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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>, <uzisilber AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Asher again
  • Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:17:27 +0200


----- Original Message ----- From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr ; uzisilber AT gmail.com
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 9:24 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Asher again


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.
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Hmhm
Do you have any literary parallels inside or outside the Bible for that kind of rhetorics?
A.
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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.
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To be frank, I'm very sceptical about their being even Hurrian whatever at all.
They are clearly not attested Person Names and they do not even look like being possible phonological Hurrian items.
A.
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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.
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Just a few spontaneous remarks:
1. Ayin is nearly the complete phonetic opposite of -i- or -y-: grave / guttural / occlusive versus acute / palatal / approximant.
2. How comes that this early Hebrew scribe is using consonants to note vowels (and other mater lectionis)?
3. Why is this early scribe not just using Y to note -i- or -y- as would any naive human being?
A.
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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.
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I must confess that I still have some way to go before it makes consistently perfect sense at this point in the process.
A.
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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).
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There is little doubt that Ayin was *not* a component of Hurrian phonology, neither was any emphatic of that kind.
It's fairly possible that Hurrian had a glottal stop in addition to voiced and voiceless velar fricatives and this was all.
A.
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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.]
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I have a problem with this "thing" popping up as a vowel or a consonant or a syllable.
A.
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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.
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As I mentioned in a previous post, the word "lord" ebri or ewri or even erbi is a loanword of Akkadian abaru "strong".
The idea that p and b could be interchangeable is completely inacceptable.
A.
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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.
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I don't understand the reasoning.
Ayin is Ayin. It's not a phonetic joker card.
A.
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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”.
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Where is the first syllable #e- of ebri- ?
A.
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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.”
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What other examples of that hypocoristic suffix do you have ?

In all cases, Pirizzi and ebri/ewri cannot have any relationship.
A.
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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%(.
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I'm not aware that there is any example in Hurrian of a first syllable being lost.
Ebri is from Akkadian abaru and the first syllable should be there.
Pirizzi is another word.
A.
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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”.
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Ebri is not a "real" Hurrian root and BRx cannot be the same thing as ebri.
A.






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