Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III wrote:  “Sanskrit has no bearing here because 
it is an Indo-European language NOT Semitic.  Remember, this is Biblical 
Hebrew.”
 
The name $H-DW-T) at Genesis 31: 47  is presented as being a foreign name 
spoken by Laban of NHRYM.  If the text is historically accurate, we would 
expect $H-DW-T) to be composed of two Sanskrit words having Hurrian 
characteristics, all rendered in Biblical Hebrew.  If so, that would be very 
exciting, 
because no Hebrew or Jew in the 1st millennium BCE could come up with that, 
whereas if $H-DW-T) is Aramaic, no written Aramaic is attested prior to the 
1st millennium BCE. 





With the historicity of the Patriarchal narratives thus being on the line, 
it is instructive to compare Biblical $H-DW-T) with the following name of a 
Hurrian princeling in the Amarna Letters:  $u-wa-ar-da-ta.  This name occurs 
in 10 Amarna Letters, including, for example, Amarna Letter EA 278 from 
Suwardata.  The only alternative spellings both occur in Amarna Letter EA 290 
from Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem, and they are important to note:  $u-ar-da-tu and 
$u-ar-da-ti.   Abdi-Heba sees the W as being optional, and deletes it.  
That shows that the W after the initial $ was optional and could be deleted.
 
Here is the analysis of the leading expert on names in the Amarna Letters, 
Richard Hess, at p.  151 of “Amarna Personal Names” (1993) [leaving out his 
many cites to other scholars], of the name Suwardata:
 
“$u-wa-ar-da-ta….  The language represented by this PN [personal name] is 
Indo-Aryan.  …$u-wa-ar-da-ta is composed of two elements.  The first is 
suvar, related to Sanskrit svaH ‘sun, brightness, sky’.  …The second is data, 
from the Sanskrit verb da ‘to give’.  …$u-wa-ar-da-ta may be rendered ‘
given by the sun(god)’.”   I do not fully agree with that explanation.  The 
Hurrians did not worship a sun-god;  rather, the all-important god for the 
Hurrians was the Hurrian sky-god, Tessup.  So $u-wa or $H in a Hurrian’s 
name, 
literally meaning “sky” [or “sun”], would reference the sky-god Tessup, not 
a sun-god.  As to the verb, the Sanskrit word for “to give” is actually 
da-da-ti  Though this is a Sanskrit verb, not a Hurrian word, the ending –ta 
may be the Hurrian verbal ending for 1st person singular for an intransitive 
verb.  [See p. 64 of the Fournet/Bomhard Hurrian website.]  So ignoring the 
interior R for a moment (discussed below), the meaning would be:  “the 
Hurrian sky-god Tessup I have been given”.
 
The main difference between Biblical $H-DW-T) and the historical name 
$u-wa-ar-da-ta at first impression appears to be the R in the historical 
name.  
But note that the underlying Sanskrit word does not have an R.  It’s svaH 
[where I am using a capital H to represent a soft heth in Sanskrit].  [The R 
is 
an extremely common, optional Hurrian suffix literally meaning “together 
with”, or “everything concerning”.  The name Suwardata, with the R, seems to 
mean:  “Everything related to the Hurrian sky god Tessup I have been given”
, or less literally, “I owe all my blessings to Tessup”.  In the 
agglutinative language of Hurrian, an internal suffix (to the first Sanskrit 
word in 
this name) like this R can be omitted.  The concept of “everything related to”
 then drops out.]  Instead of suvar, which is related to Sanskrit svaH but 
has an added Hurrian –R suffix, we should start with the actual Sanskrit 
word itself, svaH.  The second apparent difference is the presence of a W in 
the historical name [representing the Sanskrit V].  But as noted near the 
beginning of this post [and as discussed in a prior post], that W is 
optional, 
and is dropped by Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem in both of his renderings of this 
name.
 
Dropping out the R and the W then per the above analysis, the two names 
look almost the same:  $H-DW-T) vs. $u-a-da-ta.  [Since (i) early Hebrew 
writing used defective spelling with no vowels, (ii) scholars are not certain 
of 
the vowel sounds in either early Hebrew or in Hurrian, and (iii) Semitic 
renderings of Hurrian vowels vary all over the place, it is no surprise that 
the 
exact Hurrian vowel sounds do not seem to appear in the Hebrew text.]  It 
is important to match actual names in these various sources, if the 
Patriarchal narratives are to be viewed as being verifiable history from the 
Late 
Bronze Age.  Note that everything matches in these Biblical names to the 
mid-14th century BCE.  NHRYM is a letter-for-letter match to the name of 
Laban’s 
Late Bronze Age Hurrian homeland just east of the upper Euphrates River at 
Genesis 24: 10.  And now we have seen that $H-DW-T) at Genesis 31: 47 is but 
a 
variant of the historically-attested Indo-Aryan name of a Hurrian 
princeling from the Amarna Letters.
 
The pinpoint historical accuracy of the consonantal Masoretic Text is 
absolutely amazing.  No one has understood Hurrian for 3,000 years, and who 
would 
expect Sanskrit in the Bible?  Yet $H-DW-T) is right there at Genesis 31: 
47, highly accurate as a Sanskrit name with Hurrian characteristics.  And the 
early Hebrew author also knew that a bona fide historical name from the 
Late Bronze Age could feature a Hebrew word followed by a Hurrian-type word:  
Abdi-Heba and YGR $H-DW-T).  YGR is the Hebrew word “fear” [not an Aramaic 
word].  And $H-DW-T) is the Hurrian version of Sanskrit words which mean “sky 
[that is, the Hurrian sky-god Tessup] I have been given (as my witness)”.  
So in historical context, when Laban says YGR $H-DW-T), he is saying:  
 
“Fear (of) the Hurrian sky-god Tessup I have been given (as my witness)”. 
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois