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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: "G. Zack" <atdgz AT hotmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Jacob-El
  • Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:18:25 -0500


I am not sure what you are saying. Do you think that YICXAQ the son of SARAH is the Hebrew word: he will laugh, from the root CXQ?
I would agree with you that, at least the early, biblical names include the names of foreign deities. It stands to reason that these names were deformed by latter editors of the bible, and were associated, as a cover up, with fanciful etymologies.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Jan 22, 2009, at 5:54 PM, G. Zack wrote:


Isaac,

I am amazed at your statement.

Without citing a host of clear counter examples from the entire ancient Middle East (and for centuries later throughout Europe), let alone other, unrelated cultures, and as analyzed in great detail by, e.g., experts of ancient Semite languages (Cross, Alt and others) it is quite evident, as one common example, that names containing references to deities and their wishful or thanked- for "involvement" in the named individual's very-being abound (names containing il or )el, Yo, Ywo etc. as well as other deities, such as Ba'al etc.).

Perhaps I miss the point. If you meant that a name is grammatically, linguistically not a sentence, this all will grant as self evident and fundamental truism of those disciplines.

But if you deny intended meaningfulness in combining meaningful units into a single label of a meaningful positing of an idea etc.-- I doubt anyone would support that.

I'd rather believe that I missed your argument altogether...

Gad Za"k

From: if AT math.bu.edu
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:30:01 -0500
To: JimStinehart AT aol.com
CC: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Jacob-El

Sorry to say but it is all inherent nonsense. A Personal name is not
a grammatically structured word. In particular, YICXAQ is surely not
he will laugh, YA(AQOB has certainly nothing to do with heel, and R)
UBEN has nothing to do with seeing a son.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Jan 22, 2009, at 9:30 AM, JimStinehart AT aol.com wrote:


Isaac Fried wrote “Absolutely not” to the following statement by
Karl: “The
name found in the Bible is simply Y(QB, which is the imperfective
grammatical
form of the verb "to be crooked" or "to deal crookedly" as in being
less than
honest. A derivative of the same root refers to the ankle, the
permanently
crooked part of the leg.” [I will do a separate post later
regarding Karl’s
new post on this thread.]

I myself see “heel” (not “ankle”) and “crooked” as being involved
with the
name “Jacob”/Y(QB. To the extent that Y(QB s-o-u-n-d-e-d like
“he acts
crookedly”, even if the geographical place name Jacob-El/Y(QB-)L is
not in fact
connected etymologically to “crooked” (but rather, as many scholars
think, is
an old Amorite divine blessing), that would have been a good reason
for the
townspeople of that town in the Shephelah to drop the ayin/( in
their town’s
original name.

I found on the Internet a very nice account of the name “Jacob”,
written by
someone who may be a colleague of our own Yigal Levin. Here is how
Dr. Amos
Bar-da of Bar-Ilan University explains Jacob’s name:

“When he was born, Jacob seized hold of Esau’s heel (Heb. ’akev),
hence his
name Ya’akov. Semantically, the word ‘akev’ ‘heel’ comes from the
depression that the heel creates when a footprint is made in the
ground. The word
means a concavity or hollow, as in Isaiah (40:4): “Let the rugged
ground (akov)
become level and the ridges become a plain.” The original meaning
of the root
’-k-v refers to tangible, physical things: the depression in the
ground and
the bone in the foot. The root then evolved more abstractly in two
directions: 1) in the sense of following sequentially, one thing
on the heel of
another; 2) in the sense of being distorted, crooked, circuitous
and devious.
Indeed, from the point of view of Esau, Jacob’s name is derived not
from ‘heel’
but from ‘devious plotting’: (aoldb://mail/write/
template.htm#_ftn1) [1][1]
“Was he, then, named Jacob that he might supplant me (’-k-v) these two
times? First he took away my birthright and now he has taken away
my blessing!”
(Gen. 27:36).

“Grabbing Esau’s heel in birth and giving the name Ya’akov denotes the
beginning of a cycle of hostility between Jacob and his brother
Esau. This cycle
concludes with a formative event in the history of Jacob’s life,
the episode in
which Esau’s angel wrenches Jacob’s hip and gives him the name Israel.
(aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_ftn2) [1][2] The transition
from Esau’s heel
to Jacob’s thigh and the transition from Esau’s view of Jacob as a
devious,
crooked person, to the view of Jacob as Israel (in Hebrew, Israel
contains the
root y-š-r, ‘straight’) in a sense represents the idea in Isaiah
(40:4) that
the “crooked shall become straight,” characteristic of Jacob’s life.”

November 17, 2008
_http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/vayetze/amo.html_
(http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/vayetze/amo.html)

I think that the Y(QB element in “Jacob-El” unfortunately sounded
like “he
acts crookedly”, regardless of the actual etymology of this
geographical place
name. As Robert Alter states at p. 181 of his 1996 book
“Genesis”: “Jacob,
whose name can be construed as ‘he who acts crookedly’….”

In my opinion, the association with the negative phrase “he acts
crookedly”
was one reason why the townspeople of Jacob-El decided to drop the
ayin near
the beginning of their town’s name. Y(QB was simplified to YQB.
Instead of
sounding like “he acts crookedly”, it was now “winepress”.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois


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