Dr. Avalos v. Triablogue: Moses is a Basket Case of Bad History
Dr. Hector Avalos responds:
In their supposed "debunking” of my critique of their position on the legend of Sargon, the Triablogue authors simply show how woefully unprepared they are to discuss this issue.
WHY DC IS BETTER THAN TRIABLOGUE
First, Triabloguers admit they really do not have the knowledge to judge which scholar is correct about anything they discuss.
Triablogue’s main defense is that it is addressing a lay crowd. There is nothing wrong with having a blog that addresses a lay crowd. However, the authors should at least be honest and up-front with readers about the tentative nature of their conclusions and the level of their expertise in making judgments.
Yet, Triablogue repeatedly issues pontifications that do not warrant the level of certainty that they offer to readers. Thus, they mislead readers into thinking they are offering solid information.
Their next defense was that the bloggers on Debunking Christianity are vulnerable to the same charge of lack of expertise to judge my arguments. This is a bad argument because the fact that others also are vulnerable to my objection does not invalidate the objection itself against Triablogue.
And there is one BIG difference between DC and Triablogue. DC knows and is humble about its limits, while Triablogue is not. John W. Loftus, for example, does have formal training in theology. Yet, he has invited me to guest post on his blog when he recognizes that some issues are beyond his expertise. In other words, he invites an actual expert when he recognizes the limits of his expertise.
If Triablogue were as wise, they might have Dr. Hoffmeier to guest post on their behalf. But perhaps Triablogue does not have enough credibility to attract experts on their side.
Nonetheless, let me just address a few of the issues where Triablogue attempted some semblance of rational and factual challenge to my critique.
THE CREDENTIALS GAME
It is important to show that one is able make expert judgments about the issue under discussion. That is why I stated what my expertise was. My arguments are not meant to be arguments from authority. None of my arguments are of the form “because I say so.”
But it is one thing to dismiss my expertise, and it is another to misrepresent it. Notice this quite dishonest statement:
A. Harvard Semitic Monographs (Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East [1995]).
B. Oxford University Press (my articles in the The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East and in The Oxford Companion to the Bible).
C. Abingdon (a Methodist press; Strangers in our Own Land: Religion in U.S. Latino/a Literature [2005])
D. Hendrickson (a Christian press; Health Care and the Rise of Christianity [1999]).
At times, Dr. Hoffmeier and I have written for exactly the same reference works-e.g., Anchor Bible Dictionary.
Dr. Hoffmeier is a well-regarded scholar, but I think I have published more items on Assyro-Babylonian law than he has in peer reviewed journals and/or standard reference works. These include the following:
-"Exodus 22:9 and Akkadian Legal Formulae," Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1, 1990) 116-17.
-"Daniel 9:24-25 and Mesopotamian Temple Rededications," Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (3, 1998) 507-11.
-"Legal and Social Institutions of Canaan and Ancient Israel," Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, J. Sasson, ed. (4 volumes; New York: Scribner's, 1995) Vol 1: 615-631.
My expertise is sufficiently recognized to be appointed a reviewer of books dealing with Near Eastern law-e.g., Bernard M. Levinson, ed. Theory and Method in Biblical and Cuneiform Law: Revision, Interpolation, and Development. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) in Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 153-156.
I don’t see anything comparable from the authors of Triablogue. Similarly, note this very uniformed statement:
I also have a formal degree and graduate work in anthropology, which is the center for the study of human evolution. Intelligent Design and evolutionary theory are the issue.
So I am not sure what qualifies Triabloguers to override the expertise assigned to me by my peers. In fact, I have written extensively on science and religion. To say that Intelligent Design this lies outside of my field of expertise IS A FACTUAL ERROR (or they offer no proof that it is outside of my expertise).
Since Triablogue cannot win the credentials game, then it should focus on refuting the actual evidence I presented (again, none of it has to be accepted on my authority—they can check my sources if they can read them).
