Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Yitzhak:

1.  Which item on the Egyptian Execration Lists is Tyre supposed to be?

I am looking at item E-35 on the Later List, at p. 58 of Anson Rainey’s “
The Sacred Bridge”.  It shows:

s-u-r-u-ya

The S is underlined.  I’m not sure what that means.  Rainey seems to see
underlined S as later being an emphatic S (underdotted S).  Nevertheless,
Rainey seems to perceive some difference between an underlined S (what he sees
as being in the Execration Text), and an underdotted S (being what he himself
calls his “Hypothetical Reconstruction”).

Am I looking at the right item?  The final ya might be a theophoric.  If
so, that might indicate that the meaning is “divine-like rock”, as I have
previously thought.

2.  Though you told me that Tyre means “rock”, you told Karl that Tyre
might instead mean “besieged”.  Both of those common words are spelled CWR in
the Hebrew Bible.

3.  I keep noticing that outside of the Bible, there is always a letter
between the first letter and the R in whatever name is used for “Tyre” in any
other ancient language.  That fits my theory that the frequent spelling of
Tyre as CR in the Hebrew Bible is meant to be deliberately insulting, rather
than being an honest, abbreviated attempt to represent the name “Tyre” in
grammatically correct form.

You indicated that a middle vav/W in the Hebrew spelling of Tyre could not
exist prior to the Persian period.  But I’m not so sure.  On June 21, 2004,
Yigal Levin wrote:  “The use of Y as an indicator for the vowel "i" (like
most uses of matres lectonis) is a fairly late development in Hebrew. We find
none in the Gezer Calendar, few in the Mesha inscription or the Tell Dan
inscription (yes, I know that these are Moabite and Aramaic, but they reflect
the same trends), more in the Siloam, Ekron and in 7-6 century ostraca,
bullae etc.”

Yigal Levin carefully uses the word “most”, and does not say “all”, as to
the rarity of matres lectonis in early Hebrew writing.  I keep wondering
if, from the Middle Bronze Age on, a vav/W would be expected in the middle of
the word for “Tyre”, even in early Hebrew writing.  It seems to be there in
every other language.  Why would pre-Exilic Hebrew writing be so different
from all the other languages in that period?  Even if such a use was not
customary for common words, when reflecting a foreign name like Tyre, perhaps 
a
middle vav/W might have been possible, even in an era when matres lectonis
were almost never used for common words.

Moreover, space is often at a premium in inscriptions, whereas that is not
the case in regular writing.  Our first inscriptions of the city of Hebron
are XBRN, yet in the Bible the name is usually written XBRWN.  Inscriptional
writing may have been particularly inclined to use and retain defective
spelling.  The absence of the vav/W in most spellings of Tyre in the Bible, as
opposed to all other attestations of Tyre in all other ancient languages,
seems notable to me.  I don’t think it’s sloppiness or inattention to detail
on the part of the Biblical authors.

4.  If s-u-r-u-ya, with an underlined S, is the earliest form of the name “
Tyre”, then to me that looks like “divine-like rock”, with arrogant Tyre
arrogantly naming itself as being a god-like rock.  My theory of the case is
that most Biblical authors refused to call arrogant Tyre “divine-like rock”.
 So we usually see CR in the Bible, not CWR.  But if the Patriarchal
narratives are much older than the rest of the Bible (my view), then an
alternative way to avoid writing down CWR/“divine-like rock” for Tyre’s name 
would be
to substitute a first letter that sounded a lot like emphatic S, but was
not that letter, being rather a regular S, namely sin.  Hence %WR would be an
alternate way to avoid writing down the grammatically correct name of Tyre,
which should have been CWR (but usually is not in the Bible).

You may be right that in pre-Exilic Hebrew, unlike most all other known
languages, a vav/W could never be written in the middle of the name “Tyre”.
If so, then writing down CR could have implied CWR/“divine-like rock”.  So
if you are right, the one and only way to make sure not to be calling
arrogant Tyre “god-like rock” was to deliberately change the first letter, 
using a
letter (shin/%) that had a somewhat similar sound to a ssade/C, but that
just as surely was definitely not a ssade (a point you have emphasized
repeatedly, and with which I agree).  That is to say, it was safe to write 
down CR
for Tyre only  a-f-t-e-r  writing down CWR had become commonplace.  If CWR
was impossible prior to the Persian period (your view), then CR was not safe
prior to the Persian period, because CR could mean CWR.  %R [or $R] would be
safe, but CR would not be safe, as the latter could imply “god-like rock”
/CWR as Tyre’s name.

As I see it, the very fact that “Tyre” meant “god-like rock” is precisely
why most Biblical authors, most of the time, refused to spell the name Tyre
correctly.  Though later it was agreed to spell the name CR most of the
time (and only occasionally CWR), the first Biblical author, who composed the
Patriarchal narratives, had taken a different tack, and had used the
non-standard spelling %WR [or %R], precisely in order to avoid writing down 
CWR as
the name of the arrogant city-state of Tyre.

That’s my theory of the case.  Rather than ignoring what you have said, I
think I have accepted most of what you have said.  In particular, I have
agreed with your main point that the grammatically correct spelling of Tyre
would have a ssade, not a sin, and that ssade, being an emphatic S, was always
distinguished by the Hebrews from a sin, which is a non-emphatic S.  I think
we also agree that the common word CWR, meaning “divine-like rock”, was
pronounced by the Hebrews differently than the proper name CWR, when CWR was
used as the best (though infrequent) spelling of the name Tyre.  True, I
doubtless have not assimilated much of what you have said.  On the other hand,
you persist in analyzing the name “Tyre” solely from the standpoint of an
altruistic, disinterested grammarian.  That is  n-o-t  the way Biblical 
authors
dealt with arrogant Tyre!  I see the frequent Biblical spelling of Tyre as
CR as being intended as a deliberate insult to arrogant Tyre, who failed to
help the Hebrews from being destroyed by first the Assyrians, and then the
Babylonians, and who prior to that had been insufferably arrogant.  You have
not set forth your own view as to why Ezekiel begins each chapter spelling
Tyre as CR, and then later switches in the very same chapters to spelling
Tyre as CWR.  To me that is deliberately insulting to arrogant Tyre, rather
than being sloppiness on the part of either Ezekiel or any later editor.  If
so, then the grammatically ideal Hebrew spelling of Tyre [which I agree would
be CWR] is clearly not all that counts when considering various possible
spellings of Tyre in the Bible.

5.  In any event, I would greatly appreciate your analysis of the spelling
of “Tyre” in the Egyptian Execration Text.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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