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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: kwrandolph AT gmail.com, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] 1 Kings 20:14 Who are the young men, princes of the districts?
  • Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:23:57 EDT


Karl:

The Hurrians were extinct by 1000 BCE. Yet the Amarna Letters are replete
with Hurrian names. How then could the Amarna Age be the 9th -8th century
BCE?

Here are some vintage Hurrian names from the Amarna Letters:

a-k-ia
a-ki-tessub
a-ki-iz-zi
a-ra-wa-na
ar-te-e-es-su-ba
hi-bi-ya
ir-sa-ap-pa
ke-lia-ia
ke-lu-he-ba
ma-zi-ba-ad-li
pi-ri-iz-zi
pu-he-wa
pu-u-hi
ta-du-a
ta-a-du-he-e-ba
ta-gi-tul-ub-ri
tu-ni-ib-ew-ri
ut-hi
zili-ya
ti-hu-ti-su-pa
IR-he-ba
MI-ya

The name of the princeling ruler of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba, honors the
Hurrian goddess Heba.

In addition, many Hurrian rulers sported Indo-European names. That would
include not only Tushratta of the Hurrian great power state of
Mitanni/Naharim in eastern Syria, but also Yamiuta of Qadesh of Upper
Galilee, as well as
the following three Hurrian maryannu active in the Transjordan: Biryawaza,
Biridiya, and ar-za-aw-ya.

If you thumb through the Amarna Letters, you’re constantly confronted with
non-west Semitic names like these, which most often are names of Hurrian
princelings.

Hurrian names like that make sense in one, and only one, historical time
period: the Late Bronze Age. Chapter 14 of Genesis (though it is not very
long) contains three Hurrian names: )RYWK, $N(R and XCCN TMR.

The presence of Hurrian names out the wazzoo in both the Amarna Letters and
chapter 14 of Genesis neatly dates both such sources to the Late Bronze
Age, with the mid-14th century BCE making perfect sense for both sources.

Based on your great knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, certainly you can tell at
a glance that none of the above names are west Semitic. How then do you
explain the presence of all these Hurrian names if, on your view, the
Patriarchal Age was the Early Bronze Age (before there were any Hurrians),
and the
Amarna Age was the 9th or 8th century BCE (after all Hurrians had gone
extinct)?

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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