Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

James Christian:.
 
 
1.  HRRM vs. HR
 
For there to be “a construct relationship” at Genesis 14: 6, we might 
expect to see a construct form:  HRY or HRRY.  But instead we see HRRM.  That 
looks nothing like the construct forms at all, but rather seems to be an 
archaic version of the regular plural form:  HRYM.
 
In terms of substantive meaning, the only key issue here is singular vs. 
plural.  HRRM looks like an archaic plural, literally meaning “hills” or “
mountains”, and hence meaning:  “hill country”.  Note that the phrase B HRRM 
%(YR at Genesis 14: 6 is quite different from the phrase B HR %(YR at Genesis 
36: 8 and Genesis 36: 9.  HR is a 2-letter singular, and means “Mt.”.  
HRRM is a 4-letter plural, and means “hill country”.
 
As long as HRRM is some kind of plural, then the two characteristics of 
this place are, quite obviously, that it is (i) well-wooded/%(YR (ii) hill 
country/HRRM.  Those are precisely the two most prominent characteristics of 
the 
well-wooded hill country north and south of Seir/Jazer in the Transjordan, 
similar to the hill country north of Jerusalem.  There’s no well-wooded hill 
country south of the Dead Sea!
 
The phrase at Genesis 14: 6 could have three slightly different meanings, 
but they all refer to the same place north of the Dead Sea, on the east bank 
of the Jordan River in the Transjordan:
 
(i)  in hill country seir/in well-wooded hill country [where %(YR is either 
a common noun, and/or in the Late Bronze Age it was an adjective and 
HRRM/hill country, having a singular meaning though a plural form, may have 
been a 
plural of majesty in the Late Bronze Age, and like Elohim take a singular 
adjective]
 
(ii) in hill country [near the city of] Seir/Jazer [which city name means “
Well-Wooded”]
 
(iii)  in hill country [which comprises the district of] Seir/Jazer [“
Well-Wooded”]
 
“Seir” literally means “hairy”, and hence “well-wooded”.  Gesenius 
initially says “rough”, but then he clarifies that by saying “clothed, and, 
as 
it were, bristled with trees and thick woods”.  In my view (as opposed to 
Gesenius), that’s the well-wooded hill country of the Transjordan, in the 
district of Seir/Jazer, in Gilead, north and south of the ancient city of 
Seir/Jazer.
 
Please note that in the entirety of the Hebrew Bible, a reference to a 
named mountain, such as Mt. Seir (e.g. at Genesis 36: 8-9),  a-l-w-a-y-s  
takes 
a singular form of HR or HRR,  n-e-v-e-r  a plural form (like the archaic 
HRRM).
 
Chapter 14 of Genesis knows nothing of an Edom south of the Dead Sea.  That 
1st millennium BCE concept of a state of Edom is front and center in the 
very late Genesis 36: 8-43, but is totally absent from the truly ancient 
chapter 14 of Genesis.  As to the area south of the Dead Sea, there was no 
there 
there in the mid-14th century BCE, when chapter 14 of Genesis was composed.  
That area is never mentioned in the Amarna Letters or in chapter 14 of 
Genesis.
 
As something of a corollary to the above analysis, the singular word HR at 
Genesis 14: 10 probably does not mean “hill country”, but rather literally 
means “mountain”, and in English would more naturally be rendered as “
mountains”.  Whereas it would make sense for defeated rulers to flee to 
inaccessible mountains [HR], it would not make much sense for them to flee to 
hill 
country [HRRM].   
  
2.  Horite Troglodyte Cave-Dwellers vs. Historical Hurrians
 
Are you viewing the Horites at Genesis 14: 6 as being mythical troglodyte 
cave-dwellers south of the Dead Sea?  Here’s a helpful comment on that 
subject from the Zondervan KJV Study Bible (2002) at p. 23:
 
“Horites.  Formerly thought to be cave dwellers (the Hebrew word hor means ‘
cave’), they are now known to have been the Hurrians, a non-Semitic people 
widely dispersed throughout the ancient Near East.”
 
Though delicately not mentioned in that quote, the historical Hurrians are  
n-e-v-e-r  attested south of the Dead Sea.  The early Hebrew author of the 
truly ancient chapter 14 of Genesis certainly knew the historical Hurrians, 
and knew (as did everyone else at that time) that the Hurrians never lived 
south of the Dead Sea.
 
