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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr, uzisilber AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Asher again
  • Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:24:29 EDT


Dr. Fournet:

At least at the beginning of your post, you seem to have ignored my
insistence that most of the Biblical names I see as being Hurrian words are
not
attested Hurrian names, but rather, by contrast, are Hurrian common words
that
the early Hebrew author is using as nicknames for Hurrian individuals. So
for most of these Biblical names, what is needed is to ask whether they
represent Hurrian common words. In most cases, it’s clear that they are not
attested Hurrian personal names.

Yet there is one case (other than Arioch) where the Biblical name seems to
be but a slight variant of an attested Hurrian name. In this post, I will
focus solely on that name: BR%(.

As a preliminary matter, in order to critique my view, it is necessary to
be aware of my theory as to how the early Hebrew author consistently uses
certain Hebrew letters as vowel indicators in representing Hurrian words or
Hurrian names. Here, the one vowel indicator is an ayin. On my analysis of
all these various words that may be Hurrian words, a Hebrew ayin consistently
equates to a Hurrian i. Moreover, for names that may be Hurrian words in
chapter 14 of Genesis, the ayin is only used in connection with a discrete
Hurrian syllable that is consonant-i. [If we view the Hebrew ayin as being
used in that particular fashion, consistently, then all these various
previously inexplicable Biblical names suddenly make perfect sense, as
Hurrian common
words. Please note that a Hebrew ayin in these cases is not representing a
rare ayin in Hurrian (or any other Hurrian letter somewhat similar to an
ayin). No, in setting forth Hurrian common words used as Biblical names, the
Hebrew ayin consistently represents the commonplace Hurrian vowel i, and it
is usually used only at the end of a standard Hurrian syllable which is
consonant-i. To test out my theory of the case, treat a Hebrew ayin in all
these cases as representing a Hurrian i, and you will then see that all of
these
Biblical names make perfect sense, usually as being Hurrian common words.]

You wrote: “BR% is also fairly desperate as a Hurrian word. A voiced
initial is normally impossible in Hurrian.”

I see BR%( as being ebri-ssi. It means “your lord”. In Hurrian, the word
starts with either (i) an e, as here, with the Hurrian common word “lord”
consistently starting with either an e or an i in Hurrian, or (ii) as we
will see in the Amarna Letters as a proper name (not a Hurrian common word),
a
P, with P being interchangeable in this context with B.

As I noted in my prior post, to see that an e needs to be implied at the
beginning of this name, look at $M)BR in the same verse, where the aleph is
indicating a discrete syllable eb in Hurrian. In all three of the names BR(,
BR%(, and $M)BR at Genesis 14: 2, the root Hurrian word is ebri, meaning “
lord” or “Hurrian princeling”. [In the first two cases, the initial e is
implied, as confirmed by analyzing the third name.] The reason for those
nicknames at Genesis 14: 2 is to identify the five defeated princelings in
the “
four kings against five” as being Hurrian princelings.

As noted above, in most cases when a Hurrian name is presented in old
Biblical Hebrew in the Patriarchal narratives, an ayin not only means Hurrian
i,
but also it denotes a discrete syllable ending in i, being consonant-i.
Thus here, the ayin at the end of this name confirms that the final syllable
is
%-vowel, with the Hurrian vowel being i. If the Hebrew sibilant here is a
sin/%, then this is probably representing an emphatic sin in Hurrian. (See
the Fournet/Bomhard Hurrian language website at p. 13. An emphatic sin is
often transliterated as a simple s, but it can also be represented by z.)
The final syllable here then (where Hebrew sin/% is Hurrian emphatic sin) is
likely the Hurrian suffix –ssi, meaning “your”. The suffix “your” in this
form is plural, but the noun to which it is attached can be either singular
or plural. F/B at p. 54. For example, ulme-ssi is attested as meaning
either “your weapon” or “your weapons”. F/B at p. 54.

BR%( is [)]B – R[(] + %(, or )B-R(-%(. That’s eb-ri-ssi in Hurrian,
meaning “your lord”, or “your (Hurrian) lord”, or “a Hurrian princeling for
all of you” (to emphasize that “your” is plural here), or simply: “Hurrian
princeling”. We see that BR%( has virtually the same meaning as BR(, with
the root in both cases being eb-ri, meaning “lord” or “Hurrian princeling”.

BR%( in fact appears to be a slight variant of the Hurrian name
Pi-ri-iz-zi, which is attested in Amarna Letters EA 27: 89, 93 and EA 28: 12.

Pi-ri-iz-zi is a messenger of Hurrian King Tushratta of Mitanni/Naharim, so
we would
expect Pi-ri-iz-zi to be a Hurrian name. Here is Richard Hess’s analysis
of the name Pi-ri-iz-zi at p. 125 of “Amarna Personal Names”: “The language
represented by this PN [proper name] is Hurrian. Pi-ri-iz-zi is a
hypocoristic name [meaning a shortened name], composed of ewri ‘lord’ and
zzi, a
(hypocoristic?) suffix.” In Hurrian, the letters W and B and P are often
interchangeable; in particular, we know that those three letters are
interchangeable as to the Hurrian word for “lord”. Hess cites ewri, and ebri
and
ibri are also attested versions of this basic Hurrian word. The third
possibility for the first consonant is the P that we see in this Amarna name
(per
Hess’s analysis). Pi-ri is comparable to bi-ri in Hurrian, and if the vowel
is placed before, rather than after, the first consonant (with both such
variants being attested for this word in Hurrian, though as a common word
there
would always be a vowel before the first consonant), we have eb-ri. So the
pi-ri in this Amarna name is but a simple variant of the underlying Hurrian
word eb-ri, meaning “lord”, just as we have been seeing as the Hurrian root
word in both BR( and BR%(.

As to the suffix –zzi in the Amarna name Pi-ri-iz-zi, that is likely the
Hurrian suffix –ssi discussed above. As to z vs. s, consider for example how
F/B presents the Hurrian word “intelligence, wit” at p. 87, with the
sibilant alternatively being set forth as TS or z or s: “[xaTSiTSi] ‘
intelligence, wit’; EL xazzizzi/xasisi. CA <xa-(as)-sí-(is)-sí>.” If –zzi
in this
Amarna name is the Hurrian suffix –ssi, then the meaning of the Amarna name
would be “your lord” (or, to emphasize that “your” is plural here: “lord
for all of you”). Thus it is likely that Biblical BR%( and Pi-ri-iz-zi in
the
Amarna Letters are slight variants of the same Hurrian name, with the same
Hurrian meaning: “your lord”, or more simply: “Hurrian princeling”.

Thus BR%( works well as a Hurrian common word, basically meaning “Hurrian
princeling”. It is built on the Hurrian root word, ebri, just like the first
Biblical name, BR(. Both of these Biblical names have the same basic
meaning in Hurrian: “Hurrian princeling”.






Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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