Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Yitzhak Sapir:
 
1.  You wrote:  “It is surprising that you bring in Victor Hurowitz into all 
this.”
 
I learned about Akkadian cognates for XBR and XBL from Victor Hurowitz’s 
earlier posts.  His posts are often very informative and valuable.
 
2.  “Moshe Held… is the one to be held responsible for his opinion…
concerning the word xbr/ubburu….”
 
O.K., then it is Moshe Held who links XBR to ubburu.  In ubburu, the heth/X 
was dropped.  As you say, “Akkadian may be attested earlier”.  So by the time 
the Hebrews were in existence, the heth/X in Akkadian ubburu may already have 
been dropped.
 
Based on that analysis, the heth/X in XBR does not appear to be an integral 
part of the root.  It seems more like an optional prefix that the Akkadians 
unceremoniously dropped.  XBR is X + BR.
 
3.  You did not mention eblu vs. XBL, which I got from an earlier Victor 
Hurowitz post.  If that is a legitimate cognate, the initial heth/X in XBL 
does 
not seem to be a critical element of the root.  An Akkadian E is a vowel, and 
is 
not the consonant heth/X.  XBL is X + BL.
 
4.  Those two examples strongly bolster the point I am trying to make on this 
thread.  I see XBR as being X + BR, where the heth/X is a mere prefix, and 
the root is BR.  Ditto for XBRN/“Hebron”, which I see as being X + BR + N 
(where a final –N or –WN is a routine Bronze Age geographical place name 
suffix).  
If my analysis is right, then BR in this context may mean “fields”, both in 
Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew (per Job 39: 4, Daniel 2: 38, etc., and the 
related meanings in the Patriarchal narratives at Genesis 41: 35, 49;  42: 3; 
 45: 
23).  If so, then X + BR + N, with the accent on BR/“fields” as the root, is 
describing the finest “fields” in southern Canaan.  That would be a fitting 
Patriarchal name for the Aijalon Valley.  By sharp contrast, X + BR + N/XBRN/“
Hebron”/“the fields place” makes no sense at all as a Bronze Age name for the 
mountainous “citadel”/QRYT located in the Northern Negev Desert 20 miles 
south 
of Jerusalem, a fortress city with precious few “fields”, which only came to 
have the new Hebrew name “Hebron” somewhere in the 10th to 8th century BCE 
time period, not earlier.
 
I am trying to get people to do a basic linguistic analysis and think about 
what the geographical place name “Hebron”/XBRN/XBRWN means.  Then people may 
see that XBRN, as X + BR + N/“the fields place”, is a perfect Bronze Age name 
for the Aijalon Valley, being the Patriarchs’ “Hebron”, and in the Bronze Age 
could not possibly be the mountainous city later called Hebron.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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