3.  Is El-Paran the Gulf of Aqaba?  Is QD$ Kadesh-barnea?
 
You seem reluctant to embrace the very peculiar scholarly view that 
El-Paran, which means “Great Desert”, is referring to a navigable body of 
water, 
namely the Gulf of Aqaba, 100 long miles south of the southern end of the 
Dead Sea.  So let’s examine your view.  Why would troops sent by a coalition 
of 
4 attacking rulers assault “some settlement/oasis in Wadi Paran down in the 
Arabah”?  That makes no sense.  What’s more, you’ve then lost all sense of 
“return” in the word $WB at the beginning of Genesis 14: 7.  Now you begin 
to see the reason why scholars make the gargantuan ultra-leap of trying to 
view El-Paran/Great Desert as somehow, some way meaning a navigable 
waterway, the Gulf of Aqaba, 100 long miles south of the Dead Sea.  Only by 
dreaming 
up a locale that incredibly far south can one possibly claim that in some 
sense, the troops then “return”/$WB by way of the desert oasis Kadesh-barnea 
in the Sinai Desert.
 
Awkwardly for the scholarly view of Genesis 14: 5-7, Genesis never mentions 
Kadesh-barnea.  QD$ at Genesis 14: 7 is, rather, historical QD$, that is, 
QD$ of Upper Galilee.  In his article on Kadesh-barnea that I have often 
cited, Prof. Yigal Levin notes the medieval pointing done in the Middle Ages 
as 
to the QD$ that is in Upper Galilee.  While pointing out that fact from the 
Middle Ages, that long article on Kadesh-barnea never alludes to any 
historical inscription from the ancient world referencing any QD$, much less 
a 
Kadesh-barnea, by those names (or anything similar to those names), in or 
near 
the Sinai Desert.  On this thread, Prof. Yigal Levin has recently emphasized 
that in identifying XCCN TMR at Genesis 14: 7, Prof. Levin relies on Ezra’s 
post-exilic Chronicles.  James Christian, doesn’t it bother you that 
scholars  n-e-v-e-r  reference any historical inscriptions from the ancient 
world 
in analyzing Genesis 14: 6-7?  Karl sees Ezra as being inerrant in 
identifying peoples and places in the truly ancient chapter 14 of Genesis.  
Are you 
surprised that the university scholarly community simply follows Karl and 
Ezra 
in analyzing the geography of the “four kings against five”?  If you were 
expecting the university scholarly community to have some secular historical 
support for its agreement with the age-old, pre-scholarly analysis of 
Genesis 14: 6-7, with the traditional analysis having been formulated when 
there 
was almost no knowledge of the secular history of the Bronze Age (and hence 
relying entirely on later books in the Bible, not secular historical 
inscriptions from the ancient world), you may be surprised to find out that 
there’s 
nothing like that in the scholarly analysis of this issue.  Although Prof. 
Yigal Levin disagrees with Karl as to whether the “four kings against five” 
is historical or fictional, please note that Prof. Levin passively follows 
Karl’s traditional identification of all peoples and places at Genesis 14: 
6-7.  There’s nothing out there in the scholarly literature that goes beyond 
Karl’s overt reliance on Ezra’s post-exilic writings in identifying peoples 
and places at Genesis 14: 6-7.  So the person you should rightly be citing 
is Karl, because university scholars simply follow Karl, not vice versa, in 
identifying peoples and places at Genesis 14: 6-7.  No, university scholars 
don’t agree with Karl that the Amarna Letters date to the 8th century BCE.  
Yet university scholars nevertheless fully agree with Karl’s basic point 
that the Amarna Letters are 100% irrelevant in identifying peoples and places 
at Genesis 14: 6-7.  I respect Karl’s view, which is internally consistent, 
even though it’s not my own view.  But why do university scholars passively 
follow Karl’s approach to identifying peoples and places at Genesis 14: 6-7, 
while  n-e-v-e-r  mentioning the Amarna Letters in their scholarly analyses 
of this issue?
 
