Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>]

George,

I said it before, and now with your permission, I will say it again.  
I see it a mistake to read a Hebrew name as if it were a  
grammatically structured word. All I would say about ABIYMELEK is  
that it apparently contains the two fractions AB, 'father, person of  
importance' and MELEK, 'king'. The internal -IY- is, methinks, the  
English 'he'. Thus, it is not specifically and factually 'a father of  
a king', or 'my father is a king', but rather more broadly 'he is a  
nobleman, a king'.
In fact, we find women named ABIYGAIL, ABIYHAYIL, ABIYTAL and ABIY 
$AG, but never EMGAIYL, or UM-GAIYL. BAT-$U(A of 2Ch. 3:5 was the  
daughter of AMIYEL.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Apr 14, 2009, at 6:51 PM, George Athas wrote:

> Jim,
>
> Some gaps and problems with your thesis:
>
>
>  1.  ABYMLK could simply mean "My father is king". This is a  
> perfectly acceptable name. I don't know why you've avoided it as a  
> possibility.
[cut]
> From mccunes AT gmail.com  Thu Apr 16 04:29:53 2009
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*Dear Colleagues,

I just read today this comment in the fascinating IVP "Dictionary of OT
Historical Books" (p. 659):
"A complicating factor in...diachronic analysis of biblical Hebrew
involves...scribal updating... or archaizing."

The claim here is that scribes sometimes substituted either a form more
modern than the original (something like " 'ani" for " 'anoki" perhaps) or,
on the contrary, a form older than the original (perhaps in the interests of
adding greater authority).

Here's my question:  Can someone give me one or two strong, clear,
undisputed examples of this in the biblical text?

Yours,

Keith McCune
*