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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: Yigal.Levin AT biu.ac.il, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Does the Name Caleb Mean "Dog"? Not.
  • Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:52:07 EDT


Prof. Yigal Levin:

1. You wrote: “There is absolutely no evidence that the Kenizzites were
Hurrians.”

Hello, hello?

Consider the following items of evidence:

(a) The Hurrian name Qa-ni-iz-za is attested at Nuzi. As I said in a
prior post, how can one look at Nuzi name Qa-ni-iz-za and not see the
Biblical
name QN-Z-Y? They’re the same name!

(b) The phrase “Caleb/KLB the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite” is found
throughout the Bible. The name KLB is KL-B, being “KeLiP” in Hurrian,
literally meaning “It Pleases”, and implying “It Pleases [Deity]”. The root
here is the well-known Hurrian common word keli, meaning “to please or
satisfy”
. It’s found in the Amarna Letters name Keli-ya, meaning “It Pleases
Teshup”. Given that the Biblical references to KLB/“dog” as a Hebrew common
word are very derogatory, it does not make sense for Joshua’s invaluable
ally,
KL-B the QN-Z-Y, to be thought to have a west Semitic name meaning “Dog”.

(c) The name “Jephunneh” as well makes better sense in Hurrian than in
west Semitic. As a west Semitic name based on the verb PNH, “Jephunneh”/YPNH
would have the odd meaning of “He Turns” or “He Turns Away”. In Hurrian,
YPN-H could be short for the attested phrase “abin Te$$up”, meaning “
Before Teshup”, since YPN could be the Hebrew rendering of the Hurrian common
word abin. Per the Fournet-Bomhard Hurrian language website at p. 80, abin
Te$$uppa means “in front of Te$$ub”, and abi-n is a Hurrian common word
meaning “before”. As in the Biblical names QYN-Y and MDYN, an interior
Hebrew
yod/Y can represent the Hurrian vowel A. B and P are often interchangeable
in
Hurrian, as in Teshub being interchangeable with Teshup. So the Hebrew
letters YPN could represent abin in Hurrian. [As with the Hurrian names
“Uriah”
and “Araunah”, the final he/-H in the Biblical name YPN-H is a
Semiticizing element.]

(d) Ditto for the name of Caleb’s brother, Othniel. The root (TNY of that
name is sometimes said to mean “lion”, allegedly being “from an unused
root meaning ‘to force’”, but no common words like that exist in Biblical
Hebrew, so that’s a wild, unsubstantiated guess. As a Hurrian name, (TN-Y,
we
start with atani meaning “father” in Hurrian. [See p. 21 of the
Fournet-Bomhard website.] As a-ta-ni, that could be rendered in Hebrew as
(TN. The
suffix -Y is -ya, a theophoric [which in Hurrian would likely refer to
Teshup, but it could refer to any deity]. So the name of Caleb’s brother in
Hurrian is A-ta-ni-ya, which to a Hurrian would mean “Teshup (is) The
Father”,
but could also mean “[Deity] (is) The Father”. That Hurrian root has been
nicely Semiticized in the name Othniel by adding -)L at the end, so that this
Hurrian-based name could mean to a Hebrew: “The Lord (is) The Father”,
and could thereby imply “YHWH Is The Father”.

Note that all 4 of these names of Kenizzites make better sense in Hurrian
than in west Semitic.

2. You wrote: “[W]e know so little about the Hurrians in general, that
anyone could say almost anything about them, without anyone else being able
to
prove them wrong.”

Not so.

(a) Since 1943 we have known that there are 2,235 personal names at Nuzi
whose language group has been determined, and that 1,500, or 67%, of them are
Hurrian, whereas 631, or 28%, are Akkadian. Gelb and Purves, “Nuzi
Personal Names”, at p. 5.

(b) And with the publication in 1993 of “Amarna Personal Names” by
Richard Hess, it is possible to determine that almost 75% of the princeling
ruling
class names in Canaan in the Amarna Age may well have been Hurrian
[including pure Hurrian names, Akkadian names, and Sanskrit names].

(c) We also know that near the end of the Amarna Age [exact dates
disputed, but the fighting may have started in Year 14 per Genesis 14: 5], a
Hittite
who had seized the Hittite throne by the ruthless expedient of murdering
his older brother named “Tidal” shockingly and unexpectedly achieved total
victory over the Hurrians throughout Syria in the Great Syrian War. That
quickly led to the Hurrians soon ceasing to be prominent members of the
ruling
class in Canaan, a short-lived phenomenon that is basically limited to the
Amarna Age.

So if 8 of the 10 names at Genesis 15: 18-21 [all but “Amorite” and “
Cananite”] refer to Hurrians in Canaan, as I view the case to be, then that
can
only be referencing the short historical time period of the mid-14th century
BCE. That’s when the Hurrians for a brief moment in time dominated the
ruling class of Canaan, but soon were destined to fall into the dustbin of
history, precisely when the Hebrews historically were on the cusp of
establishing
300 villages in hill country.

The Patriarchal narratives are much older and more historically accurate
than the scholarly community realizes, being an account by the first Hebrew
of
the tempestuous times that gave birth to Judaism as the ill-fated Amarna
Age was dying.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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