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Author Topic:   The Bible and the Hittites, Exploding another 'Biblical Archaeology' Myth.
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 1 of 53 (68017)
11-20-2003 1:59 PM


How many times have you heard it? I am sure many more than you care to remember. I am talking about the bog standard reply from Bible believers when you mention archaeology and the Bible.
Countless times I have heard ‘well archaeology confirms everything in the Bible, look at the Hittites!’ I swear if I hear about the Hittites and the Bible again I will scream LOL.
I think it is time that that misinformed people stopped spreading this untruth and that this misconception was finally laid to rest.
The next time anyone mentions to you that ‘The Hittites of the Bible were thought to be a myth until excavations at Bogzhakoy in Anatolia unearthed evidence of the Hittites confirming God's Word as 100% accurate’, inform them that the Anatolian Hittites have nothing whatsoever to do with the biblical ones, there is no relationship at all between the biblical Hittites and the huge find in modern day Turkey.
To claim that the biblical Hittites are the same Hittites that were found at Boghazkoy in Turkey is simply untrue, they are NOT the same people, and why this keeps being circulated suggests to me that either no one has investigated this or they have investigated it and decided to turn a blind eye. I choose to believe the former, I wouldn’t like to think that scholars would deliberately try to mislead people, but it is about time that ‘biblical archaeologists’ admitted the truth about the Hittites.
Here is some information about the Hittites:
From ‘The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 3 D. N. Freedman (ed) Doubleday, New York, London, 1992.
Entry ‘Hittites’ page 233:
In the biblical references to the Hittites two different groups may be discerned. One is a local people of Palestine, settled in the area around Hebron before Abraham’s arrival, the descendants of Canaan through the eponymous ancestors of Heth. They lived in the heart of the land promised to the Israelites, so that God had to expressly command the Israelites to destroy them. That they were not eradicated but continued to inhabit southern Palestine, including the area around Jerusalem, may be seen in the references to Hittites in the Hebrew army, as forced labour conscripts, or as possible wives for the Hebrews, all the way through to the return from the Babylonian exile. Almost all the references of Hittites in the Old Testament fit into this picture of a local Canaanite people never quite eradicated in the Hebrew conquest of Canaan.
There are five references to Hittites which do not fit with this picture. The reference in Joshua 1:4 to the area around the Euphrates as the Hittite country cannot be the Hittites of Hebron, but rather, depending on the dating of the conquest, either the Hittite Empire’s territories in North Syria or the successor Neo-Hittite Kingdoms in that region.
The reference in Judges 1:26 to the man who after betraying Bethel goes to the ‘land of the Hittites’, the only other occurrence of this phrase besides the Joshua 1:4 passage, it is quite possible that the Neo-Hittite area is meant.
The references to the ‘Kings of the Hittites’ in 1 Kings 10:29 and 2 Chronicles 1:17, where they are importing horses and chariots from Solomon, and 2 Kings 7:6, in which their very name causes the Syrian army to flee, again inply a powerful and wealthy group of Kings, not a local Canaanite people who had been reduced by the conquest and enslaved by Solomon. Again the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms fit perfectly, the chronology is right, they were in the same area as the Syrians and the plural ‘kings’ fits very well with the nature of these states, which were not unified into a polity, but consisted of a number of small kingdoms.
Also, just a word on the ‘Neo-Hittites’, these are not the Hittites of Anatolia either, ‘yet the language and the religion of these ‘Neo-Hittites’ inscriptions are not those of the Hittites of Hattusas, nor are they those of the common people who inhabited Syria under the Hittite Empire (for they were Hurrians). (O R Gurney, The Hittites, page 40. Penguin Books Ltd, Middlesex 1952)
*Note that Hattusas is Boghazkoy
Gurney’s book was written over 50 years ago, so there really is no excuse for keeping this Hittite myth going, no scholar worth his salt ever links the Hittites of Palestine with the Anatolian ones. Gurney has an interesting chapter entitled ‘The Hittites in Palestine’ in which he states:
We have to deal with the paradoxical fact that, whereas the Hittites appear in the Old Testament as a Palestinian tribe, increasing knowledge of the history of the ancient people of Hatti has led us even farther away from Palestine, until their homeland has been discovered in the heart of the Anatolian plateau. That the Syrian vassals states of the Hittite Empire were confined to the area north of Kadesh on the Orontes, and that although Hittite armies reached Damascus, they never entered Palestine itself (Gurney. P59).
So we can see from the biblical texts that there are two distinctive groups that are referred to as Hittite, neither is the Hittites of Boghazkoy, it is incorrect to identify them as such. The Hittites that are attested to at Boghazkoy were never anywhere near Palestine:
In the consideration of the Hittite history two main periods can be distinguished, the period before 1200 BCE and the period after that date. In the first period the Hittite Empire centred in inner Anatolia, extended southward toward the northern reaches of Syria, but never as far south as Palestine. In the second period, small Hittite kingdoms and principalities covered vast areas in Anatolia and Syria, none of them extending south of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. (‘Hittites in the Old Testament’ in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, G A Buttrick (ed) Abingdon Press New York 1962)
Here is another extract; this is from the Oxford Companion to the Bible:
Among the people of Israel found in Canaan were the ‘Sons of Heth’ members of a Canaanite family (Gen 10:15). Esau married two of their women (Gen 26:34) and later Ezekiel decried Israel’s religious faithlessness by calling her a descendant of a Canaanite and a Hittite, Ephron the Hittite sold his field and cave near Hebron to Abraham. The names given for these Hittites are all Semitic and it is likely that they all were members of a local Canaanite tribe. The Hittites of Anatolia, (modern Turkey) were another people, forgotten until excavations at Boghazkoy were begun in 1906. (Entry ‘Hittites’ page 285, Bruce Metzger and Michael D Coogan (eds) Oxford University Press, New York 1993)
An excellent book on the Hittites is the fairly recent book by Trevor Bryce entitled ‘The Kingdom of the Hittites’, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998, in which he claims that archaeologists have an embarrassment of riches at Boghazkoy, is this good news for the Bible though, apparently not?
Bryce does tell us the origin of the apparent problem the term Hittite:
How did the term ‘Hittite’ come about? It arose out of a few scattered biblical references to a Canaanite people after the end of the Bronze Age. The term was subsequently adopted by scholars to refer to the Late bronze Age kingdom in Anatolia. As far as we know, the Late Bronze Age Hittites never used any ethnic of political term to designate themselves, certainly not one which reflected an Indo-European origin. They simply called themselves ‘people of the land of Hatti (pp. 18-19).
So you can see that the Anatolian ‘Hittites’ never referred to themselves as Hittites in the biblical term, it appears that we had a problem in the bible with a people there was no evidence for, then we had the discovery of a people at Bogzhakoy and for no real reason they were lumped together, and lo and behold the Bible is proven once again! It really is scandalous that this deliberate misleading of the general public is being maintained, and what is worse, it is being maintained by people who allegedly follow a god who insists that his followers tell the truth.
A final word on the Hittites from Bryce:
The Bible contains a number of references to Hittites and Hittite kings. What connections, if any, do these ‘Biblical Hittites’ have with the kingdom which dominated Anatolia and parts of Syria in the Late Bronze Age, and its successors in the centuries which followed?
A number of references place the Hittites in a Canaanite context, slearly as a local Canaanite tribe, descendants of the eponymous patriarch Heth, and encountered by Abraham around Hebron. The names of these ‘Hittites’ are for the most part of Semitic type; for example Ephron, Judith, Zohar. These were presumably the Hittites who were subject to Solomon and who were elsewhere in conflict with the Israelites. They were a small group living in the hills during the era of the Patriarchs and the later descendants of that group, and clearly to be distinguished from the Hittites of historical records (emphasis mine).
The Hittites of the Bible are simply not the same people who are evidenced at Boghazkoy, this is a very well known fact within archaeological circles, so why it is still being hyped?
So I think we can put this ‘biblical archaeology’ myth to bed once and for all.
Brian.

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Prozacman
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 53 (68025)
11-20-2003 2:25 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Brian
11-20-2003 1:59 PM


Very interesting stuff Brian. You are certainly correct with regard to people(like me) having been misled by the Biblical Archeaology crowd. In my case it was the church youth group leader when I was about 15(I'm 42 now). He used the argument that we could trust the Bible was God's word because the archeaologists found the Hittites, but he was vague about just who they were.
Anyway, I have studied somewhat the ancestors of the Anatolian Hittites, and you may be interested to know that these people partly originated from the prehistoric(appx. 7000 BC) settlement town of Catal Hoyuk. But regarding the Hittites of Palestine I would like to learn more.
Apparently, people want to believe so badly that they ignore or twist the new facts when those facts go against their long-held cherished beliefs. The Catholic inquisitors did this to Galileo when he invited them to look thru his telescope to prove that the earth revolved around the sun, and they refused.
[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 11-20-2003]

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ConsequentAtheist
Member (Idle past 6238 days)
Posts: 392
Joined: 05-28-2003


Message 3 of 53 (68182)
11-20-2003 9:27 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Brian
11-20-2003 1:59 PM


Countless times I have heard ‘well archaeology confirms everything in the Bible, look at the Hittites!’ I swear if I hear about the Hittites and the Bible again I will scream LOL.
You travel in a strange crowd. I'm 58. I've been an atheist for most of those years, and my interest in paleontology and archeology is almost as old. And I've never heard anyone say such a thing. Are you sure that you didn't just make it up to justify a book report?

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joshua221 
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 53 (68196)
11-20-2003 9:46 PM


Pretty funny CA, also pretty harsh. I've enjoyed some History channel shows on the Bible and Archeology. I haven't heard anything about the Hittites and Archeology so far.
------------------
Bible
Search Results
"love" was found 865 times in 751 verses.
Thats a Whole Lotta Love

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ConsequentAtheist
Member (Idle past 6238 days)
Posts: 392
Joined: 05-28-2003


Message 5 of 53 (68201)
11-20-2003 9:50 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by joshua221
11-20-2003 9:46 PM


Pretty funny CA, also pretty harsh.
There was nothing harsh intended.

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Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 6 of 53 (68250)
11-21-2003 4:04 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by ConsequentAtheist
11-20-2003 9:27 PM


Hi,
Firstly I am not in the habit of making things up LOL,
Secondly, there is no book report involved.
Thirdly, maybe you have simply not read the same materials as I have.
Anyway, here are ten links to sites that claim what I said in my intro, if you are at all interested you can do a Google and look at some others:
My Google search was 'Bible Archaeology Hittites' returned 2, 250 hits, different search strings would also yield different results of course.
1. IBSS - Biblical Archaeology - Hittites
Another important discovery was the Hittites and the decipherment of their texts. Scholars thought the Bible was wrong because there was no evidence of Hittites until Hittite pottery was dug up.
2. Page not found – MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION OF BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Boghaz-Koy: Much to the annoyance of the biblical critics, A.H. Sayce found the capital of the Hittites in 1876. Hugo Winckler, German cuneiform scholar, went to investigate upon hearing about the selling of tablets by the locals. At Boghaz-Koy, he uncovered five temples, a fortified citadel, monumental pictures and 10,000 clay tablets that speak of Boghaz-Koy as the Hittite capital called Hattusha. The Hittites are mentioned 47 times in the Bible.
3. 404 Not Found
There are so many examples that I hardly know where to begin. One of my favorites, however, is the example of the Hittites. For many years critics maintained that the Hittite civilization did not exist because the only historic record of the people was in the Bible. As the result of archaeological discoveries, there are now hundreds of artifacts documenting the Hittite civilization, spanning more than 1,000 years.
4. Forbidden
(Genesis 23:10). Archaeologists and historians, for hundreds of years said: ‘The Bible is wrong. It cannot be God’s book because there is a mistake. There is no evidence of there ever being a people called the Hittites.
No buried cities, no documents mentioning them, nothing at all.’
Because there was no evidence, they didn’t believe that the Bible could be right. Even the Encyclopaedia Britannica had nothing in about Hittites.
Then, an archaeologist discovered an ancient slab with writing on it. This mentioned that someone had had a battle with a nation of people called Hittites! The Bible was right! The following edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica contained lots if information about this people!
5. http://www.plvcc.org/archaeology_and_the_bible.htm
The skeptics once claimed that no such nation as the Hittites ever existed since they were mentioned only in the Bible. They felt that the Hittites were only an imaginary race of people. Records of Egypt and Assyria have now been found which show that the Hittites for nearly seven centuries occupied Northern Syria and Southern Asia Minor and were one of the greatest nations on the earth at that time. Many ruins of Hittite buildings have been found. Thus the claim of the skeptic has been silenced about the Hittites and again our faith remains in the truthfulness of the Bible.
6. Archaeology and the Old Testament
The Hittites played a prominent role in Old Testament history. They interacted with biblical figures as early as Abraham and as late as Solomon. They are mentioned in Genesis 15:20 as people who inhabited the land of Canaan. 1 Kings 10:29 records that they purchased chariots and horses from King Solomon. The most prominent Hittite is Uriah the husband of Bathsheba. The Hittites were a powerful force in the Middle East from 1750 B.C. until 1200 B.C. Prior to the late 19th century, nothing was known of the Hittites outside the Bible, and many critics alleged that they were an invention of the biblical authors.
In 1876 a dramatic discovery changed this perception. A British scholar named A. H. Sayce found inscriptions carved on rocks in Turkey. He suspected that they might be evidence of the Hittite nation. Ten years later, more clay tablets were found in Turkey at a place called Boghaz-koy. German cuneiform expert Hugo Winckler investigated the tablets and began his own expedition at the site in 1906.
Winckler's excavations uncovered five temples, a fortified citadel and several massive sculptures. In one storeroom he found over ten thousand clay tablets. One of the documents proved to be a record of a treaty between Ramesses II and the Hittite king. Other tablets showed that Boghaz-koy was the capital of the Hittite kingdom. Its original name was Hattusha and the city covered an area of 300 acres. The Hittite nation had been discovered!
7. http://www.knls.org/English/trascripts/humble03.htm
If you want a good example of how archaeology goes hand-in-hand with the Bible, let me tell you about the Hittites and how I once visited their capital city in Turkey. As we read through the first few books of the Old Testament, we can find about forty references to the Hittites, and I’ve been interested in the Hittites for a long time. I knew that even though they appear in the Bible, they had been lost to history and forgotten. I knew that critics of the Bible doubted whether there ever was such a race of people and brushed them aside as "myth" or "legend." And I knew that in the twentieth century, archaeologists had uncovered the Hittite capital at Hattusas in Turkey and that we now have a vast amount of information about these Hittites.
8. Page not found - Apologetics Press
However, the year 1876 saw many people changing their minds about both the Hittites and the Bible. An archaeologist, Hugo Winckler, visited a city in Turkey named Boghaz-Ky. Upon excavating portions of the city, he found a breathtaking number of human artifactsincluding five temples, many sculptures, and a fortified castle. But more important, he found a huge storeroom filled with over 10,000 clay tablets. After completing the difficult task of deciphering the tablets, it was announced to the world that the Hittites had been found. The sight at Boghaz-Ky had been the Hittite capital city, Hattusha (see Price, 1997, p. 83).
All the people who had used the absence of archaeological evidence about the Hittites to mock the Bible’s accuracy were shamefaced and silent, and another small piece of evidence was added to the ever-growing mass of facts verifying the Bible’s accuracy.
9. Forbidden!
The Bible refers to a civilization of people called the Hittites, but no other literature has made reference to such a civilization. Critics used to say this was just fiction in the Bible. However, archaeological excavations in the 1950's found the remains of the Hittite empire in the area where the Bible said it was (Turkey/Syria), and Carbon-14 dating tests prove that it existed at the time stated in the Bible (1375-1200 B.C.).
10. http://www.bibleworld.com/arch01.htm
Forgotten people have been brought to life by the archaeological spade. The Hittites, even though mentioned more than 40 times in the Old Testament (Josh. 1:4, et al.), were unknown outside the Bible at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some critics had denied the existence of such a people. By 1906 the Hittite capital at Boghazkoy (near Ankara, the capital of modern Turkey) was being excavated by Hugo Winckler. I have visited the site as well as the Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara where the Hittite treasures are housed. Courses in Hittite civilization are now offered in major universities.
The names of numerous individuals who are mentioned in the Scriptures have been found on inscriptions, seals, and bullae from the period in which they lived. Ahab, Jehu, Mesha, Jehoiachin, Gemariah, Baruch, and Sargon are just a few of those named in the Bible who are also now known from historical records outside the Bible.
Since you have been involved in paleontology and archaeology for over 50 years you must love the subject as much as I do. You must also be as horrified as I am when you see the discipline being abused in this fashion.
I have been sent literally hundreds of email over the last few years regarding the Hittites and the Bible, I have no reason to make these claims up.
I must admit that I am very very surprised that you haven't heard this claim before. Anyway, perhaps we just mmove in different circles.
Brian.