4.  Does HW) Mean “Being the Former Name of a Place Later Called”?
 
To ask the question is to answer it.  HW) means “that is”.  En-Mishpat is 
an alternate, contemporary name of QD$ of Upper Galilee.  Variants of both 
names are found at items #4 and #5 on the mid-15th century BCE Thutmose III 
list, referring to Qadesh of Upper Galilee, whose view is dominated by 
towering, nearby Mt. Hermon (which the pagans viewed as being Baal’s “seat of 
justice”/mishpat).  Your assertion that “This is obviously a modernization 
for 
the reader” is not true.  Rather, it’s a vintage Late Bronze Age phrase 
(verified by the Thutmose III list) that was never updated by anyone.  
 
5.  “Wells, Wells of Bitumen”
 
On a separate thread, I noted that an Israeli scientist has confirmed that 
there were no “wells, wells of bitumen” at the Dead Sea.  That phenomenon 
is definitely found in the southern Beqa Valley, and in some form applies at 
Babenna near the west coast of Syria (just south of Ugarit, not far from the 
city of Niya) as well.
 
6.  Place of Final Battle
 
The place of final battle was well north of Ashteroth, not in the 
Transjordan, because at the beginning of Genesis 14: 7 the troops of the 4 
attacking 
rulers “return”/$WB back north to the Ashteroth area in the northern 
Transjordan, and then they proceed north from there all the way through the 
Beqa 
Valley, including Hasi/Hazezon-tamar/XCNN TMR/“the wisdom of nine” [in 
Hurrian].  We know from Richard Hess’s scholarly and minute analysis of the 
names 
in the Amarna Letters that the Beqa Valley at Hasi was one of the places 
where Amorites lived in the mid-14th century BCE, as accurately recalled at 
Genesis 14: 7.  %DYM means “tilled fields”.  There is no “valley of tilled 
fields” south of the Dead Sea!  And no Amorites there either.  And no 
well-wooded hill country, and no Horites/Hurrians.  And no “wells, wells of 
bitumen”
 either.   N-o-t-h-i-n-g  in the text fits the 
scholarly/conventional/fundamentalist view of Genesis 14: 6-7.   
N-o-t-h-i-n-g. 
 
Rather, Genesis 14: 1-11 has pinpoint historical accuracy in portraying the 
final battle as occurring in a valley of tilled fields north of the Beqa 
Valley near a salt sea (where historically there were both Amorites and 
Hurrians galore) -- the Orontes River Valley in west-central Syria, north of 
the 
Beqa Valley, near the Mediterranean Sea.  In Year 14 (per Genesis 14: 5).  “
Four kings against five”.  Amorites, Hurrians and Hittites, wherever one 
looks.  And bitumen is exported from that part of Syria to this very day. 
 
Having been defeated at or near the city of Niya in the Orontes River 
Valley (a “valley of tilled fields”), by an enemy who can come from the 
northeast, the defeated princelings had two main choices for fleeing.  One 
would be 
to take the road west to the nearby port city of Latakia, staying just south 
of Ugarit, and perhaps as an evasive action passing through Babenna and its 
famous bitumen pits (whether quarry pits or wells).  The other tactic would 
be to abandon the roads entirely, and flee southwest into the rugged 
mountains (with the latter tactic proving to be a better strategy).  Note 
that 
these two logical routes of flight, after a final losing battle at the city 
of 
Niya in the Orontes River Valley in western Syria, match nicely to what 
Genesis 14: 10 says:  “Now [an area near] the Valley of Siddim [the Orontes 
River Valley] was full of bitumen pits [‘wells, wells of bitumen’], and as 
the 
kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell into them, and the rest fled to 
the mountains.”  
 
The final battle occurs in the pivotal first year of the Great Syrian War.  
Once we get the underlying geography right, instead of always fighting what 
the text so clearly and unequivocally says, and look  n-o-r-t-h  of the 
Dead Sea (where no university scholar has ever seen fit to look), we see that 
 
e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g  matches perfectly to the well-documented secular 
history of the mid-14th century BCE.  E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.
 
Just be willing to take a look at ancient historical inscriptions from  
n-o-r-t-h  of the Dead Sea, that’s all.  It’s all there, and it’s fully 
historical to a fault.
 
7.  “Pinpoint historical accuracy” -- thy name is Genesis 14: 1-11.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois