Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Yitzhak:

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 6:41 PM, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 7:19 PM, K Randolph wrote:
>
>> Where do you get your w-e-i-r-d translations, like “divine-like rock”?
>
> Karl, given the context where it is used it is not so weird.  How
> would you convey the association of rocks with divinity that is
> apparent in the Bible?

This is a theological, not a linguistic question.

>From a strictly linguistic viewpoint, deity is not at all part of the
word. Not in the Bible at least.

Remember the theological perspective of the ancient Hebrews who
believed Torah—they looked at action, not form. So when they wrote
that God dealt with Egypt with and outstretched arm, that did not mean
that God had a physical body like humans, rather that the outstretched
arm was the action of fighting against, of war. Similarly that when
God created man in his image, that does not mean that God has a body
that looks like man, rather that man has been given Godlike
characteristics, such as creativity, a sense of justice, love,
language, and so forth. Therefore any reference to God being a rock
has nothing to do with the physical attributes of a rock, rather the
actions of steadfastness and immovability of a large rock.
>
>> As for the etymology of the name of Tyre, it may originally have had
>> nothing to do with a rock at all. The city was originally built on the
>> shore, on sand and dirt, on a spot next to a natural harbor, which was
>> fairly rare on that coastline. Only later was the city rebuilt on the
>> rock so that the harbor also provided a natural moat to protect the
>> city from enemies. But that rebuilding was long after the name had
>> been chosen.
>
> The oldest attestation of Tyre's name that I know of is from the
> Egyptian execration texts.  Also, the name Tyre referred to the
> island portion rather than the mainland portion.  I would consider
> an etymology relating to the root cwr 'besiege'.  This would
> explain the Ugaritic transcription of the city name which suggests
> the Sade in Tyre is etymologically different from the Sade in "rock".
> It would also explain the variant spellings with a double -r- (Amarna)
> and a single -r- (Greek) since the root cwr 'besiege', 'encircle' has
> a byform crr.  In this sense, the city's name would refer to the
> fact that it is an island, 'besieged'.

Again, the fact that the Akkadian name had a double ‘R’ indicates that
the name comes from CRR [to be narrow, also used of to narrow the
distance between armies for hand to hand combat] and not CWR [to shut
in] as its root meaning. The word for besiege is actually a phrase,
“to camp upon” XNH (L חנה על.
>
>
> Yitzhak Sapir

Though the books you referenced indicate that the name is quite old,
they do no indicate what reasons the original settlers on the site had
in mind when they settled the site. We don’t know if they were going
with CRR or CWR as the root meaning, through I’m inclined based on the
Akkadian that it was CRR.

Karl W. Randolph.