THE WET NURSE PARALLEL
In deciding whether an Egyptian or a Mesopotamian origin for the Moses wet-nurse was more likely, I cited a parallel with the Sumerian-Akkadian ana ittishu legal texts. The parallels are:
1. A foundling
2. Raised by a wet-nurse
3. Until weaned
The fact is that one need not treat foundlings the same way in all cultures. For example, you could:
1. Kill the foundling, and not raise it at all.
2. Give it to one wet-nurse, but not until weaned.
3. You could put it up for adoption.
Thus, it is clear that the Triablogue authors have no experience in analyzing the complexities and diverse options available in ancient Near Eastern law.
In fact, they show that they have not read the Legend of Sargon carefully at all. In the Sargon legend, Sargon is not given over to a wet nurse but he is adopted.
However, there are also other parallels in adoption that show that the Sargon legend was related to laws of the ana ittishu series. So, it is the fact that BOTH the Moses and Sargon stories take different options that are both found in the ana ittishu legal series that is a good argument for a Mesopotamian, rather than Egyptian, parallel here.
Therefore, Lewis’ conclusion (that a Mesopotamian parallel is stronger than an Egyptian one here) has more evidence for its side.
To refute the force of the legal parallels, Triablogue’s riposte also included this gem:
Thus, Hammurabi’s laws about an eye for an eye are quite verbally similar to those in Exodus 21:22. Many scholars doubt whether Hammurabi’s laws were applied in real life, but the form and content of Hammurabi’s laws are so similar to some in Exodus that most scholars do see some literary relationship.
Otherwise, Triablogue offers nothing but rhetoric to dispute the parallel between Moses and the ana ittishu laws. They could not find a better Egyptian parallel for all their boasted knowledge of Hoffmeier’s writings. The reason, of course, is that Hoffmeier also does not have a better parallel.
Whether the Moses story is historical or not will not detract from the fact that the Moses story matches some directives found in those Sumerian-Akkadian laws.
THE LARGER PARALLELS
In judging literary dependence, one must address these parallels listed by Lewis (The Sargon Legend, p. 255):
I. Explanation of abandonment
II. Noble birth
III. Preparation for exposure
IV. Exposure
V. Nurse in an unusual manner
VI. Discovery and Adoption
VII. Accomplishment of the hero
The Sargon and Moses story share ALL elements except number V (Sargon legend lacks this). Of course, there are differences, but one must ask the likelihood that two people independently would experience 6 of 7 events in this sequence. One could say it was coincidence, but this is statistically improbable.
It is not at all analogous to the example cited by Triablogue, where the parallel is a man driving a vehicle in a S. King story and in a Steinbeck story. In finding literary parallels, the statistical frequency of an event matters, and so does the sequence of events.
Many modern stories have people driving cars, but let Triablogue find another story in the ancient Near East that has all the event parallels of Sargon. There are not that many. Besides, driving cars in stories is a motif that can be traced culturally. It did not exist in 1800. It is part of the common cultural repertory of the 1900s and thereafter.
My contention is not so much that the Moses story is copied directly from the Sargon story, but clearly there is a relationship in at least 6 motifs that are present in the Sargon story.
SARGON’S BURNING BUSH?
And there are more parallels between Sargon and Moses that are found in other types of documents mentioning Sargon. One document is a liver omen text from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BCE, though variant parameters exist). The omen is reproduced by Lewis (p. The Sargon Legend, p. 136), and reads:
MOSES’ LIFETIME?
Perhaps the weakest response involves the supposed existence of materials from Moses’ lifetime. Here is how Triablogue phrased this pearl:
By this logic, therefore, The Story of Sargon, must also be from Sargon’s lifetime, since the text is set in his lifetime and it is portrayed as autobiographical. Yes, this is what passes for historical reasoning by the Triabloguers.
Indeed, with Sargon it is MUCH different because we have actual archaeological artifacts with his name from his supposed lifetime. And then we have references to Sargon in subsequent centuries and all the way down to the existing copies of his story in the seventh century BCE.
Nothing like that for Moses. If I am wrong, let Triablogue give us a document or artifact mentioning Moses that actually comes from around 1400 BCE, 1300 BCE, or 1200 BCE. The fact is Hoffmeier can’t do it. Triablogue can’t do it.
