Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Joel C. Salomon" <joelcsalomon AT gmail.com>]

On 05/24/2010 08:49 AM, JimStinehart AT aol.com wrote:
> I would like to start a new thread on YGR %HDWT) …
> The traditional analysis of YGR %HDWT) at Genesis 31: 47 is that it’s an 
> Aramaic phrase consisting of two Aramaic words.  But is it?  If scholars 
> are 
> right about that, the historicity of the Patriarchal narratives is lost.  
> There’s no attested written Aramaic prior to the 9th century BCE, many 
> centuries after any historical Patriarchal Age.

Does this lack of written Aramaic indicate that it was not a spoken
language?

> Whether Genesis 31: 47 is fictional or not, and regardless of its 
> composition date, if YGR %HDWT) is Aramaic, as scholars insist, then why 
> isn’t YGR 
> %HDWT) either (a) the exact equivalent of GL(D, and/or (b) an attested 
> Aramaic 
> phrase for Gilead?  Why is it neither?  Shouldn’t we then wonder whether it’
> s even Aramaic at all?

(a) In English alone, how many different ways can you name a heap of
stones to indicate that it stands witness?  How many ways in French, or
German?  Would you expect that the particular form chosen by a speaker
of one language would correspond e-x-a-c-t-l-y to the form chosen by a
different person speaking a different (if cognate) language?

(b) Notice that your proposed e-x-a-c-t translation of גלעד/GL(D into
Aramaic is also not “an attested Aramaic phrase for Gilead”.

—Joel Salomon