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ConsequentAtheist
Member (Idle past 6238 days)
Posts: 392
Joined: 05-28-2003


Message 7 of 53 (68258)
11-21-2003 6:00 AM


Nice Google search. I did a similar search for this forum and found the topic far less attested.
[This message has been edited by ConsequentAtheist, 11-21-2003]

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Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 8 of 53 (68262)
11-21-2003 7:06 AM
Reply to: Message 7 by ConsequentAtheist
11-21-2003 6:00 AM


Hi,
I wasn't specifically talking about people at this forum, I was speaking in general terms. This misconception is like a rash all over the Internet.
I am not claiming that everyone who claims this is deliberately misleading others, they more than likely believe that it is true. However, these stories have to originate somewhere and I believe it is those who set themselves up as an authority on Near Eastern archaeology that have been so desparate to prove things from the Bile that they have put two and two together and come up with five.
I believe that most of the people presenting this Hittite argument simply have read it somewhere and swallowed it hook, line and sinker, they haven't taken any time to look into it.
Brian.

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 Message 7 by ConsequentAtheist, posted 11-21-2003 6:00 AM ConsequentAtheist has replied

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ConsequentAtheist
Member (Idle past 6238 days)
Posts: 392
Joined: 05-28-2003


Message 9 of 53 (68264)
11-21-2003 7:21 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by Brian
11-21-2003 7:06 AM


I wasn't specifically talking about people at this forum, ...
One would think that a pervasive argument would have at least some representation on a board such as this, but perhaps not.
believe that most of the people presenting this Hittite argument simply have read it somewhere and swallowed it hook, line and sinker, they haven't taken any time to look into it.
You're no doubt right. I wouldn't know. Like I said, this is the first time I've encountered the argument.

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 Message 8 by Brian, posted 11-21-2003 7:06 AM Brian has not replied

  
Tsegamla
Inactive Member


Message 10 of 53 (68543)
11-22-2003 1:19 PM


So, why did they call them Hittites? When they found that the Anatolian kingdom didn't ever really give itself a name, did some guy just say something like, "Hey, guys! Looks like we found us the missing Hittites over here!" out of sarcasm? Were they just putting a name with no people together with a people with no name?

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JIM
Inactive Member


Message 11 of 53 (68585)
11-22-2003 4:22 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Tsegamla
11-22-2003 1:19 PM


Tsegamla writes:
So, why did they call them Hittites? When they found that the Anatolian kingdom didn't ever really give itself a name, did some guy just say something like, "Hey, guys! Looks like we found us the missing Hittites over here!" out of sarcasm? Were they just putting a name with no people together with a people with no name?
The Hitties were an Indo-European people, from the east and were gradually absorbed by the Hatti. They were among the first to perfect the war chariot, and became a great power in the ancient world. Their state and culture developed in central Anatolia, as the Hatti before them. The Hittite Period is roughly contemporary with the height of the Minoan civilization on Crete, the rise and fall of Mycenaen Greece, and the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt, but, despite evidence from ample cuneiform inscriptions, there is no consensus over which branch of Indo-European it belongs to.
I believe they were called the Hittites because they ruled of a place called "The Land of Hatti." Since Angloes can't pronounce for sh*t, they're called the Hitties. And Hatti eastern Anatolian peninsula, but that's just a guess.

