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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] What Is "Hebron"?
  • Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 11:12:58 EDT


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 Note that the simple ayin ending has been
replaced by an ayin-tav ending.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




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