Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Dr. Reinhard G.  Lehmann wrote:  “[T]here is  something that separates 
Jaqov and Laban forever: Language...and Religion!”  I agree with that, but 
the 
specific  question on this thread is whether Laban is portrayed in the text,  
anachronistically, as using a language, Aramaic, that is not attested as  
existing (at least in written form) until the 9th century BCE, many centuries 
 after any historical Patriarchal Age.  In contesting the 
traditional/scholarly analysis of Laban’s words YGR  %HDWT) at Genesis 31: 47 
as being 
Aramaic, I myself start with the fact that  Genesis 24: 10 tells us that 
Laban’s 
homeland is NHRYM, a word referring to the  Hurrian state of Nahrima/Mitanni 
in northeast Syria, being a word which, outside  of the Bible, is attested 
exclusively in the mid-14th century BCE.  (As I noted previously, the phrase  
“fields of Arameans”, or “Paddan-Aram”, is also attested in the 14th  
century BCE.)  If Laban has adopted  the Hurrian culture of NHRYM, then we 
might well expect Laban to swear by the  all-important Hurrian sky-god, 
Tessup.  
But important names at NHRYM [in particular, the names of most rulers of  
NHRYM] historically were, oddly enough, usually Indo-Aryan names based on  
Sanskrit words, though often having Hurrian characteristics.  So the Hurrian 
word “Tessup” should not  be expected.  No, we should rather  expect to see 
the Sanskrit word on which the Hurrian concept of Tessup was  based. 


 
%HDWT) at Genesis 31: 47 may be $H-DW-T), based on Sanskrit as filtered 
through the Hurrians.  In Sanskrit, svaH [where I am using a capital H to 
represent a soft heth, which is usually a small underdotted h] means “sky” 
[and 
svaH can also have related meanings such as “sun”].  In Hurrian, the 
sibilant needs to be shin/$ [with Hurrian having no samekh/S and no sin/%].  
The V 
is W, but W is a semi-vowel in Hurrian, and Hebrew defective spelling only 
represents true consonants.  So the Sanskrit V can be dropped in Biblical 
Hebrew as if it were a Hurrian W, which is a vowel.  Dropping that letter 
also 
allows this word to remain a single syllable, per the Sanskrit.  The soft 
heth at the end in Sanskrit could be represented in Hebrew as he/H, instead 
of heth/X, because it’s not a regular heth, and neither Hurrian nor Hebrew 
had a soft heth [unlike many other ancient languages].
 
The above analysis is largely confirmed linguistically at p. 132 of the 
Fournet/Bomhard Hurrian website.  We start with the key fact that the “Te” 
element in Tessup is “dei” or “doi” or “di” in Hurrian common words, meaning 
“to shine, to be bright”.  Now note that 3 Sanskrit rough equivalents of 
Hurrian dei/doi/di all have a V and end with a soft heth, and in all 3 cases, 
both the V and the soft heth drop out in Hurrian completely, leaving only a 
vowel-type sound.  Deva-(H = “deity, god”.  Diva-(H = “heaven, sky, day”. 
 Divya-(H = “divine, heavenly, supernatural”.  The pattern seems to be 
that in a Sanskrit word meaning “sky” or “deity”, where the first letter in 
Sanskrit is d or s, and the rest of the word features first a v and then a 
soft heth, both the v and the soft heth can be expected to drop out in 
Hurrian, leaving only a vowel-type ending of the word.  So in representing 
this 
Hurrian phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew regarding the Sanskrit word svaH, the 
first Sanskrit letter s becomes shin/$, since that was the Hurrian sibilant, 
and there should be neither a V/vav/W nor a regular heth/X, since both drop 
out in Hurrian regarding this Sanskrit word.  Rather, there should only be an 
ending vowel-type sound, such as a final he/H in Biblical Hebrew.  Thus this 
Sanskrit word svaH, filtered through the Hurrians, could well be 
represented in Biblical Hebrew as $-H.
 
As to the word “sky”, we must note that the most important Hurrian god was 
Tessup, god of the sky.  So by using the Sanskrit word for “sky” as 
witness, indirectly the Hurrian god Tessup, god of the sky, was thereby 
referenced.  We are beginning to see that YGR $H-DW-T) is the type of proper 
name that 
would be used by a person like Laban from NHRYM in the Late Bronze Age.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois