Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Karl wrote:  “The source of the English term [‘rolling hills’] is
recognizable to a seafaring people.  The waves roll, are in motion – so when 
hills
are viewed that appear similar to waves, the similarity is noted.”

That fits in perfectly with my theory of the case.  The west
Semitic-speaking, seafaring people of the rich island city-state of Ssur/Tyre 
used the
term GRR to refer to the portion of the “rolling”/GRR hills of Upper Galilee
that Ssur controlled (as far east as QD$ of Upper Galilee).

Both in the Patriarchal narratives and in the Amarna Letters, the name of
the ruler of the seafaring island city-state of Ssur is Abi-MLK.  In the
Patriarchal narratives, Abi-MLK is stated at Genesis 20: 2 to be the “ruler of
GRR”.  Note the nifty double meaning that can now be discerned.  Abi-MLK
rules GRR -- the “rolling”/GRR hills of Upper Galilee as far east as QD$ of
Upper Galilee.  But the real source of Ssur’s fabulous wealth is that Abi-MLK
of seafaring Ssur also rules over the “rolling”/GRR waves of the
Mediterranean Sea.  Thus Abi-MLK truly was the “ruler of ‘rolling’/GRR”, just 
as
Genesis 20: 2 says:  both the “rolling”/GRR hills of Upper Galilee, and the “
rolling”/GRR waves of the Mediterranean Sea.

Strong’s says that Gerar/GRR means “a rolling country”.  Gesenius sees “
to roll” as one meaning of GRR as a common word.  “Waves” itself is GL or
GLY.  Isaiah 48: 18;  51: 15  “Waves”/GL can be “stirreth up”/GRH, where the
key consonants in GRH are GR.  [For GRH, see for example Proverbs 15: 18.]
We see that GL and GR words often mean “round” or “rolling” or “waves”
or “stirreth up” or “something round that rolls”.  Ugaritic has a type of
GR for “mountain”, and a type of GL for “depression”, both of which relate
to an up and down type of terrain.  In Aramaic, GLL can mean “valley”, and
GLGL can mean “hill”.  In Biblical Hebrew, GRGR means “a berry, being
something that is round and that rolls”;  that implies a root GRR meaning “to
roll”.  In Biblical Hebrew, GLL means “to roll”, which is the root of GLGL,
meaning “something that is round and that rolls, such as a wheel”.  Thus it
is easy for west Semitic words based on either GR or GL to mean “rolling”,
whether it be “rolling” hills or “rolling” waves.

The Egyptian letters KRR on the mid-15th century BCE Thutmosis III list
represent a place in northern Canaan, and are probably the linguistic
equivalent of either GRR or GLL in Biblical Hebrew.  I see Egyptian KRR as 
being
GRR/Gerar in Biblical Hebrew, with the R form being older than later names or
words like GLYL that feature L.  Ga-ri, featuring G-R, at Amarna Letter EA
256: 23 may also be a form of GRR, since apparent matches to all of the 9
cities mentioned there can be found in Late Bronze Age greater Galilee.  If 
so,
then Egyptian KRR is GRR, not GLL.  The Sumerogram KUR used in Akkadian means
“hill” or “country”.  In the original Sumerian, KUR had been pronounced “
kur”, and KUR meant either “hill” or “country”.  In the Akkadian of the
Amarna Letters, however, KUR was used as a logogram, and depending on how it
was marked, it was to be pronounced either as the Akkadian word for “hill”,
or as the different Akkadian word for “country”.
_http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/32938_ 
(http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/32938)   Yet one
has to wonder if KUR, meaning “hill” or “country”, might be related to
the Egyptian letters KRR, which may likely mean “hill country” or “rolling
[hill country]”.  In lines 42-45 of Amarna Letter EA 149, Abi-MLK of Ssur uses
the word “land”/KUR three times, begging Pharaoh Akhenaten not to neglect
the land/KUR, and saying that if Akhenaten sends the Egyptian army up north,
then everyone in the land/KUR will be properly afraid of doing anything
bad.  Although KUR is a generic word that is frequently used by many people in
the Amarna Letters, it is possible that the ruler of Ssur might think of the
portion of Upper Galilee that Ssur often controlled in good times as being
the “land”/KUR, that is, the “land”/KUR of KRR/GRR/“rolling” hills in
Upper Galilee.  Likewise, with the ruler of Ssur being the richest ruler in
Canaan, whose influence often extended far east on the mainland, at least as
far east as the Beqa Valley if not to the King’s Road in the Transjordan, a
Hebrew author could rightly view Abi-MLK of Ssur as effectively being the
ruler of the “land”/KUR, that is, the ruler of the “land”/KUR of KRR/GRR/“
rolling” hills in Upper Galilee.

As we are seeing, the oldest forms of these words often seem to feature K
and R, while the later versions of these words in other languages seem to
feature G and L.  Thus the older KRR/GRR/Gerar, a geographical term that
pre-dates the first Hebrews, could later have been replaced by 
GLL/GLYL/Galilee in
Biblical Hebrew.  With the possible exception of Egyptian KRR itself, the
term “Galilee”/GLYL, featuring GLL instead of GRR, seems unknown in the
Bronze Age.  GRR/Gerar may likely have been a predecessor of the later
GLYL/Galilee.  As we have been seeing, the tendency seems to be that R is 
early, L is
later.  [I do  n-o-t  contend that resh/R and lamed/L are routinely
interchangeable in Biblical Hebrew, much less that the Hebrews routinely 
confused
those two letters as the Egyptians did.].  As noted in previous posts,
Assyrian has R, not L, in gararu “to go, run” and girru “way, road”, which may
be related to the above words;  and Akkadian has R, not L, in karku “rolled”
and kerku “a roll”, which have both a K (like KRR and KUR above) and an R,
and mean “roll”.  So in Semitic languages that pre-date written examples
of Biblical Hebrew, an R in words meaning or implying “roll” may have been
the earlier form, with an L in somewhat similar words becoming more dominant
later.  Indeed, every well-attested Semitic language seems to have one or
more words that might possibly be related to GRR as an apt description of the 
“
rolling”/GRR/GLL hills of Galilee.  In deciding whether or not GRR/Gerar at
Genesis 20: 1 may be referring to Upper Galilee, we have seen that
linguistically it is by no means improbable, much less impossible.

If one meaning of GRR as a west Semitic common word in the Late Bronze Age
[before written Hebrew is attested] was “rolling”, as seems likely, then
GRR as a proper name in the Late Bronze Age could easily refer to the 
“rolling”
/GRR hills of Upper Galilee.  Later on, GRR as a common word lost the
meaning of “to roll” in Biblical Hebrew [though the derived Biblical Hebrew 
word
GRGR retained such meaning], with GLL now being used in Biblical Hebrew to
mean “to roll”.  So early in the Iron Age, the proper name GRR became GLYL
in Biblical Hebrew, but still having the same underlying meaning:  “rolling”
, as in the “rolling”/GLL hills of Galilee.

The seafaring people of the island city-state of Ssur may have originally
come up with the name GRR, since they were so familiar with the “rolling”
/GRR “waves”/GL that were “stirred up”/GRH in the Mediterranean Sea.  Per Karl
’s analysis, to “a seafaring people[, t]he waves roll, are in motion – so
when hills are viewed that appear similar to waves, the similarity is noted.”
  [The Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives did not make up the
geographical place names GRR or QD$.  Rather, the Hebrew author simply 
recorded
the pre-existing, non-Hebrew west Semitic names for those places, being
names which pre-date the first Hebrews.  Accordingly, it is irrelevant whether
the Hebrew author, on his own, would or would not have thought to compare the
rolling hills of Galilee to the rolling waves of the sea.  Rather, a
seafaring people, such as the seafaring people of the rich trading island
city-state of Ssur/Tyre, were likely the ones who came up with the name GRR 
for a
portion of Upper Galilee, which featured “rolling”/GRR hills.]

Karl, thank you for your insight that it would probably be a seafaring
people [like Abi-MLK of Ssur] who would view the terrain of Upper Galilee as
being “rolling hills”, like the “rolling”/GRR “waves”/GL of the “stirred up”
/GRH sea with which seafaring people are so familiar:  GRR/“Gerar” in Late
Bronze Age northern Canaan.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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