Again, the fact is that all we have are stories of Moses extant in manuscripts from the 1-3 centuries BCE, and that alone cannot tell you that those stories were there in 1400 BCE or even in the 7th century BCE. Whether the story of Sargon is true or not, we have actual evidence from his lifetime that shows he was a real person at some point.
TEXTUAL CRITICISM INVALID FOR SARGON?
Triablogue deploys another standard apologetic technique (arguing against something a scholar did not say) with this response to my comments on textual criticism:
Without new or additional evidence, there is no way that we can tell from 1-3 c. BCE manuscripts, that a Moses story existed in ca. 1400 BCE.
If Triabloguers had read The End of Biblical Studies, they would realize that some arguments are based on simple logic, and they don’t require more than a good logical mind to examine them. No other expertise is always required.
Triablogue is still dealing with an increasingly outdated notion that textual criticism is only about finding the “original.” Triabloguers apparently think themselves as sophisticated by using the term Urtext, without realizing how increasingly outdated this concept is for biblical materials.
Triabloguers might benefit from the article by Eldon J. Epp, “The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text’ in New Testament Textual Criticism,” Harvard Theological Review 92, no. 3 (1999):245-281.
Since the concept of an Urtext is eroding, textual criticism is focusing increasingly on textual histories (earlier compositions and relationships are included, even if “originals” are not.).
We can do textual criticism to determine what might be the earliest readings among the Sargon manuscripts, even if we do not have to find the “original” reading. This brings me to another FACTUAL ERROR made in Triablogue in this statement:
Yet, as Evan has so insightfully pointed out, Alan Millard, who is a rather conservative Christian Near Eastern scholar, also thinks that the Sargon traditions were in circulation about a thousand years prior to the 7th century manuscripts. See A. R. Millard, “How Reliable is the Exodus,” Biblical Archaeology Review 26, no. 4 (July/August,2000).
EPIC OF GILGAMESH A RED HERRING?
In an apparent attempt to fend off the flood of evidence that cuneiform literature was present in Palestine, Triablogue states:
Goetze and Levy date the fragment to the fourteenth century BCE, partly on the basis of paleography. However, newer estimates suggest the fifteenth or sixteenth century BCE (see “Copies of Gilgamesh Tablets by A. Westenholz” in W. G. Lambert, Wisdom, Gods, and Literature (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), p.445.
But Gilgamesh is not alone. About 89 cuneiform objects have now been catalogued in Palestine. See Wayne Horowitz, Takayoshi Oshima, and Seth Sanders “A Bibliographical List of Cuneiform Inscriptions from Canaan, Palestine/Philistia, and the Land of Israel,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 122, No. 4, (Oct. - Dec., 2002), pp. 753- 766.
That does mean that scribes in Palestine could be familiar with the Epic of Gilgamesh and other Mesopotamian stories. In contrast, we have ZERO biblical Hebrew texts in Mesopotamia from the equivalent periods. This alone shows that cuneiform literature was established BEFORE Hebrew literature, even in Palestine.
And why should the Sargon legend be different? If Gilgamesh was known in Palestine, what is so difficult about hypothesizing that the Sargon legend became known in Palestine or among Hebrews living in Babylon?
CONCLUSION
I am not arguing that the Moses legend is copied directly from the Sargon legend. However, the similarities are too many to posit that two people experienced so many similar things independently. We have one reasonable explanation, and that is that there was some literary relationship, even if indirect, between these stories.
If we were to assign a literary priority, we would have to start with what we actually have. Of the two stories (Moses and Sargon) the ONLY one present as late as the seventh century BCE is that of Sargon. Moses is not in the archaeological and textual record until HUNDREDS OF YEARS later.
Triablogue can argue all it wants that Moses was around ca. 1400 BCE. But they have not offered a single piece of extra-biblical archaeological evidence for their side. Not one. So we can at least conclude that:
I. There is no actual evidence that a Moses river-story was present in the seventh century BCE.
II. There is plenty of evidence that the Sargon river-story was present in the seventh century BCE.
III. Sargon’s presence in actual documents can be attested from the late third millennium BCE and far into the first millennium BCE.
