Comments by "John Luetjen" (@jehl1963) on "Does Bronze Age Archaeology Support the Bible?" video.

  1. At about 22:00 you write off Moses as a literary character. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It would most likely be safer to say that he has not been attested to in the archeolgical record. On the other hand, you omit a huge Bronze Age Biblical reference which was not attested to in the archeological record -- until it was. This is the Hittites. Until the mid-19th century, the only references to the Hittites were in the Bible. This Bronze-age culture was lost to the Greeks and the Romans. Yet the Bible not only mentions them at the appropriate times, but also accurately alludes to their changing political structures - something that would have been virtually impossible for Babylonian-exile-era writers to do in an age before archeology..
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  2.  @fordprefect5304  I'm not sure if you are inaccurately attributing the modern idea of a border to the ancient world. Borders in the ancient world tended to be a geographic feature like a river, with occasional guard-houses on the main roads. Nothing like the the Berlin wall. Also, just because politically the Egyptian government didn't get along with the Hittite Government didn't mean that they removed every last Hittite who might be in the land when the boarder moved. There would be traders, nomadic farmers and others who would move around. The Bible doesn't suggest that there were cities of Hittites are anything like that, but rather individuals -- which is why Abraham was referred to as negotiating with Ephron from " the sons of Heth" ( חֵֽת׃ לִבְנֵי־ ), and later in that section Ephron is referred to as "THE Hittite" ( הַחִתִּ֤י). He wouldn't be referred to as "THE Hittite" if there were thousands of Hittites around. Not to mention, as Gilan wrote in his article "Hittites in Canaan", there are relatively numerous Hittite finds in Palestine dating to the empire period, which is unlike other areas outside Anatolia, where their traces are few. For example Hittite cremation burials have also been found near the modern Amman airport -- cremation was unknown among the Canaanites. Hittite jugs were found in a Megiddo tomb dating from about 1600-1200 BCE. A 14th Century BCE Hittite document titled "Deeds of Suppiluliuma" recounts how the "...sons of Hatti, and carried them to Egypt". Note the expression "sons of Hatti", paralleling the Biblical "sons of Heth". Archibald Henry Sayce in 1905 also found Hittite "Trichromatic Cappadocian Ware" in Gezer, -- dated to the 12th Dynasty of Egypt. So the archeology actually does support the Bible in regards to Hittites in Palestine during the 20th to 18th centuries BCE.
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  3. @fordprefect5304  I'm not sure that I get your point. Could you explain it further?
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  4. @M.M.83-U  I'm curious -- what is the data that you are basing your claim on?
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  5. Interestingly -- or maybe frustratingly -- Moses (Moshe) means something relevant to the story of the Exodus in both Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Hebrew. Moses's sister's name (Mariam) has the same feature. In Hebrew it literally means "Rebellion", but in Egyptian "mr" (love) or "mry" (Beloved) + "amon" = "beloved of Amon".
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