Monday, May 26, 2014

"Israel" Mentioned Even Earlier in History

From Malcolm H. Wiener in his "Dating the Emergence of Historical Israel in Light of Recent Developments in Egyptian Chronology" published in TEL AVIV: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, Volume 41, Number 1, 2014:-

Recent evidence strongly supports a reduction in the duration of the pharaoh Horemheb’s reign from 28 to 14 years. Further evidence strongly favours raising the accession year of Ramesses II from the previously conventional 1279 BCE to 1290 BCE to reflect the Horemheb reduction together with other minor adjustments. The first recorded appearance of the term ‘Israel’ from the Victory Stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah* should accordingly be placed at ca. 1220 BCE, about a decade earlier than previously believed...

*
[a] song of the nine bows celebrates the pharaoh’s universal patronage with illustrative reference to the region and towns of Palestine: Gaza, Ashkelon, Gezer and Yeno’am, which now belong to Egypt. Israel, metaphorically portrayed as the land of Hurru’s former husband, has been replaced by Merneptah’s patronage in a manner comparable to the well-known role that Yahweh plays in Hosea and Ezekiel as Jerusalem and Samaria’s Ba’al. Regionally, the geographical region referenced by the eponymic use of the name Israel in the stele corresponds with the Saul tradition’s Philistine area
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