Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

Yitzhak Sapir  wrote:  
   "I am not sure why someone thinks that "yhwh" is Aramaic. 

 It could just as well be Hebrew.  I understand (based on

  memory of past discussions here) that neither "hwh" nor 

 "yhwh" are attested or known prior to the 1st millenium  BCE." 

    

    One can find HWH as the verb 'to be' in an Aramaic 

inscription in a ninth/eigth  BCE century Aramaic inscription.  Check it in 
the KIA 

(remember, the editorial language is German) under Aramaic

 Inscriptions; whereas in the Hebrew inscriptions the verb is

 HYH.

   As for the root HYH in  the Hebrew Bible for 'to be', it 

is attested  roughly 2000 times ( an electronic count here 

would be helpful!); this can be compared with root HWH  in the

HB, again for the verb 'to be', which appears 5 or 6 times.

   

   Obviously the conclusion that the root HYH served as the 

standard verb for 'to be' in Hebrew is not far fetched; very

 rare occurrences of HWH in this verbal function would 

 have been under Aramiac influence. 

   Please keep in mind that the above remarks refer 

specifically to verbs.

   Uri

                
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>From kwrandolph AT email.com  Wed Jun 28 13:20:57 2006
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Yigal:

You can't rule out that two individuals sharing the=20
same name were involved. Especially a name like Dan.

Genesis 14 mentions that Abraham and his troop=20
caught up to the four kings at a place called Dan,=20
then pursued them to the left side (i.e. north) of=20
Damascus. If the four kings followed the main=20
trading route from Sodom to Damascus, that would=20
indicate that Dan in Abraham's day was south of the=20
Sea of Galilee if in the Jordan Valley, or possibly=20
along the King's Highway if to the east.

Further, as I pointed out in the example of=20
Beersheba, Dan in Abraham's day needn't have been=20
the name of a town, just the name of a commonly=20
used pasture, well, or some other such feature.

The next mention of Dan as a toponym in Tanakh that=20
I know of is in the last chapter of Deuteronomy,=20
which most people agree was appended onto the book=20
later, after when the tribe of Dan had captured and=20
renamed Laish to Dan. All other references to Dan=20
as a toponym are later.

Karl W. Randolph.

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
>=20
> I agree, although there are also limits on using the "it must be
> someone/somewhere else by the same name" excuse. You mentioned Dan. In Ge=
n.
> 14:14, Abraham persues Lot's captors "as far as Dan". However the city of
> Dan, as we know from Joshua, Judges and in fact from extrabiblical
> references as well, was called Laish or Leshem until it was conquered by =
the
> tribe of Dan and renamed after their progenitor. Since the original Dan,
> ansector of the tribe, was Abraham's great-grandson, the reference (as we=
ll
> as that in Deut. 34:1) must be anachronistic. To claim that "it must be
> somewhere else called Dan" does not work in this case, since the
> geographical contexts make it very clear which Dan is meant, and of course
> that Dan was a well-know city, often used as a geographical reference ("f=
rom
> Dan to Beer-sheba" etc.), and we DO know the biblical toponymy of Israel
> well enough, as to make it unlikely (albeit not impossible!) that there w=
as
> another such city which we have never heard about.
> Of course, to those who believe that the Torah was written by Moses, who =
was
> a prophet, this is no problem. God, who wanted the text to be relevant to
> people living in future generations, had Moses use a term that they would
> understand. Most of Moses' contemporaries didn't know the Land that well
> anyway. To those who do not use "prophecy" as part of their scholarly
> discourse, the ONLY probable solution is that these passages (at the very
> least!) were written many generations after Moses and refect the geography
> of the writer's day (or his concept of HIS past).
>=20
> There are other examples as well.
>=20
> Yigal

--=20
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