Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>
To: <uzisilber AT gmail.com>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 4:23 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Asher again


> Uzi wrote:
> “I know that these are the patriarchal narratives…but the prophetic 
> writings were probably composed not too long after….”
>
> Jim wrote:
> Hello, hello?  How can you say such a thing?
>
> The Patriarchal narratives are much, much older than the rest of the 
> Bible.
>
> 1.  The Hurrians began to go extinct in the second half of the 14th 
> century
> BCE, and were long forgotten by the time the rest of the Bible was
> composed.
***

I'm not competent to judge if the "Patriarchal narratives" are indeed older 
or much older.

As far as Hurrians are concerned, Gelb's book (1944 Hurrians and Subarians. 
Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press) lists a number of Person Names 
most of them are fairly clearly Hurrian as late as the middle of the first 
millenium BCE. See p. 81-84 “Latest Traces”
Excerpts:
"Gradually Hurrians disappear from the large areas in which they were found 
so profusely in the several centuries after 1500 B.C.  For the time around 
1100 B.C. and the following centuries an entirely different ethnic picture 
is given by the occurences of Hurrian personal names in Assyrian historical 
inscriptions.  In order to make clear the new geographic distribution, only 
sure occurences of names which can be definitely linked with sites are 
quoted below. [...] 11.  Ashurbanipal warred also against Ah-Seri, king of 
the Manneans, who had a son, Ualli and a grandson Eri-sinni.  Of these three 
names Ah-Seri is probably, Eri-sinni certainly, Hurrian. [...]  The most 
interesting conclusion from the negative point of view is that Hurrians are 
completely absent from central Mesopotamia."

Best

A.
***


But just look at all the vintage Hurrian names in the Patriarchal
> narratives:  $N‘R, )RYWK, BR(, BR%(, $M)BR, $N)B, HCCN TMR, (PRWN, )YLWN, 
> and B)RY.
> Those are vintage Late Bronze Age Hurrian names that would have been
> incomprehensible to all later Biblical authors.  (No wonder $N‘R later got 
> mixed
> up by later Biblical authors with Sumer, even though there’s no linguistic
> match to Sumer, and $N‘R at Genesis 14: 1 is referring to Syria, not to
> Babylonia or southern Mesopotamia.)
***

I cannot see what makes these names vintage Hurrian.
What are the vowels exactly in those names?

A.
***