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Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 12 of 53 (68717)
11-23-2003 4:52 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Tsegamla
11-22-2003 1:19 PM


Hi,
Bryce explained how they came to be named Hittites:
How did the term ‘Hittite’ come about? It arose out of a few scattered biblical references to a Canaanite people after the end of the Bronze Age. The term was subsequently adopted by scholars to refer to the Late bronze Age kingdom in Anatolia. As far as we know, the Late Bronze Age Hittites never used any ethnic of political term to designate themselves, certainly not one which reflected an Indo-European origin. They simply called themselves ‘people of the land of Hatti (pp. 18-19).
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
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Tsegamla
Inactive Member


Message 13 of 53 (68731)
11-23-2003 10:53 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Brian
11-23-2003 4:52 AM


I understand that they were given the name 'Hittites'. My question is more on the subject of why that particular term was chosen. Did the original archaeologists who discovered the kingdom think it was the Biblical Hittite kingdom, so they named it that, but later it turned out not to be, but the name stuck?
I just don't see why they weren't named the 'Hattites' or something similar. JIM's explanation makes sense, that somehow the pronunciations got mixed up and it turned into 'Hittite'.

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rosa
Inactive Member


Message 14 of 53 (69063)
11-24-2003 7:22 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Tsegamla
11-23-2003 10:53 AM


Hello, this is my first try to join in after lurking for a month or so.
I dimly, very dimly remember reading about correspondence found in both Egypt and Anatolia, letters from a person of Egyptian nobility, in political trouble, wanting to arrange a strategic marriage..... the El Amarna Letters?
It was long ago, when the book _Gods, Graves and Scholars_ was en vogue and the writings of Petrie, and Wooley at Ur.
Maybe someone can tell me more?

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Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 15 of 53 (69439)
11-26-2003 5:42 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Tsegamla
11-23-2003 10:53 AM


Hi,
Sorry about the delay in replying, there was a book I had to collect to reference correctly.
My question is more on the subject of why that particular term was chosen. Did the original archaeologists who discovered the kingdom think it was the Biblical Hittite kingdom, so they named it that, but later it turned out not to be, but the name stuck?
Yes this is essentially what happened:
It can be traced to Archibald Sayce who, in a lecture to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London in 1882, claimed that far from being a small Canaanite tribe who dwelt in the Palestinian hills, the Hittites were the people of a great empire stretching across the face of the ancient Near East, from the Aegean Sea’s eastern shoreline to the banks of the Euphrates, centuries before the age of the Patriarchs ( Trevor Bryce, Life and Society in the Hittite World , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, page 3).
He had suspected for some time that Boghazkoy was the capital of the Hittites because some hieroglyphic scripts found at Aleppo and Hamath in Northern Syria were in fact the work of the Hittites (the biblical Hittites) and matched the script on a monument at Boghazkoy.
But in 1902, 20 years after Sayce's claim, in the El Amarna tablets there were two tablets identified by J A Knudtzon as containing a new Indo-European language. The cuneiform script was found among the diplomatic correspondence of the Pharaohs Akhenaten and his father Amenhophis III. On one of the tablets, Knudtzon noticed that a king was mentioned who belonged to a country to called Arzawa, so naturally enough he called the new language Arzawan. His claim hardly found any support with contemporary scholars until it became known that a few fragments of clay tablets written in the same language had been found at Boghazkoy and as more tablets were unearthed in 1906, many more ‘Arzawan’ scripts were found.
Although this was an important discovery for philologists, it presented a few problems for Sayce's theory. Central Anatolia wasn’t the place where you would expect to find early speakers of Indo-European, so two immediate questions had to be answered, first who were these people and second, how had they got there. First one was easy to answer. The tablets clearly showed that Boghazkoy was ancient Hattusas, the capital of the land of Hatti.
Here is the rub, obviously the language of the tablets was that used by the people of Hatti, so the language was ‘consequently re-christened ‘Hittite’, and the name ‘Arzawan’ was quietly forgotten.’ ( J G Macqueen ‘The Hittites and their contemporaries in Asia Minor’ Thames and Hudson London 1986. page 22)
It is an interesting term ‘re-christened’ if I were a sceptic I would say that someone jumped the gun a little here in naming the people of the land of Hatti as ‘Hittites.’
The Arzawa tablets contradict Sayce's naming of the Boghazkoy inhabitants as being Hittite because they were written in cuneiform script and not in hieroglyphics.
The ‘Hieroglyphic Hittites’ at Boghazkoy is also an Indo-European language and, although it has certain similarities to the cuneiform, it is by no means identical with it (Macqueen page. 24)
The modern use of Hittite is clearly articficial when used in the Boghazkoy context, only a person interested in maintianing this biblical perfection myth would cling to the Hittites in the Bible as the Boghazkoy 'Hittites'
Therefore our current designation of Hittite should be understood to represent an artificial categorisation of the peoples who lived under the political banner of Hattusa. (Ronald L. Gorny ‘Environment, Archaeology, and History in Hittite Anatolia. Biblical Archaeologist, Volume 52, 1989, page 82)
The people who occupied central Anatolia were of mixed ethnic origins, Hattians, Hurrians, Luwians and numerous smaller groups, they called themselves by the traditional name of the region in which they lived, the ‘people of the Land of Hatti’.
Bryce hopefully puts the final nail in the coffin of this myth when he sates that ‘Largely for the sake of convenience, and because of their long-assumed biblical connections, we have adopted for them the name ‘Hittite’
So yes, the name was given in haste, before the evidence was properly examined, and the term simply stuck, as Bryce said it was for the sake of convenience.
Here is another very important point. Apart from one reference to ‘the land of Hittites’, which sometimes denotes Syria, all other references to the Hittites in the Old Testament are to a small group living in the hills during the era of the Patriarchs. In Hoffner’s opinion ( ‘The Hittites and Hurrians’ in D J Wiseman’s ‘Peoples of the Old Testament Times’, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973, page. 196) this group is neither Hurrian (textual error hty for hry ) nor the group of Kurushtameans which migrated to the ‘land of Egypt’.
The textual errors referred to actually help to solve the historical enigma of having Hittites in Palestine, as we know from the archives from Boghazkoy, the ‘Hittites’ there were never in Palestine. If we replace with ‘Horite’ the name ‘Hittites’ many, if not most of the historical problems disappear. This only involves changing one consonant, and in Hebrew consonant text, this would be palaeographically admissible (Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, page 615)
It has always appeared strange that the Horites, who played such an important role in the history of Syria and Palestine in the 2nd millennium BCE have received very scant mention in the Old Testament, far out of proportion to their real importance. By replacing ‘Hittites’ when the term designates people in Palestine, with ‘Hurrians’, we may obtain a picture that is fully compatible with our knowledge of Hurrian history. (IDB. p.615)
The people of Boghazkoy only ever referred to themselves as people of 'the Land of Hatti'. Sayce incorrectly identified them as the biblical 'Hittites', scholars adpoted the term, and by the time that it was shown that they were not the biblical 'Hittites' the name had become too well assosciated with them, so for the sake of convenience, it was kept.
It wasn't that difficult to find this information out, of course I have access to a wonderful library, I really don't know how the so-called 'biblical archaeologists' on many Christian websites maintain this myth, they should do their homework.
Hope this helps, if you require any more information, or you would like anything here clarified, then let me know please.
Brian.
[This message has been edited by Brian, 11-26-2003]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by Tsegamla, posted 11-23-2003 10:53 AM Tsegamla has not replied

  
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