IV. Moses’ presence cannot be found in any extra-biblical record before around 1-3 centuries BCE.
Whatever else Triablogue may argue about the priority of Moses, it is arguing this on the basis of theological speculation, and not on actual archaeological or historical evidence.
In their supposed "debunking” of my critique of their position on the legend of Sargon, the Triablogue authors simply show how woefully unprepared they are to discuss this issue.
WHY DC IS BETTER THAN TRIABLOGUE
First, Triabloguers admit they really do not have the knowledge to judge which scholar is correct about anything they discuss.
Triablogue’s main defense is that it is addressing a lay crowd. There is nothing wrong with having a blog that addresses a lay crowd. However, the authors should at least be honest and up-front with readers about the tentative nature of their conclusions and the level of their expertise in making judgments.
Yet, Triablogue repeatedly issues pontifications that do not warrant the level of certainty that they offer to readers. Thus, they mislead readers into thinking they are offering solid information.
Their next defense was that the bloggers on Debunking Christianity are vulnerable to the same charge of lack of expertise to judge my arguments. This is a bad argument because the fact that others also are vulnerable to my objection does not invalidate the objection itself against Triablogue.
And there is one BIG difference between DC and Triablogue. DC knows and is humble about its limits, while Triablogue is not. John W. Loftus, for example, does have formal training in theology. Yet, he has invited me to guest post on his blog when he recognizes that some issues are beyond his expertise. In other words, he invites an actual expert when he recognizes the limits of his expertise.
If Triablogue were as wise, they might have Dr. Hoffmeier to guest post on their behalf. But perhaps Triablogue does not have enough credibility to attract experts on their side.
Nonetheless, let me just address a few of the issues where Triablogue attempted some semblance of rational and factual challenge to my critique.
THE CREDENTIALS GAME
It is important to show that one is able make expert judgments about the issue under discussion. That is why I stated what my expertise was. My arguments are not meant to be arguments from authority. None of my arguments are of the form “because I say so.”
But it is one thing to dismiss my expertise, and it is another to misrepresent it. Notice this quite dishonest statement:
Incidentally, since Avalos is fond of flaunting his credentials, does he also think that we should judge a book by its publisher? Hoffmeier’s monograph was published by Oxford University Press. The book by Avalos was published by Prometheus Press. Which would you rather see on your resume?Triablogue makes it appear as though I have one book (“the book”) that is relevant. The fact is that I have eight books (6 solely authored; 2 as editor and contributor) and numerous articles which are published by a variety of Christian, secular, and university venues, including:
A. Harvard Semitic Monographs (Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East [1995]).
B. Oxford University Press (my articles in the The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East and in The Oxford Companion to the Bible).
C. Abingdon (a Methodist press; Strangers in our Own Land: Religion in U.S. Latino/a Literature [2005])
D. Hendrickson (a Christian press; Health Care and the Rise of Christianity [1999]).
At times, Dr. Hoffmeier and I have written for exactly the same reference works-e.g., Anchor Bible Dictionary.
Dr. Hoffmeier is a well-regarded scholar, but I think I have published more items on Assyro-Babylonian law than he has in peer reviewed journals and/or standard reference works. These include the following:
-"Exodus 22:9 and Akkadian Legal Formulae," Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1, 1990) 116-17.
-"Daniel 9:24-25 and Mesopotamian Temple Rededications," Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (3, 1998) 507-11.
-"Legal and Social Institutions of Canaan and Ancient Israel," Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, J. Sasson, ed. (4 volumes; New York: Scribner's, 1995) Vol 1: 615-631.
My expertise is sufficiently recognized to be appointed a reviewer of books dealing with Near Eastern law-e.g., Bernard M. Levinson, ed. Theory and Method in Biblical and Cuneiform Law: Revision, Interpolation, and Development. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) in Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 153-156.
