The Kingdom of Geshur in History and Memory |
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Authors: | Nadav Na'aman |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Jewish History , Tel Aviv University nnaaman@post.tau.ac.il |
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Abstract: | ABSTRACT The article re-examines the biblical, extra-biblical and archaeo-logical sources for the history of Geshur and the way it was memorialized in biblical texts. It demonstrates that archaeological research is the key to estab-lishing the location of the kingdom's capital, its territory, population, econo-my and commercial relations. The written sources complement and corrobo-rate the archaeological data. Evidently―contrary to the conclusions reached in a recently published article―we know quite a lot about this marginal Aramean kingdom. Geshur was located on the northern border of the Kingdom of Israel, far away from Jerusalem; and yet late Judahite scribes, who operated hundreds of years after it disappeared from the political arena, still remembered that it was a separate entity, on par with Maacah, and different from all other neighbour-ing districts enumerated side by side with it. What was unclear to the scribes is the geographical reality in the far north. Hence, their geographical depic-tion of Geshur's (and Maacah's) location was inaccurate. |
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Keywords: | Geshur Maacah Israel |
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