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Re: orion 4QMMT (c)
On Thu, 22 May 1997, harrison wrote:
> What I was hoping to do with my original question was to find more
> concrete evidence for my position concerning the Tobiads, and to possibly
> resolve the date problem that persists when dealing with the Ezra
> documents.
This deserves a better response than it's been getting. I was
investigating the Zenon papyri last evening and noted in Tcherikover,
_Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum_ (Magnes/Harvard UP, 1957) 1:116, a
reference to two inscriptions on a rock at 'Arak el-Emir (identified by
Tcherikover as the likely site of the Tobiad estate) reading
Tubiah (+WBYH), which Tcherikover, following Maisler ("The House of Toubais" in
Tarbiz, xii. 109ff, in Hebrew) suggests is to be dated to around 500 BCE
based on paleography. This would suggest that the various references to
Tobiah's and Tob'el reflect a family extending back several
centuries. Tcherikover also would classify the family as Jewish, based
on the form of the name Tobiah (TWB plus YH), which make me wonder if the
way Nehemiah treats a Tobias in Neh 2:10 as an "Ammonite slave" isn't a
reflection of Judean party (not sectarian) politics rather than an
indication that the family was Ammonite.
David W. Suter
Saint Martin's College
Lacey, WA 98503
dsuter@catadon.stmartin.edu