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  • From: Arne Halbakken <1stluth AT smig.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] FW: The King's road
  • Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:57:56 -0600

For what it's worth, here is an excerpt from Papyrus Anastasi I from COS:

(18.7) You do not go to the land of Hatti; you do not see the land of Upi. Khadum's manner you do not know, nor Yagadiya either. What is it like, the Zimira of Ramesses II, LPH? The town of Aleppo is on which side of it? What is its river like? You do not campaign to Qadesh or Dubikh; you do not go to the region of Shasu with the archers. You do not tread the road to the Magara, where the sky is dark by day. It is overgrown with junipers and alluna and cedars (that) have reached the sky, where lions are more numerous than leopards and bears, and surrounded with Shasu on every side. You do not climb the mountain of Shuwa; you do not plod with your hands on your legs, your chariot netted with ropes, your horses in tow.

(19.6) Hey, come that you may see Birata and make h‡afidja from its ascent, having crossed its river. You will see what it's like to be a mahir when your markabata is set on your shoulders because your aide is exhausted. When you finally unburden your-self in the evening, your whole body is crushed and battered, your limbs thrashed. You will lose your-self in sleep only to awake at reveille in the short night, alone at the harnessing, for no brother comes to (help) brother. The naharu}a have entered the camp, the horses are untied. The [...] has with-drawn in the night; your clothes have been stolen. Your maru}a has awakened in the night, learned what he did, and taken the rest. He has gone over to those who are bad; he has mingled with the Shasu tribes and made himself an Asiatic. The enemy has come to make sûadda in thievery and found you inert. You will awaken and find no trace of them; they have made off with your things. Now you know what it's like to be a mahir.

(20.7) I will mention to you another inaccessible town, the one named Byblos. What is it like? And its goddess? Once again, you do not set foot in it. Inform me, please, about Beirut, and about Sidon and Zarepta. Where is the river of Litani? What is Uzu like? They tell of another town on the yumma, named Tyre of the Port. Water is taken to it in freighters; it is richer in fish than sand.

(21.2) I will tell you another subject. The passage of Zir{am is difficult. You will say it burns more than a sting: how sick is the mahir! Come, put me on the road north to the region of Akko. Where does the way to Aksap start? At which town? Inform me, please, about the mountain of Wasir. What is its rusûa}u like? Where does the mountain of Shechem start? Who can take it? Where does the mahir march to Hazor? What is its river like? Put me on the track to Hamat, Dagan, and Dagan-el, the parade-ground of every mahir. Inform me, please, about its road, and let me see Ya{anu. When one is marching to Adamim, where is he facing? Don't withhold your teaching: let us know them.

(22.2) Come, that I may tell you other towns that are above them. You do not go to the land of Takhsi, Gur-Maruni, Tamintu, Qadesh, Dapur, Asya, or Hermon. You do not see Qiryat-{anabi and Beit-sopiri. You do not know Aduruna, or Zitti-padalla either. You do not know the name of Khalsa, which is in the land of Upi, a bull on its borders, the place where the troops of every hero have been seen. Inform me, please, about the manner of Qiyana. Let me know Rehob, and ex-plain Beit-she}an and Tirqa-el. The river of Jordan, how is it crossed? You should let me know the pass of Megiddo, which is above it.

(23.1) You are a mahir learned in the work of heroism. May a mahir like you be found to sagga in front of the army. Oh maryana, forward to shoot! Look, the face of the murad44 is a sûadiluta 2000 cubits deep, full of scree and pebbles, so that you must make a sawbib. You will take the bow and make a pirtji on your left so that you might let the chiefs see. Their eye is good, and weakness is in your hand: "abatta kama eri mahir na{imu." You will make the reputation of every mahir of Egypt who passes: your reputation will become like that of Qatsra-yadi, the king of Asuru, when the bear found him in the bika}i.

(23.7) The face of the pass is dangerous with Shasu, hidden under the bushes. Some of them are 4 or 5 cubits, h nose to foot, with wild faces. Their thoughts are not pretty, they do not listen to cajoling, and you are alone, no {adjira with you, no djabi}u behind you. You do not find the ir}ir to make passage for you. The decision is made to go forward, but you don't know the way. Your face starts to djanna, your head is sûalafi, your ba lies in your hand. Your path is full of scree and pebbles, with no toehold to pass, overgrown by asbarru with dangerous qadja and wolfspaw. The sûadiluta is on your one side, the mountain stands on your other. You go in hastakkata, with your chariot on its side, afraid to press your horse, lest he be thrown to the Duat. Your yoke has been thrown off and bare, your kusûana has fallen. You will unharness the team to renew the yoke in the middle of the pass, but you are not experienced in the manner of binding it, and do not know how to refasten it. The anqafqafa has been thrown from its place, too heavy for the team to bear. Your heart is disgusted; you will start to trot. When the sky is open (again), you think the enemy is behind you. You will start to tremble: if only you had a wall of shrubs, that you might put him on the other side. The team has been worn down by the time you find a cot; you will see the taste of sickness.

(24.2) You have entered Joppa and will find the field verdant in its season. You will break through for food and find the little maiden who is guarding the garden, and she will fraternize with you as a companion and give you the color of her embrace. It will be perceived that you have given witness and you are judged with a mahar. Your cloak of fine linen, you will sell it.

William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr., eds., Archival Documents from the Biblical World (COS 3; Accordance electronic ed. Leiden: Brill, 2003), 12-13.

Arne Halbakken


Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:31:24 +0200
From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
Subject: [b-hebrew] FW: The King's road
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

I assume Rainey is referring to Papyrus Anastasi I - see the map on p. 101 of Sacred Bridge.

Yigal Levin


-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of James Spinti
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 4:24 PM
To: b-hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The King's road

Check out p. 41 in Sacred Bridge, by Anson Rainey & Stephen Notley (Carta, Jerusalem). He mentions "an ancient Egyptian treatise on roads in Canaan" but doesn't cite the source. See also page 123, 199, and 328, ranging in date all the way into the Hasmonean times.

James
From jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com Thu Feb 11 18:53:06 2010
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The final vowel of YHWH: Garth exposes his theory.
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Sorry Garth.

This is where objective people like Karl and I are likely to say stop right
there and slow down a little. Your whole argument is based on theoretically
based assumptions on pronunciation guides which we won't necessarily agree
with. It then becomes impossible for us to follow the rest of your argument
because we don't accept the foundation it rests upon as sturdy (like the man
who built his house upon the sand, the wind blew and the crash of that house
was great).

We have a strong tradition of Yahuw but your theoretical forms of Yahwu are
simply unattested. The least you could do is follow convention and
acknowledge that they are not attested by writing *Yahwu in your theoretical
presentations. That way we immediately understand you acknowledge there may
be a fault with the very foundation of your line of logic.

Further some of us are convinced that Hebrew if not entirely CV was
predominantly CV and still is predominantly so right up to the MT tradition.
And so, I personally find your proposed *Yahwu forms extremely unlikely if
not impossible.

Furthermore, Iabe is clearly a Samaritan dialectal perversion of the
original form. For this reason many view its witness (myself included) as
highly suspicious.

Assuming a causative conjugation of Yhwh for reasons of factors induced by
weak consonants we would accept a trisyllabic pronunciation if following the
usual patterns we observe.

James Christian



James Christian

2010/2/11 Garth Grenache <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>



Deal all, peace!

...and thanks to Karl and James who responded to my post.

Here I offer an answer to your questions:

James asked> Where do you get 'yahwu'? Surely you mean 'yahuw'?!?

Garth replies> I mean -yahwu. This would be the result of adding the final
nominative case marker -u to the end of a name ending with -yahwa. E.g. A
name formed from the sentence "natan- yahwa" would be Natan-yahw-u.

The final -u was present as a Nominative case marker, -a as Accusative case
marker, and -i as Genitive case marker, as late as about 1000BCE, in most
Semitic languages.

To append such a marker to a word which already had a final vowel, would
involve replacing that vowel: Natan-yahwa > Natan-yahw-u


Karl wrote> There is one slight problem, namely, that we don?t know how
Biblical Hebrew was pronounced. The vowels were not written down. Some of
the consonants apparently changed pronunciation over time as well. As a
result, there have been sometimes strongly worded disputes on this list as
to Biblical Hebrew pronunciation. Therefore, to claim that we can come to a
resolution as to the exact pronunciation of a single word (name) within the
language sounds, well, impossible.

Garth replies> The exact pronunciation of each phoneme(meaningful unit of
speech to be pronounced) may be unknown, but by comparing Semitic languages
and their morphology, the phonemes themselves can be evidenced. For
example, one might argue about how open or closed the 'a' phoneme was
pronounced in a certain culture, but few scholars would doubt that the 'a'
phoneme existed, or that it was in words such as malku, yawmu, etc.

There were only three distinct short vowel phonemes in the original Semitic
language, as can be deduced by *comparative Semitic Linguistics* -a i & u-
and this could allow each to be pronounced slightly differently in different
words and still remain distinct.

So even in Arabic today the same long â phoneme can have a quality as
forward as the 'a' in 'at', or as open as the 'a' in 'father'.

I haven't asserted how open or closed the 'a' in Yahwa is: merely that it
was an 'a': an open vowel phoneme.


Finally, please note that some of the characters I've used are showing up
in the text e-mails as ?s, but do read correctly online.

The formatting allowed at this website makes my theory a bit easier to
understand, and this presentation is more complete, for those who wish to
understand more.

http://garthg.multiply.com/journal/item/110/The_ancient_and_correct_pronunciation_of_YHWH


Original message:

Dear all at b-hebrew, peace!

My name is Garth Grenache and I am an internet friend of Dave Donnelly.
I live in the land down under.

I
have been seeking the original pronunciation of YHWH for several years,
publically proposing and challenging various theories on YHWHgroup (
groups.yahoo.com/group/YHWHgroup/ ) whilst developing my understanding
of the history of Hebrew and the Semitic languages.

From YHWH came Yah, Yəhô-, -yāhû, Greek iaō, "Temple of YHW",
and somehow also Greek 'Samaritan' forms iabe, iaou(e) and magic papyrus
iaōouēe.
A good theory needs to give a good explanation of all the data.

In
2006 I proposed a reconstruction that I've not been able to better to
this date, though it has been peer reviewed and critiqued on the above
forum and elsewhere.

Dave Donnelly has prompted me to post my also before your eyes, so that you
too may critique it.

Scholars
like Gesenius could determine from the above forms that the Name began
with Yahw-, and had a final vowel other than î or û.
(If any reader is in doubt about this, I refer them to...

http://garthg.multiply.com/journal/item/110/The_ancient_and_correct_pronunciation_of_YHWH
...where I give convincing linguistic evidence of this.)


Why did Gesenius and like-minded scholars accept 'e' for the final vowel?
*Greek 'Samaritan' forms iabe, iaou(e) and magic papyrus iaōouēe supplied
an 'e'.
*Hebrew Imperfective verbs with weak 3rd root consonant have final 'e'.
YHWH appeared to be the same.

