Tanach Thoughts

As promised, a post on why I was unable to find time to make the second part of the Shiloh destruction posts for over a month. It was because, as previously mentioned here , I had gone on a month-long excavation in Tel Tibnah/Tibna/Tibneh (however you want to spell), an archeological tel in Southwest Shomron (Samaria). We were quite busy there and between the archeological work and my work as a volunteer translator of our social media posts, as well as occasional breaks, I couldn't find the time to make the post. I thought I would use the following post to discuss some of the Tanachic-era findings from the site. Not everything has been properly studied yet, though, so there's not that much to say right now. The site is identified by pretty much all scholars with the Roman-era regional capital city Timnah. Some scholars also identify it with Timnat Serach or Timnah Cheres, the city of Yehoshua bin Nun. During this first season of excavations, we mostly found Roman and Hellenisti...

 Crazy theory time: Bnei Yisrael knew what to do with their weapons. In Shemot 13:18 it says: "Now the Israelites went up armed..." If we follow the plainer interpretation of the word 'chamushim', then it will mean 'armed' as used in this translation, rather than 'one-fifth of the Israelites left Egypt'. So, Bnei Yisrael left Egypt armed. Usually people hear this and think: Oh, so a bunch of slaves who knew nothing about fighting took weapons with them. Well, good luck with that. Here's where my theory comes in: Actually, at least some of them knew how to use these weapons. The evidence is as follows: Bnei Yisrael had lived in Goshen, on the Egyptian-Sinai border. It is doubtful that the Egyptians, who didn't mind killing them left-and-right, would have taken the time and resources to defend this slave-province from raiders. So more likely, the Israelites set up their own guard system. We find that shortly after the Exodus, the Israelites face...