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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: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:07:37 +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: Thursday, July 15, 2010 4:13 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Asher again


Dr. Fournet:

The key to the exact dating of the composition of chapter 14 of Genesis is to determine whether or not the four personal names of the five rebellious parties at Genesis 14: 2 are Hurrian names (that is, Hurrian common words being used as apt nicknames for Hurrian princelings). If the league of five rebellious parties consists of Hurrian princelings, then that would be a perfect match to the Great Syrian War in western Syria in the mid-14th century BCE. Determining whether the four names at Genesis 14: 2 are Hurrian common words, which are being used as apt nicknames for Hurrian princelings, in turn depends primarily upon figuring out what Hebrew letter an early Hebrew author would choose to represent the Hurrian vowel i. As you note, the most obvious choice would be yod, because the sound is somewhat similar. But that would not be the best choice, as we will now see.

***
A general problem I see here is that during the Mitanni Period, the Hurrian-Mitanni upper-class bore Indo-Aryan sounding names.
You may agree or disagree that this upper-class was actually able to speak some Indo-Aryan language on a regular basis. But the fact *is* that these people bore Indo-Aryan sounding names and they did not bear Hurrian sounding names.
For that matter it strikes me as a major historical contradiction that upper-class people involved in whatever "Hurrian" conquest or supremacy at that time would be referred to with Hurrian names.
In my opinion you have a major problem here in your approach.
We expect Indo-Aryan sounding names and the fact is what we have is Indo-Aryan names in that period.
A.
***



First let’s look at pp. 20-22 of the Fournet/Bomhard Hurrian language website, where we see the following: “RS 24.261 in Laroche (1968:499—504) “Sacrifice to Astarte-Šauška”: “…iyd…to E(y)a….” “iydm…and to Ea….”

The god Ea was important, being mentioned repeatedly in the Mitanni Letter [Amarna Letter EA 24, from the mid-14th century BCE]. If the Hebrew author had picked yod to represent Hurrian i, then he could not have written the name Ea! YY won’t work. YYD won’t work as meaning “to Ea”. But if the ayin were picked to represent Hurrian i, then everything works perfectly, as (Y means “Ea”, spelled iy in Hurrian.
***
In all cases, there is no real proof that people would write vowels in Semitic alphabets that early.
You have to prove that ability first.
So Ea be it *[eja] or *[ija] or the like should logically be written <?_y_?> with implicit i_a vowels.
Ugaritic has three different alephs to solve that problem. [?i-] [?a-] and [?u].
I'm not aware that any alphabet but Ugaritic ever used that system.
A.
***


The common Hurrian word for “which” is the same problem. Per p. 90 of the Fournet/Bomhard Hurrian language website: “*[ija]/[iji] ‘which’. EL ya/ye <i-ya->. Often used with andi. Derivative: yame-, yeme- ‘anyone’.”

The spelling is i-ya. If Hebrew yod represented Hurrian i, then what Hebrew letter would represent Hurrian y?
***
If we follow the logic of Arabic writing, Hurrian [i] should be written with Aleph plus implicit i.
This is the kind of writing we should expect from early Semitic scribes.
Early Semitic writing worked that way.
A.
***

We see that it is not self-evident that it would be superior to use Hebrew yod to represent Hurrian i, rather than, as on my view, using Hebrew ayin to represent Hurrian i.

Note also that many, many Hurrian words feature an i as the initial letter, which is a syllable in and of itself. For all of the following Hurrian words, an initial Hebrew yod would work very poorly, because in Hebrew an initial yod is a true consonant, not a vowel indicator. Per pp. 89-91 of F/B: (i) i-ya, (ii) i-t-, (iii) i-ki, (iv) i-$a-a-we, (v) i-$a-a$, (vi) i-$i-ik-ku-un-n, and (vii) i-zu-u-zi

So although a Hebrew yod is the “obvious” choice to represent the Hurrian vowel i, in fact it’s not the best choice. The early Hebrew author made a much superior choice: he decided to use ayin to represent Hurrian i, because the Hebrew ayin (unlike Hebrew yod) was not otherwise needed to represent any other Hurrian letter. It was a brilliant choice.
***
This choice is attested nowhere with certainty.
It's not brilliant, it's artificial.
There is no tradition nor attestation this ever happened, and that it ever happened so early.
A.
***


Hurrian was usually recorded in Akkadian cuneiform, which had no ayin. Hurrian itself seems to have had no ayin, except in occasional foreign proper names used in Hurrian. To quote the F/B website at p. 13: “The Ugaritic writing indicates that the goddess Anat, of Cananean origin, was *[«anat] with «ayin. There is another instance of that letter in the obscure word [t « n]. This is not a sufficient basis to posit that Hurrian may have had pharyngeal phonemes.”

