the archeological evidence I mentioned earlier, it seems clear that there were certainly some culturally Hittite people in the Levant at that time, even if they were a minority. Going back to the biblical references, there is also a subtle story arc of the Hittites recorded in the biblical texts -- something that it's doubtful that myth-writers 1000-500 years later would have included. For example, during the time of the patriarchs (and only during this time) the Hittites are referred to as "children of Heth", "sons of Heth" and "daughters of Heth". Note that this name "Heth" is recorded both biblically and in Egyptian hieroglyphs. This aligns with a time before the Hittite Empire had fully consolidated, even though they were the predominant ethnic group on the Anatolian plateau. Later in the Bible during the mid-17th century Old Kingdom era, they are referred to collectively as "Hittites", which aligns with the height of the singular Hittite empire. Then later in the 1st millennium, Solomon is described as interacting with "all the kings of the Hittites", which aligns with the fragmented late Hittite period. So there seems to be considerable written and physical evidence that is at odds with the statement upon which you based your conclusion.
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  2. Hi Matt; a long-time viewer of your channel, with good reason. You've done some great work with charting. But to paraphrase Queen Gertrude -- "The narrator doth protest too much". If you have to spend 1/3 of your video explaining to the viewer why they need to toss the bronze age bible out the window as a historical reference, you might be trying to hard too explain your own biases. For example, there is a glaring omission in the check-marks on your chart at 8:24. This omission is the bronze age Hittites. The Bible accurate describes the arc of the Hittite empire(s), including names of some of the leaders, the geography of the empire and many other things. Prior to the mid-19th century there was no -zero, none, zilch - historical attestation of the Hittites. Neither the Latin nor the Greek texts mentioned them. It was only in the Bible that they were mentioned. That is until their sites were finally excavated, and their texts translated in the late 19th and 20th century when we discovered that the biblical descriptions of the Hittites was indeed accurate. It's important to note that the biblical references were also not specifically about the Hittites, but generally mention them passing. So the biblical writers wrote about them as supporting characters. They didn't really care about the Hittites. But the names, geography and the arc of the Hittites culture matches the biblical references. This is an example of where the Bronze age history as recorded in the Bible was nuts-on , without even trying. So to dismiss the Bronze age history as recorded in the Bible out-of-hand displays a bit of modern hubris. Even if it was written in the Iron Age, those writers were 3000 years closer to the events than modern historians. So the failure of modern historians to confirm the bronze age events in the Bible does not mean that the records of the Bronze age in the Bible are failures.
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