[b-hebrew] Eve and the Hivites

JimStinehart at aol.com JimStinehart at aol.com
Tue Nov 9 09:37:38 EST 2010


George Athas:
 
You wrote:  “It makes perfect sense to me without assuming your 
assumptions, Jim. You don’t need to import foreign elements wholesale into the 
narrative to make sense of it. I really can’t see the need for it.”
 
Absent the historical presence in Canaan of “foreign elements”, how would 
you explain the following aspects of chapter 34 of Genesis?
 
1.  “The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, 
because he had defiled their sister Dinah.  They said to them, ‘We cannot do 
this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would 
be a disgrace to us.’”  Genesis 34: 13-14
 
Why would men with west Semitic names in Canaan be uncircumcised?
 
2.   “Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out 
to see the women of the land.”  Genesis 34: 1
 
Why would Dinah, at such a young age [about 3 years after her father Jacob 
had worked his last 6 years for Laban] go “out to see the women of the land”
?   What’s the significance of that?  And why would young Shechem see such 
a young female as being wife material?
 
3.  “But they [Simeon and Levi] said [to their father Jacob], ‘Should he 
treat our sister like a prostitute?’"  Genesis 34: 31
 
How do you explain that statement?  Young Shechem obviously tried very hard 
to make Dinah his wife, even going to the extreme of getting all the men of 
Shechem to circumcise themselves, rather than treating Dinah like a 
prostitute.
 
*       *       *
 
As set forth in my prior post on this thread, the above three questions 
answer themselves if XW-Y/“Hivites” means “Xeba worshipping people”.  But 
absent such “foreign elements”, it’s hard to make sense out of this story.  
Many, many scholars have suggested that the Hivites are non-Semitic;  that’s 
probably the majority view among scholars.  Yet to the best of my knowledge, 
I am the first one to explain the etymology of XW-Y in a convincing fashion. 
 The key is that an intervocalic B, known to sound like V, could have a 
very similar sound to a W.  George, if we’re willing to consider “foreign 
elements”, then multiple sources indicate that W could indeed be pronounced V in 
the Late Bronze Age:
“The Indo-Aryan sound v was…rendered at Nuzi…as w in the element wara.  
Use of w for v definitely appears in renditions of Indo-Aryan names and words 
at Bogaskoy and in the Amarna Letters.”  Ignace J. Gelb, Pierre M. Purves 
and Allan A. MacRae, “Nuzi Personal Names” (1943), at p. 194.
 
The key is to consider the “foreign elements”.  Then historical 
linguistics can solve this longstanding Biblical mystery.  The Biblical “Hivites”
/XW-Y are the historical Xeba worshippers at Late Bronze Age Shechem in central 
Canaan.  The setting is fully historical, and the story practically tells 
itself, if we consider the notorious pagan goddess Xeba and the other 
corresponding “foreign elements”.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
 
 



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