Tanach Thoughts

So, exciting news, one of my papers has passed the first peer reviewer! He expressed interest in my general theory, but had a long list of issues with some of the specifics. Some I believe that I have to reject outright because these comments are unsubstantiated. The reviewer simply stated that he was uncertain about these points. I think that if I can sharpen other points based on the rest of the comments, then it'll be okay if I (politely) reject these. So, whilst searching for information that would strengthen the rest of my thesis, I came across something interesting: Both Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and Targum Yerushalmi to Devarim 1:44 translate "Seir" as "Gavla" (גבלא, Aramaic for Gebal). Now, Gebal is known as an ancient town in Sidon, and it eventually became known as Byblos. But Seir is in the south of Israel! So why would these targums identify Seir with Gebal? As it turns out, there was indeed a time when the region of Idumea (Edom) or Seir was known as...

Long time no see guys. In-between balancing school and homework, ideas for posts have been little to practically non-existent. But earlier this week I finally thought up of something that is blog-worthy, in my humble opinion (and since I run this blog, that humble opinion is what goes around here... ;)) The first word in the post's title was not really my choice: Last night I told over my new idea to a friend from university and he said: "Hmm. Interesting conspiracy theory..." Personally, I would have gone just with "theory", and I told him that. He proceeded to explain why he thought it was a conspiracy theory, but let's not get into that (he also believes it's wrong to term "Biblical archeology" with any word that has anything to do with the Tanach, AKA the Bible...we won't get into that either today). About a month ago, the archeology department had a field trip to Mt. Gerizzim, and after that we went to meet some of the leaders of the S...