I was doing some research on Hittites, and came across your post. It seems you have answered your own objection in your quote from the Anchor Bible Dictionary:
"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"
Here it is acknowledged that at least Joshua 1:4 may well be refering to the Anatolian Hittites, and then there are the Biblical references to the Neo-Hittites, which you try to too quickly dismiss as unrelated to the Anatolian Hittites. But cf Bryce 2005 p351.
So too your dismissal of any relationship between Canaanite and Neo-Hittites. Thus regarding your Bryce quote, you omit his following comments:
"Yet there are other biblical references to the Hittites and their land which are inconsistent with the notion of their being a small Canaanite hill tribe... Is there any connection between the two sets of references, any relationship between the local Canaanite tribe and the neo-Hittite kingdoms?... Hoffner has commented that Hittite cultural influence reaching the Israelites indirectly via the Canaanite kingdoms, after a passage of time, is detectable in many instances. His contention is that through many years of contact with cities in Syria and Phoenicia (Carchemish, Aleppo, Ugarit) Hittite civilization left its marks there. From there Hittite influences may have filtered southwards to Israel just prior to the beginning of the kingdom of David." (New Edition, 2005, p356)
And, yes, I have omitted some bits because I didn't want to type it all, and I'm only quoting the bits to counter your over-stated conclusions.
Regards,
Craig.
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