I don’t see anything comparable from the authors of Triablogue. Similarly, note this very uniformed statement:
For example, he’s a very vocal and public opponent of Intelligent Design theory. But that lies far outside his field of expertise.Apparently, they disregard the fact that I have also published my views on Intelligent Design in a very respected astronomical journal—“Heavenly Conflicts: The Bible and Astronomy,” Mercury: The Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (1998).
I also have a formal degree and graduate work in anthropology, which is the center for the study of human evolution. Intelligent Design and evolutionary theory are the issue.
So I am not sure what qualifies Triabloguers to override the expertise assigned to me by my peers. In fact, I have written extensively on science and religion. To say that Intelligent Design this lies outside of my field of expertise IS A FACTUAL ERROR (or they offer no proof that it is outside of my expertise).
Since Triablogue cannot win the credentials game, then it should focus on refuting the actual evidence I presented (again, none of it has to be accepted on my authority—they can check my sources if they can read them).
THE WET NURSE PARALLEL
In deciding whether an Egyptian or a Mesopotamian origin for the Moses wet-nurse was more likely, I cited a parallel with the Sumerian-Akkadian ana ittishu legal texts. The parallels are:
1. A foundling
2. Raised by a wet-nurse
3. Until weaned
The fact is that one need not treat foundlings the same way in all cultures. For example, you could:
1. Kill the foundling, and not raise it at all.
2. Give it to one wet-nurse, but not until weaned.
3. You could put it up for adoption.
Thus, it is clear that the Triablogue authors have no experience in analyzing the complexities and diverse options available in ancient Near Eastern law.
In fact, they show that they have not read the Legend of Sargon carefully at all. In the Sargon legend, Sargon is not given over to a wet nurse but he is adopted.
However, there are also other parallels in adoption that show that the Sargon legend was related to laws of the ana ittishu series. So, it is the fact that BOTH the Moses and Sargon stories take different options that are both found in the ana ittishu legal series that is a good argument for a Mesopotamian, rather than Egyptian, parallel here.
Therefore, Lewis’ conclusion (that a Mesopotamian parallel is stronger than an Egyptian one here) has more evidence for its side.
To refute the force of the legal parallels, Triablogue’s riposte also included this gem:
But do case laws deal with hypothetical situations (“legends”) which never occur? Or do case laws deal with real life situations?Hypothetical legal situations do not lessen literary parallels between those laws and some later text. Rather, it is the FORM and CONTENT of laws that are more important in establishing literary dependence.
Thus, Hammurabi’s laws about an eye for an eye are quite verbally similar to those in Exodus 21:22. Many scholars doubt whether Hammurabi’s laws were applied in real life, but the form and content of Hammurabi’s laws are so similar to some in Exodus that most scholars do see some literary relationship.
Otherwise, Triablogue offers nothing but rhetoric to dispute the parallel between Moses and the ana ittishu laws. They could not find a better Egyptian parallel for all their boasted knowledge of Hoffmeier’s writings. The reason, of course, is that Hoffmeier also does not have a better parallel.
Whether the Moses story is historical or not will not detract from the fact that the Moses story matches some directives found in those Sumerian-Akkadian laws.
THE LARGER PARALLELS
In judging literary dependence, one must address these parallels listed by Lewis (The Sargon Legend, p. 255):
I. Explanation of abandonment
II. Noble birth
III. Preparation for exposure
IV. Exposure
V. Nurse in an unusual manner
VI. Discovery and Adoption
VII. Accomplishment of the hero
The Sargon and Moses story share ALL elements except number V (Sargon legend lacks this). Of course, there are differences, but one must ask the likelihood that two people independently would experience 6 of 7 events in this sequence. One could say it was coincidence, but this is statistically improbable.
It is not at all analogous to the example cited by Triablogue, where the parallel is a man driving a vehicle in a S. King story and in a Steinbeck story. In finding literary parallels, the statistical frequency of an event matters, and so does the sequence of events.