Then why reject the 'e'?
*The
Name is as old as Adam and Eve (Ge 4:1) and the first Semitic language
did not have 'e'. Therefore 'e' could not be original.
*Even
centuries before before the iabe/iaou(e)/iaōouēe forms, the final vowel
was already lost from the pronunciation of YHWH, not appearing in Greek
forms iaō or Hebrew "Temple of YHW", which together suggest that the
pronunciation of YHWH had long come to be Yahô. If 'e' were original,
and was a contraction from -ayu/-iyu as in other 3-He Imperfectives,
why then did the verbs retain their final 'e', but YHWH did not? And
having lost its final true vowel, from where did the final 'e' come
from? Perhaps from the assumption that it was pronounced like the
other 3-He Imperfectives which end in -e! Or...
*The magical
papyri's iaōouēe is in the context of a syncretist's god who is
simultaneously both Zeus and YHWH: "I summon thee the, ruler of the
gods--Zeus, Zeus, that thunderest on high, king Adonai, lord Iaoouee."
The long string of vowels is impossible in Hebrew, and includes every
Greek vowel letter. It is mystical and may be a syncretism of iaō with
iowe/iowi -Latin inflectional forms of of Iuppiter (Jupiter), who is
Zeus! ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyptoton ).
*Samaritan
"Iaoue">"Iabe" may reflect the same syncretism of iaō with iowe,
even as the Samaritans were syncretists who "feared YHWH but also
served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom
they had been carried away" (2Ki 17:33).
Therefore, Hebrew 3-He
Imperfectives suggest that the missing final vowel of Yahw- should be
an 'e', and those who believed that YHWH was Iawe(Jupiter) had even
more reason to reconstruct the lost final vowel as 'e'. But it could
not have been original, even as the 'e' in 3-He Imperfectives was not
original!


If not final 'e', then what?
*Ex 3:14 implies
that the Name means "He is", and it's consonants also suggest the root
HWY which means 'be/become' and is attested in both East and West
Semitic, being present in Akkadian as well as Amorite, Hebrew and
Aramaic.
*Qal Stative Imperfectives in Central Semitic tend to have
'a' between the 2nd and 3rd root consonants. "He is" would have been
*yahwayu.
Therefore 'a' was the original vowel after the 'w' in
Yahwa, even before the Name's formation, being present there in the
verb *yahwayu.

But what happened to the -yu in yahwayu? Why has it been arbitrarily
truncated?
*I suggest it was not an arbitrary truncation, but a calculated truncation
by YHWH Himself.
*If
He gave His Name as Yahwayu or Yahway, it would undergo regular
inflection to become Yahwaya, which would be suggestive of the
Subjunctive verb, with the inappropriate meaning of "He would be".
*Truncating the final -yu produced an indeclinable form Yahwa, to which
this inappropriate meaning would not be attached.
(*A declinable form Yahu/Yaha/Yahi was also supplied, which became the
short form "Yah".)

How did the Yəhô- names become? -Further evidence for final -a in Yahwa.
*Even as in regular sentences, Yahwa was followed by other words to form
names such as Yahwanatanu.
*The -wa- in these names became softened to -ô-, producing Yahônatan, even
as in 'aḫwatu > 'aḫôt "sister".
*This left the first short 'a' in an open syllable, exposing it to
antepenultimate reduction: Yahô- >Yəhô-.
*The
reduction of -wa- to a close-mid vowel ô, rather than close vowel û can
be explained by the presence of the 'a'. If the final vowel of YHWH
were a close vowel i or u, we would expect û to result.
*From Yəhô-
names, or independently, the absolute Name Yahwa became pronounced as
Yahô (as evidenced by "Temple of YHW" and BC Greek iaō).

How did -yahû names become?
*The theophoric name's case marker must be appended to the final consonant
of a name ending in -yahwa, producing -yahwu.
*e.g. 'Elî + yahwa + final case marker -u -> 'Elîyahwu
*Here with u, the final '-wu' was softened to long -û: -yahwu > -yahû
*Penultimate augmentation of the vowel in a resulting open syllable
subsequently occurred: -yahû > -yāhû


In summary: final -a in YHWH is suggested by...
*The presence of 'a' in the second syllable of Qal stative Imperfectives
yaCCaCu, yahwayu 'he is' being the origin of the name.
*The close-mid ô vowel found in Yəhô- names in the place of 'wa', v.s. the
close û vowel found in -yahû names from -yahwu.


Thanks for reading. Your response and criticism is most welcome.
Kind regards,

Garth Grenache.

A more complete presentation of this Yahwa theory can be found here:

http://garthg.multiply.com/journal/item/110/The_ancient_and_correct_pronunciation_of_YHWH


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