Biblical Hebrew Forum

[kgraham0938 AT comcast.net]

I think because $HIYR is part of a construct chain, and since HA$HIYR is 
definite, the entire phrase is definite.  That is why it is normally 
translated as "the Song of Songs."  And futhermore it is being taken as a 
superlative genitive.
--
Kelton Graham 
KGRAHAM0938 AT comcast.net

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Bob MacDonald <bobmacdonald AT shaw.ca> 

> In the beginning of this book, I see the phrase translated as The Song of 
> Songs. Does the prefix apply a definite article to the whole phrase or just 
> to the 'songs'? Could it be read as A song of the songs? - i.e. implying 
> there were other songs in the cited group. 
> 
> 
> 
> thanks 
> 
> 
> 
> Bob 
> 
> 
> 
> Bob MacDonald 
> 
> Victoria BC 
> 
> http://gx.ca 
> 
> http://bmd.gx.ca 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ 
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>From yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com  Fri Jan 26 08:30:11 2007
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Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:30:02 +0000
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Proto-Canaanite Spells in Hieroglyphics
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On 1/25/07, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

> Readers of Hebrew can also follow up here:
> http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/533/840.html
> http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=816788
> and also read the PDF of the article, "Proto-Canaanite-Spells in
> Hieroglyphics: An Initial Review of the Development of Hebrew in the
> 3rd Millenium BCE":
> http://hebrew-academy.huji.ac.il/PDF/steiner.pdf (Hebrew)
>
> From looking at the article, he makes some interesting comments,
> from defining the original meaning of "qbb" as "spell"/"incant" rather
> than "curse", and an ancient plural of words such as ph "mouth" in
> "pahot", a word "qawu" meaning "saying" (compare Ps 19:5) to
> suggesting a possible literary connection between the "mother of
> snake" )m xw to Eve, )m kl xy ("xw" being an ancient Canaanite
> word for snake, that survived as late as Galilean Aramaic).

Now having read it through, Steiner makes a good case that these are
early Canaanite or Hebrew phrases.  These phrases appear in the
Pyramid Texts (the title of this post and his article should have been
translated with "Pyramid Texts" rather than "Hieroglyphics," even though
the Pyramid Texts are in Hieroglyphics).  The article explains that the
Pyramid Texts, starting with that of King Unas, whose texts include
the Canaanite phrases, are the earliest religious writings in Egypt,
dating at least to the 24th century BCE but may be even earlier.
Unlike other Canaanite words that are attested, these are complete
phrases in what is probably the dialect of Byblos.  The decipherment
is substantiated by the fact that the Canaanite phrases complete and
interpret the Egyptian text in which they are placed.

>From a vocabulary point of view, the 7 phrases, each of which is a
short sentence, include the following words or roots common with the
Bible: n+y = "turn aside", )ty = "come", hmyt = "kill", r)y = "see", qbb
= "chant", qw = "message", )m = "mother", dwd = "lover", byt = "house",
+wb = "good/well", rr = "venom", ph = "mouth", )p = "nose", yd = "hand",
pt = "female pudenda", n = "may/please", m(n) = "from", b = "in".  I would
also add ")nw" = "dual first person pronoun."  Steiner includes also ")ry"
in this list, but this is a name in which the intruding snake is
called and it's
not clear to me what this has to do with the Biblical word.  Some words
seem to be direct ancestors of the Hebrew - min = "who" (Hebrew "mi:"),
$w = "that" (Hebrew $-, zw).  The language shows s > h in pronouns and
the hiphil, which did not take place in Akkadian as well as Ugaritic, and it
shows assimilation of the -n- in "mirrirrir" ("from Rir-Rir") which
did not take
place in Arabic or Aramaic.  Some words such as qw and pt are not
attested anywhere else with this meaning except the Bible.  Steiner also
argues that the a: > o shift had already taken place.  This has apparently
already been disputed and I myself find some problems with it.  For example,
the word t-m-t appears with the meaning "(Their hands) will kill."  Since the
subject is "hands", one can probably consider that the final vowel of this
verb was -a: as is reconstructed from other languages for the dual imperfect,
and so should have had a -w suffix if Steiner's claims were correct on this
issue.

Here are the Canaanite (Hebrew?) phrases as Steiner transliterates and
translates them, except for the places where I translated differently which
I marked in brackets.  For the more complete context and discussion, see
the PDF.

235/5 - k-w 3-3-3 i-m-im x-w i-m-im x-w "The message of Rir-Rir, Mother-
Snake, Mother-Snake"
235/7 - n-t i t-ti-i i i-3-i "[Turn away,] my lover, oh, )ry"
236/8 - k-b-b-h i-ti-i-ti-i b-i-ti-i "His/Her chant: come come  to my house."

The following describes how Rir-Rir, the two-headed Mother-Snake
goddess, enters the body of the king's mummy, and transforms him:

281/12 - i-s-s-h k-w k-b-b-h 3-3-3 b-i "[His hiss (is)] the message of his
chant: Rir-Rir is in me."
281/13 - rw n p-h-ti-i rw n p-t-ti-i p-h-ti-i p-t-ti-i "Look please at
my mouths,
look please at my pudenda.  My mouths are my pudenda."
281/15 - m-mi-n inw 3-3-3 t-w-b s' if w-inw hnw "Who are we? Rir-Rir.
[Our nose sniffs well].  We are they."
286/18 - (-b-$-w m-3-3-3 $-w t-m-t i-t-h-nw-w "Hurry from before
Rir-Rir whose hands will kill."

His decipherment, therefore, makes it very likely that what we have here
is indeed the oldest form of Hebrew (as the title of his article suggests),
older even than the Jerusalem Amarna dialect, which I think is a good
candidate as the Late Bronze dialect from which Hebrew developed.

Yitzhak Sapir