Many modern stories have people driving cars, but let Triablogue find another story in the ancient Near East that has all the event parallels of Sargon. There are not that many. Besides, driving cars in stories is a motif that can be traced culturally. It did not exist in 1800. It is part of the common cultural repertory of the 1900s and thereafter.
My contention is not so much that the Moses story is copied directly from the Sargon story, but clearly there is a relationship in at least 6 motifs that are present in the Sargon story.
SARGON’S BURNING BUSH?
And there are more parallels between Sargon and Moses that are found in other types of documents mentioning Sargon. One document is a liver omen text from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BCE, though variant parameters exist). The omen is reproduced by Lewis (p. The Sargon Legend, p. 136), and reads:
...omen of Sargon who made an incursion during darkness and saw a luminous phenomenon.The Akkadian term for “luminous phenomenon” is “nûru(m),” which also has a Hebrew cognate (ner). It is also noteworthy that one of Sargon’s achievements is to climb mountains, and Moses also climbed a famous mountain (Sinai).
MOSES’ LIFETIME?
Perhaps the weakest response involves the supposed existence of materials from Moses’ lifetime. Here is how Triablogue phrased this pearl:
Actually, we do have something from Moses’ supposed lifetime that mentions him and his features. We have Exodus-Deuteronomy. Those books contain many autobiographical references to Moses.But where do they get the idea that Exodus and Deuteronomy are from Moses’ lifetime? Apparently, being set in Moses’ lifetime is the only evidence they need to conclude that the books about Moses are from his lifetime.
By this logic, therefore, The Story of Sargon, must also be from Sargon’s lifetime, since the text is set in his lifetime and it is portrayed as autobiographical. Yes, this is what passes for historical reasoning by the Triabloguers.
Indeed, with Sargon it is MUCH different because we have actual archaeological artifacts with his name from his supposed lifetime. And then we have references to Sargon in subsequent centuries and all the way down to the existing copies of his story in the seventh century BCE.
Nothing like that for Moses. If I am wrong, let Triablogue give us a document or artifact mentioning Moses that actually comes from around 1400 BCE, 1300 BCE, or 1200 BCE. The fact is Hoffmeier can’t do it. Triablogue can’t do it.
Again, the fact is that all we have are stories of Moses extant in manuscripts from the 1-3 centuries BCE, and that alone cannot tell you that those stories were there in 1400 BCE or even in the 7th century BCE. Whether the story of Sargon is true or not, we have actual evidence from his lifetime that shows he was a real person at some point.
TEXTUAL CRITICISM INVALID FOR SARGON?
Triablogue deploys another standard apologetic technique (arguing against something a scholar did not say) with this response to my comments on textual criticism:
But Avalos just told us that textual criticismBut, I did not say that textual criticism cannot help us reach “earlier” compositions. My skepticism is in regard to our ability to reconstruct “original” compositions in ancient times. Deciding which of two readings is earlier is possible depending on how far back one reaches.
can’t help us to reach earlier or original compositions.
Without new or additional evidence, there is no way that we can tell from 1-3 c. BCE manuscripts, that a Moses story existed in ca. 1400 BCE.
If Triabloguers had read The End of Biblical Studies, they would realize that some arguments are based on simple logic, and they don’t require more than a good logical mind to examine them. No other expertise is always required.
Triablogue is still dealing with an increasingly outdated notion that textual criticism is only about finding the “original.” Triabloguers apparently think themselves as sophisticated by using the term Urtext, without realizing how increasingly outdated this concept is for biblical materials.
Triabloguers might benefit from the article by Eldon J. Epp, “The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text’ in New Testament Textual Criticism,” Harvard Theological Review 92, no. 3 (1999):245-281.
Since the concept of an Urtext is eroding, textual criticism is focusing increasingly on textual histories (earlier compositions and relationships are included, even if “originals” are not.).