Since neither Hurrian itself, nor the writing system usually used to record Hurrian, had an ayin, the Hebrew ayin had no natural role to play in recording Hurrian words. Yet Hurrian often uses the commonplace vowel i, as to which there is no direct equivalent in Hebrew.
***
The direct equivalent of Hurrian short [i] is vowel [i] which Egyptian hieroglyphs and early Semitic writing and present day Arabic don't bother indicate.
A.
***


The two choices here were probably ayin or yod. Although centuries later yod came to be routinely used as a vowel indicator in full spelling, yod did not usually function in that way in the old Biblical Hebrew defective spelling originally used in the Patriarchal narratives. Yod as an initial letter was a true consonant in Hebrew; an interior yod in the days of old defective spelling often was simply a way to ease pronunciation, with )BYRM likely having the identical meaning as )BRM, but being easier to pronounce; and in final position it meant possessive or “a people”. Moreover, as noted above regarding the Hurrian word for “which”, Hurrian does have y in ordinary Hurrian words, sometimes paired with i (!), so it would be awkward to have Hebrew yod consistently represent Hurrian i. But with Hebrew ayin otherwise having no role to play in setting forth Hurrian words, it made sense to choose Hebrew ayin, rather than Hebrew yod, to represent Hurrian i.

***
No
There is utterly no reason why this letter should be used to write -i-.
Hurrian probably had long vowels at least at a phonetic level (and possibly phonemic level). It's completely artificial to imagine they would write short -i- and not the other vowels, some of them being long.
You either write no vowel (Egyptian way), or only the long vowels (Arabic and early semitic way) or all vowels (Greek way).
But you don't write only short -i- with Ayin, this is nonsense.
A.
***


Once one realizes that Hebrew ayin is being used to represent Hurrian i, then it’s easy to see all four names at Genesis 14: 2 as being simple Hurrian common words (which are being used as appropriate nicknames for the Hurrian princelings who historically made up the league of five rebellious parties in the Great Syrian War in the Orontes River Valley in western Syria in the mid-14th century BCE). Look at those four names at Genesis 14: 2, assume that Hebrew ayin is Hurrian i, and further assume that the Hebrew author is using Hurrian common words as nicknames for these Hurrian princelings. On those straightforward assumptions, all four names make perfect sense as Hurrian common words. BR( is ebri. BR%( is ebri-ssi. $M)BR is $umi-ebri. [The aleph there indicates a discrete syllable ‘eb’, which is how we know to imply an e at the beginning of the first two words in Hurrian. All three of those words are based on ebri.] And $N)B is $ana-b. [Note that the final vowel in $ani or $eni would normally be i, but for the meaning “your brother” it changes to a (per p. 19 of the F/B website), which is why we see the aleph there, not an ayin.] The first three names effectively mean “lord” or “Hurrian princeling”, and the fourth name means “your brother” or, in effect, “Hurrian princeling” [because Hurrian princelings historically referred to each other as “brothers”]. Thus all four names at Genesis 14: 2 effectively mean: “Hurrian princeling”. The early Hebrew author is telling us that the league of five rebellious parties consisted of Hurrian princelings.

Analysts have missed this Hurrian analysis because, like you, they have always assumed that a Hurrian i would naturally be represented by Hebrew yod. Although that’s an “obvious” choice, it would have been a bad choice. The actual decision to use Hebrew ayin to represent Hurrian i was a far superior choice, albeit admittedly not an obvious choice (because the sounds don’t match).

So take a look at the four names at Genesis 14: 2 and think “lord” and “brother” in Hurrian. It’s super-simple Hurrian. The key is simply to recognize that the early Hebrew author made the brilliant decision to represent Hurrian i by Hebrew ayin, not by Hebrew yod.
***

As stated before in a previous mail, your interpretation of these names as Hurrian is not acceptable on purely phonetic grounds.
They are not Hurrian and there is no room to doubt that they are decidedly and definitely not Hurrian for consistent and conclusive reasons.
In addition these names should be Indo-Aryan sounding.
So the conclusion is that these names do not refer to persons who have anything to do with Mitanni and Hurrian people.

Best

Arnaud Fournet








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