Dan to Beersheba

Beersheba might seem like an odd Biblical location to question the traditional identification of.  But I really feel the modern Israeli city of Beerhseba is too far north to work for how often Beersheba is an idiom of Israel's southern border.  And maybe it's too far west too, this idiom should perhaps be the middle of the border otherwise it's more of a corner.

Part of the confusion comes from Gerar, I think Biblical Gerar includes the modern traditional location but extents further to cover a descent chunk of the southern Negev.  It's a region not a city.

There are three chapters of The Bible that define the Southern Border without reference to Beersheba or Gerar.  Numbers 34, Ezekiel 47 and Ezekiel 48, all three can be difficult to interpret because of how they use place names that appear only in these three chapters, plus other aspects that are translated inconsistently.  The Lamsa translation of the Peshita version of Ezekiel seems to make Tamar and Meribah-Kadesh different names of the same location, and I think of all the versions I've read that makes the most sense in the context of other aspects of Biblical geography.

Numbers 34's use of Zin further confirms that Barnea is the same Kadesh (the Wilderness of Paran I think refers to everything west of the Arabah while the Wilderness of Zin is a more specific sub section of Paran.)  I think the reason Numbers 21 at first looks like it's saying they just arrived at a new location is because they did move slightly, but in the grand scheme of things are still on the same dot on a map of Jordan small enough to fit on my Labtop's computer screen.

So all three of these chapters place Kadesh on or very near the eastern edge of the Southern Border.  While the Western part of the border is the Wadi al-Arish.  Kadesh as I've already argued is Petra in Jordan.  The name Beersheba is not introduced till Genesis 21 but it's still implied to be pretty much where Abraham and Sarah settled at the start of chapter 20.  So the information in those chapters of Genesis combined with other references to Kadesh and Paran further support Beersheba being close to the same latitude as Kadesh.  And also about halfway between Kadesh and the Egyptian border.

Frankly I currently think Avdat is about where Beersheba should be.  The ruins at Avdat standing today (you can see them in the 73 film version of Jesus Christ Superstar) are Nabataean ruins contemporary with the Greco-Roman period, as is the name Avdat itself.  Biblical Beersheba I do not expect to have been a bustling Metropolis, it was probably a pretty humble village with no major buildings, the construction of Nabatean Avdat could easily have eliminated whatever remains older Beersheba had.  Avdat did have a Well which was the water source of it's Roman Bathhouse.

Avdat was an important stop on the road connecting Gaza to Petra. That fits pretty well with the picture I've painted above of the relationship between Beersheba and Kadesh.

Then I learned about Shivta, another city on that trade same route who's name actually seems connected to Beersheba's original name in Genesis 26:33 and Joshua 19:2.  

I now think Beersheba was in the area of either Shivta/Sobota/Subeita, Ruheiba (which seems to have the most notable Well in the area according to Dan Gibson) or Elusa.  And that Avdat/Obodat to their south was the ancient settlement of Abida son of Midian.

[I'm maybe retracting the Geographical theories of the Dan half of this post, I somehow missed that Joshua 19 does specifically say Tyre is a city.]

What about Dan's association with the Northern Border?  It's situation is a bit different.  

I believe the area(s) Dan conquered and colonized in Joshua 19:47 and Judges 18 are in fact north of the proper northern border described in Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47-48.  I do have my skepticism of Tel-Dan in the Golan Heights being the specific location of Laish, but I no longer support Veilikvosky's Baalbek argument which I had in the past.

I like Joseph Swartz's argument that the northern Mount Hor of Numbers 34 is the Ras al Nakhara on the Mediterranean sea coast at the modern Israeli-Lebanon border.  In Joshua 19's description of the northern limit of Asher's allotment, I think "Tyre" is not the well known Phoenician city, that city wasn't founded till much later in m view (it doesn't come up Biblically till the Reign of King David), the Hebrew spelling of Tyre is also a word for rock and so I think that's also referring to the Ras al Nakhara.  That rock formation is in my view the northern limit of Asher and the southern limit of Tyre.

Joshua 22:7 refers to a Mount Naphtali near Kedesh.  Kedeshnaphtali is pretty close to Mount Meron which is in fact the tallest mountain in Israel (excluding some peaks in the Golan Heights which is not in my view Biblically part of Israel proper but belongs to Ishmael).  Whenever any Jewish writing refers to a Mount Zaphon I believe they mean Mount Meron, that does not contradict the Mount Zaphon of Ugarit being Jebel Aqra, each is the Mount of the North for that respective people.  In Isaiah 14:13-15 a contrast is made between the "sides of the north" and the "sides of the pit".  The Hebrew word for "pit" used in there is very similar to the word for "well", the same root as the Beer part of Beersheba, so I think this part of Isaiah is making a poetic expression of going from north to south while also going from Heaven to Sheol, from highest to lowest.

The part of Lebanon that is north of Mount Meron is a primarily Marontie part of Lebanon at least according to some maps I've looked at.  And meanwhile between Mount Meron and the Lebanon border are the villages that contained Israel's oldest Maronite communities, Kafr Bir'im and Jish.  But the largest Maronite part of Lebanon is much further north based around the coastal cities of Bkerke, Byblos, Harissa and Juniyah.

In some studies on the DNA haplogroups of Jewish Communities compared to other middle eastern Communities "Lebanese Christians" are among the groups that are even more closely related to Jews then the Arabs are, meaning Biblically they're either Edomites or fellow Israelites, but I think the Edomites are also mingled in with the Arabs.  Most of the Christians in Lebanon are Maronites and the Maronites are also the oldest still existing Lebanese Christian community.  So because of Dan's unique relationship with the Sidonians and Tyre I have abandoned my past sexier theories about the fate of Dan and now view the modern descendants of Dan as being the Maronites.

Naphtali is one of the Tribes carried away into captivity by Assyria but Dan was not.  None the less Dan's absence from the books of Ezra-Nehemiah and 2 Chronicles 30:10-18's account of Hezekiah inviting the surviving northern Israelites to his Passover implies they became just as "lost" as the Tribes who were.

Dan in the Hebrew Bible is often associated with Idolatrous Worship of YHWH, (and sometimes also worshiping other gods) from their taking of Micah's idol to one of Jeroboam's Calves being placed there.  The Maronites are an Eastern Rite Catholic Church and thus uphold the Seventh Ecumenical Council, they have a famous Marian Shrine known as Our Lady of Lebanon.