Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Yaakov (J) Stein:
 
You wrote:  “Where do you see a variant without the ayin?”
 
I was thinking primarily about the following two variants given by Gesenius.  
There is an ayin present in these two variants, but we are no longer seeing 
an ayin alone as the ending.  
 
1.  The First Variant is aleph-resh-bet-ayin-tav.  That is the masculine form 
of Arbe/aleph-bet-resh-ayin.  Note that the simple ayin ending has been 
replaced by an ayin-tav ending.
 
With the aleph being a prosthetic that might be dropped, we could easily have 
resh-bet-ayin-tav/R-B-ayin-T as being the original name of this city, before 
there were any Hebrews in the world.  Later, the Hebrews decided to spelled 
the name of this city as aleph-resh-bet-ayin, seeing the root as meaning 
“four” 
(not “great”), and putting it in feminine form.  A conquering Egyptian 
pharaoh in the mid-15th century BCE (before there were any Hebrews), though, 
would 
likely hear that old Canaanite town name as R-B-T.  That is Item #105 on the 
Thutmosis III list.  R-B plus an ending that includes a T.  If the ayin was 
just part of an ending, the ayin could be dropped by the Egyptians.
 
In the Amarna Letters, R-B-ayin-T comes out as “Rubutu”.  The final U never 
comes into Hebrew.  So we have Rubut for R-B-ayin-T.  That’s another great 
match.  Perhaps the second U represented an ayin, or substituted for the 
ayin, or 
perhaps the ayin just got lost in the shuffle.  What we have, once again, is 
R-B plus an ending that includes a T.  Amarna Letters EA 289: 13 and 290: 11 
feature the ruler of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba, complaining about many towns in 
southern Canaan and on the southern border of northern Canaan.  We would 
fully 
expect Abdi-Heba to complain about the town near which the Patriarchs 
sojourned.  
There’s no “Hebron” in the Amarna Letters, because Hebron was the Valley of 
Hebron in the Patriarchal Age.   But there’s “Rubut” as big as life, which is 
a nice match to a slight variation on the “Arbe” in the Patriarchal 
narratives.
 
2.  The Second Variant, this time on the number “four”, is 
resh-bet-yod-ayin-yod (meaning “fourth”).  The prosthetic aleph is gone.  
Instead of a simple 
ayin ending, we now have yod-ayin-yod.  Consider also resh-bet-ayin, which is 
another variant.  Both of those variants look a lot like resh-bet-he at 
Joshua 
15: 60.  (That could also be he-resh-bet-he, or he + resh-bet-he.)  The 
ending is slightly different, but everything else is the same.  We cannot 
count on 
the ending being a simple ayin.  Resh-bet-he is very close to resh-bet-ayin.
 
This town, “Rabbah”, is said to be of unknown location in Judah, but it 
could have been just north of Judah.
 
3.  If the geographical names of cities near which the Patriarchs are 
portrayed as sojourning in the Patriarchal narratives are historical, rather 
than 
being fictional, then we should be able to find in the historical record the 
city 
near which all three Patriarchs sojourn.  There’s no “Hebron” in the secular 
historical records of Thutmosis III and the Amarna Letters.  That’s because 
Hebron was a valley.  But we see slight variations on “Arbe” just where we 
would expect to see them.  Thutmosis III brags of conquering RBT, and 
Abdi-Heba 
of Jerusalem complains that he is being muscled out of Rubut.  Those are 
slight 
variations on Arbe, whose masculine variant could be 
R-B-ayin-T/resh-best-ayin-tav/R-B-T.  All three feature R-B + ending, with 
the ending featuring a T.  
That city, which was not located near the modern city of Hebron, was still 
known in the 1st millennium BCE, as we see “Rabbah” in Joshua (this time 
without 
the optional T in the ending).
 
4.  There is no reason to think that the ancient Canaanite city names in the 
Patriarchal narratives are fictional.  I have identified 12 cities near which 
the Patriarchs are portrayed as sojourning in the Patriarchal narratives, 
when 
the Patriarchs are sojourning in Canaan.  12 out of 12 such cities are Late 
Bronze Age cities, attested in Egyptian secular historical documents.  These 
are not fictional cities.  Why have scholars missed all but Shechem and 
Dothan 
of these 12 cities?  Because scholars err in thinking that the other 10 
cities 
are fictional cities in southern Canaan.  In fact, those other 10 cities are 
historical cities in  n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  Canaan, as shown by the Late Bronze 
Age 
historical records.
 
If the Patriarchal narratives are using accurate Late Bronze Age geography, 
then there must be a city of “Arbe” in the Late Bronze Age secular historical 
record.  There is.  For the reasons explained above, instead of having a 
simple ayin ending, “Arbe” might be expected to be R-B plus an ending that 
includes a T, in the secular historical records.  It’s RBT as item #105 on 
the 
Thutmosis III list, and “Rubut” in Amarna Letters EA 289: 13 and 290: 11 from 
Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem.  All the scholars have missed those matches, because 
all 
scholars woodenly insist that both Hebron and Arbe must be located south of 
Jerusalem.  T’ain’t true.  The modern city of Hebron is located south of 
Jerusalem.  But that’s not where the Patriarchs sojourned.  No, the 
Patriarchs 
sojourned north of Jerusalem, near RBT/Rubut.
 
If we are willing to look to  n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  Canaan, we instantly find all 
10 Late Bronze Ages cities near which the Patriarchs are portrayed as 
sojourning in the Patriarchal narratives.  The scholars have missed all 10 of 
these 
matches not because it takes too much linguistic stretching, but rather 
because 
no scholar has ever looked to northern Canaan for any such matches.  But they’
re all there, if we’re willing to look to northern Canaan.
 
Nothing in the Patriarchal narratives matches the mid-1st millennium BCE 
world of JEPD in Jerusalem.  No, everything in the Patriarchal narratives 
instead 
matches the world of the first Hebrews in  n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  Canaan in the 
Late 
Bronze Age.  Rather than being late fiction, the Patriarchal narratives are 
early history, having been composed by the first Hebrew, who lived in 
northern 
Canaan in the Late Bronze Age.  All 12 cities near which the Patriarchs are 
portrayed as sojourning in the Patriarchal narratives, when the Patriarchs 
are 
in Canaan, duly show up in the Egyptian secular historical records from the 
Late Bronze Age.  12 out of 12 such cities are located in  n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  
Canaan.  There’s not a single fictional city in the lot, and not a single 
city that 
did not yet exist in the Late Bronze Age.  The pinpoint secular historical 
accuracy of the Late Bronze Age geography of the Patriarchal narratives is 
breathtaking.  If, that is, we are willing to look to  n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  
Canaan.
 
There’s nothing wrong with northern Canaan.  Not a single Hebrew lived in 
Jerusalem in southern Canaan in the mid-2nd millennium BCE.  Jerusalem did 
not 
come into the lives of the Hebrews, much less become their holy city, until 
the 
1st millennium BCE (or until just slightly before the beginning of the 1st 
millennium BCE), long after the Patriarchal Age was over.  There’s no 
Jerusalem 
in the Patriarchal narratives because Jerusalem meant nothing to the first 
Hebrews, who lived in northern Canaan.
 
If we are willing to look to northern Canaan, we see that all the geography 
of Canaan in the Patriarchal narratives makes perfect sense.  
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




**************Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family 
favorites at AOL Food.      
(http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)