Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Yigal Levin wrote:

While anything is possible, the olive tree that I assume you're referring to
as Asher's symbol is a rabbinic reconstruction, based on Asher's blessing by
both Jacob and Moses, both of which mention "oil", presumably olive oil. I
don't know that the asherah-tree had anything to do with olive-oil in
particular.

***

For what it's worth, it can be noted that Hurrian has the following words:
1. a verb HaS-  "to oil, anoint"
2. a noun HaSari  "oil" 
To be precise it's probable that HaaSari had a long -aa-.
Nothing makes that word a loanword in Hurrian. On the contrary the derivation 
is very natural. 

This word is conspicuously a close homophone of another HaSari which means 
"excrement". It's unclear what kind of phonetic feature distinguished one 
word from the other, as it seems quite probable that people could hardly 
tolerate to have exactly the same pronunciation for both. I suspect HaSaari 
was the other word. 

Is Asher written with sin or shin?

Best

A.