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"Amorite" and "Hittite" in the Old Testament

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THE TERMS "AMORITE" AND "HITTITE" IN THE OLD TESTAMENT BY JOHN VAN SETERS Toronto A great deal can be learned about the background and purpose of Biblical narratives as well as the antiquity of the traditions within them, by an examination of geographic and ethnic terminology. Two such terms in the Old Testament are "Amorite" and "Hittite" 1). It has been frequently assumed in the past that these terms are evidence of a very ancient level of the tradition quite apart from the literary sources in which they may be found. The present investigation will call into question the correctness of this assumption and will suggest that certain ideological purposes often lie behind the employment of these terms; that is to say, the use of the terms was rhetorical rather than historical. I. THE USE OF "AMORITE" AND "HITTITE" IN NON-BIBLICAL SOURCES Our historical knowledge of the Amorites and Hittites is de- pendent upon the vast amounts of extra-Biblical materials dating from the second millennium B.C. which have come to light in recent years. From the early second millennium B.C. onward, the whole of the Fertile Crescent from Iraq to Syria-Palestine was dominated by a rather homogeneous and advanced urban civilization of West-Semitic peoples 2). As a convenience modern scholars have given them the ethnic designation of "Amorite", but in one respect this is quite mis- 1) It might have been useful to include the term "Canaanite" also, but this would have greatly increased the size of the present study. The scope and con- clusions of A. VANSELMS, "The Canaanites in the Book of Genesis", OTS 12 (1958), 182-213, are quite different from the present study. This suggests that another examination on a broader scale of the term "Canaanite" is needed. I wish to express my appreciation to Professor F. V. WINNETTwho kindly read an earlier draft of this paper and offered many helpful suggestions. However, I take full responsibility for the views expressed within it. 2) S. MOSCATI,The Semitesin Ancient History (Cardiff, 1959), pp. 52 ff.; J. VAN SETERS,The Hyksos, A New Investigation(New Haven, 1966), pp. 191 ff.; I. J. GELB,"The Early History of the West Semitic Peoples", JCS 15 (1961), 24-47. 65 leading i). "Amorite" is derived from the Akkadian term amurru, used for the general direction "West", as well as to designate nomadic nPoples of the Syrian desert and steppe-land. As early as the Mari texts (ca. 1750 B.C.) it was also applied to a kingdom of central Syria, its chief city being Kadesh on the Orontes 2). This kingdom of Amurru continued to have considerable political importance in the second half of the second millennium B.C. as is known from Hittite and Egyptian sources of this period 3). With the coming of the Sea-peoples and the Arameans, ca. 1200 B.C., the kingdom of Amurru was oblit- erated and "Amorite" no longer had a precise ethnic or political con- notation. What is important to note is that the term "Amorite" was never used during the second millennium B.C. in contemporary sources for any part of Palestine or Transjordan, even though there is extant a large body of literature from Egypt throughout this period which relates directly to Palestine and which makes use of a variety of terms for the region 4). Similarly, in the Egyptian and cuneiform texts of the second millennium B.C. down to ca. 1200 B.C., the .Hatti land, i.e., the "land of the Hittites", stood for the homeland of the successive Hittite kingdoms of A.natolia 5). It is true that from the fourteenth century B.C. onward the Hittites did carve out in Syria an empire of vassal states, its southern boundary being the kingdom of Amurru. But there is no evidence that it held any territory south of this region, this being under the control of Egypt. This situation continued until the end of the Hittite empire, ca. 1200 B.C. Now, nowhere in the Old Testament does the use of "Amorite" and "Hittite" correspond to what we know about these historical peoples in the second millennium B.C. The best explanation for the 1) My own use of "Amorite" in The Hyksos should perhaps be changed to "Nort-West Semitic". 2) J.-R. KUPPER, "Northern Mesopotamia and Syria", Cambridge Ancient History2, fasc. 14, p. 23. 3) A. GOETZE,"The Struggle for the Domination of Syria", CAH2, fasc. 37, pp. 12 ff.; also D. B. REDFORD,History and Chronologyof the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt : SevenStudies (Toronto, 1967), pp. 216 ff. 4) For such terms see A. H. GARDINER,Ancient Egyptian Onomastica(London, 1947); H. W. HELCK,Die BeziehungenÄgyptens zu Vorderasienim 3. und 2. Jahr- tausend v. Cbr. (Wiesbaden, 1962); VAN SETERS,The Hyksos, pp. 186 f. The sug- gestion, found in Y. AHARONI,The Land of the Bible (Philadelphia, 1967), pp. 137 f., that Amurru originally represented a great kingdom throughout Palestine is without any supporting evidence. 5) On the Hittites see O. R. GURNEY,The Hittites2 (Pelican Books, 1961) and A. GOETzE, Kleinasien2(München, 1957). .
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