We can do textual criticism to determine what might be the earliest readings among the Sargon manuscripts, even if we do not have to find the “original” reading. This brings me to another FACTUAL ERROR made in Triablogue in this statement:
I SAID: Avalos appeals to Lewis as the standard monograph. Lewis says the story was written in the reign of Sargon II.Lewis DOES NOT SAY THIS, and no direct quote is presented for evidence. This is what Lewis actually said on p. 273 of The Sargon Legend:
Only the extreme limits of the possible date of composition can be determined with confidence. The Sargon legend had to be composed after 2039 and before 627 B.C....Nevertheless, a date of origin between the thirteenth and eighth centuries seems likely on the basis of internal evidence such as the use of idiomatic expressions that are first attested in the royal inscriptions of the Middle and Neo-Assyrian Kings.Notice also how Triablogue uses an ad hominem argument to dismiss my conclusions (they call me an “apostate” as though that invalidates my arguments for parallels between Moses and Sargon).
Yet, as Evan has so insightfully pointed out, Alan Millard, who is a rather conservative Christian Near Eastern scholar, also thinks that the Sargon traditions were in circulation about a thousand years prior to the 7th century manuscripts. See A. R. Millard, “How Reliable is the Exodus,” Biblical Archaeology Review 26, no. 4 (July/August,2000).
EPIC OF GILGAMESH A RED HERRING?
In an apparent attempt to fend off the flood of evidence that cuneiform literature was present in Palestine, Triablogue states:
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a red herring. We’re not debating the literary dependence (or not) of Gen 6-9 on the Epic of Gilgamesh. (Incidentally, notice that Avalos doesn’t give the date for this Palestinian fragment.)In establishing the direction of literary influence, it is important to document and presence of literary traditions in specific cultural areas. The so-called Megiddo fragment of the Gilgamesh epic was first published by A. Goetze and S. Levy, “Fragment of the Gilgamesh Epic from Megiddo,” Atiqot 2 (1959) 121-28.
Goetze and Levy date the fragment to the fourteenth century BCE, partly on the basis of paleography. However, newer estimates suggest the fifteenth or sixteenth century BCE (see “Copies of Gilgamesh Tablets by A. Westenholz” in W. G. Lambert, Wisdom, Gods, and Literature (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), p.445.
But Gilgamesh is not alone. About 89 cuneiform objects have now been catalogued in Palestine. See Wayne Horowitz, Takayoshi Oshima, and Seth Sanders “A Bibliographical List of Cuneiform Inscriptions from Canaan, Palestine/Philistia, and the Land of Israel,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 122, No. 4, (Oct. - Dec., 2002), pp. 753- 766.
That does mean that scribes in Palestine could be familiar with the Epic of Gilgamesh and other Mesopotamian stories. In contrast, we have ZERO biblical Hebrew texts in Mesopotamia from the equivalent periods. This alone shows that cuneiform literature was established BEFORE Hebrew literature, even in Palestine.
And why should the Sargon legend be different? If Gilgamesh was known in Palestine, what is so difficult about hypothesizing that the Sargon legend became known in Palestine or among Hebrews living in Babylon?
CONCLUSION
I am not arguing that the Moses legend is copied directly from the Sargon legend. However, the similarities are too many to posit that two people experienced so many similar things independently. We have one reasonable explanation, and that is that there was some literary relationship, even if indirect, between these stories.
If we were to assign a literary priority, we would have to start with what we actually have. Of the two stories (Moses and Sargon) the ONLY one present as late as the seventh century BCE is that of Sargon. Moses is not in the archaeological and textual record until HUNDREDS OF YEARS later.
Triablogue can argue all it wants that Moses was around ca. 1400 BCE. But they have not offered a single piece of extra-biblical archaeological evidence for their side. Not one. So we can at least conclude that:
I. There is no actual evidence that a Moses river-story was present in the seventh century BCE.
II. There is plenty of evidence that the Sargon river-story was present in the seventh century BCE.
III. Sargon’s presence in actual documents can be attested from the late third millennium BCE and far into the first millennium BCE.
IV. Moses’ presence cannot be found in any extra-biblical record before around 1-3 centuries BCE.
Whatever else Triablogue may argue about the priority of Moses, it is arguing this on the basis of theological speculation, and not on actual archaeological or historical evidence.