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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Jacob-El
  • Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:33:39 EST


Jacob-El

One of the leading scholarly commentators on the Book of Genesis is Gordon J.
Wenham, who makes this interesting observation at p. 176 of his “World
Biblical Commentary: Genesis 16-50” (1994):

“The name Jacob…is usually regarded as a shortened form of Y( QB-)L ya[ayin]
qob-el ‘may El protect, reward’ (the meaning of the verb is unsure) and is
a typical Amorite name of the early second millennium. It is found in
inscriptions from Chagar Bazar (1800 B.C.), Qatuna (c. 1700 B.C.), and
occasionally
in second-millennium Egyptian texts.”

Did the Egyptians record “Joseph-El” as a geographical place name in mid-2nd
millennium BCE Canaan? If so, is the Shephelah the locale where this old
Amorite name shows up as a city name in the secular history of the Late
Bronze
Age? Would that then indicate that the Shephelah, but not the Negev Desert,
was
associated with Amorites (like Mamre) in the Bronze Age?

The Bible would seem to have near-blanket coverage of the names of all
cities, towns and important villages in southern Canaan in Biblical times.
Scholars
generally concede that the Egyptians recorded “Jacob-El” as a geographical
place name in Canaan. But to the best of my knowledge, scholars have been
unable to identify the Biblical Hebrew equivalent of “Jacob-El” as a
geographical
place name in the Bible. But it’s got to be there. This is largely a Hebrew
language question, as we compare Egyptian letters to Biblical Hebrew
equivalent letters in order to try to find the elusive “Jacob-El” in the
Bible as a
geographical place name in Late Bronze Age Canaan.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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