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Re: orion translation central?
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Ms Lernerīs remarks seem typical of the defensiveness of many Israeli
responses to the historical revisionism that has entered into Old Testament
and Qumran studies since the 1970s, when Thompson and Van Seters first
began serious questioning about the age and historical reliability of the
OT tradition.
But the question as to the antiquity of Jewish tradition is hardly a new
one; note that Josephus is busily engaged in trying to persuade his Greek
and Roman readers that the Jews really *are* an ancient people-- a position
he would hardly have felt compelled to take if it were generally accepted
outside of the region. So whether or not the OT was an ideological work
designed to justify this or that, one notes that Josephus, at least, finds
it necessary to argue on an historical and ideological basis.
I do wish scholars would do other scholars the courtesy of accepting that
it is possible for them to entertain an idea without at the same time
intending to destabilise the state of Israel. We arrive at the positions we
arrive at because that is where the evidence seems to point, not because we
have a particular contemporary political agendum to prove.
Fred Cryer