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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: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:19:50 +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: Friday, July 16, 2010 3:54 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Asher again


Dr. Fournet:

Richard Hess analyzes the name of a messenger from Mitanni, and the name of a defeated princeling in the Orontes River Valley in western Syria, as being Hurrian names. Why are you now talking about the Kassites? The Kassites did not serve as messengers to Hurrian King Tushratta of the Hurrian great power state of Mitanni in eastern Syria. The Kassites did not form a league of five rebellious princelings in the heart of Hurrian country in western Syria and get crushed by the mighty Hittites and three regional allies of the Hittites, in the historical “four kings against five” in the mid-14th century BCE. All your talk of Mitanni and the Kassites is utterly irrelevant to discussing the ethnicity of the members of the league of five rebellious parties.

Both in secular history and at Genesis 14: 2, we only have names of four members of the league of five rebellious parties. (That’s because both in secular history and at Genesis 14: 2, one member had no princeling ruler at the time. That’s Tunip in Amarna Letter 59: 1. “Tunip” is probably a Hurrian name.) Of the four historical names we have of the members of the league of five rebellious parties, two are thought to be Hurrian, two are thought to be Akkadian, none are thought to be Indo-Aryan or Sanskrit, and none are thought to be Kassite.

Though you haven’t yet agreed with any of Hess’s analyses of these names yet, let’s try Aki-Teshup of Niya, at Amarna Letter EA 59: 15, 18. Here is how Wm. Moran analyzes this name at p. 380 of his edition of the Amarna Letters: “Aki-Te$$up (Hurr. ‘Te$$up is the guide’{?}, king of Nii”. Aki sure looks Hurrian to me, per p. 80 of F/B: “*[ag-ú] [P-x] ‘to bring, to lead’. EL ag- <a-ku-u>. …UR <ag/j(u)>”. Tessup was the #1 god of the Hurrians. I myself find it hard to imagine a more Hurrian-sounding Hurrian name than Aki-Te$$up. Maybe “Te$$up” has an Aryan etymology, but it was a Hurrian god known by the Hurrian name of Te$$up. Te$$up is all over the Mitanni Letter. Wm. Moran observes at p. 387: “Te$$up, Hurr. Storm-god.” The name Aki-Te$$up is not Indo-Aryan, it’s not Sanskrit, it’s not Mitannian, and heaven knows it’s not Kassite!
***
Yes this amounts to thrashing an open door.
Agi-TeSSub is an obvious and doubtless Hurrian name. As you can see the pattern is verb + god name. It means "TeSSub brought" (this child).
You can see that none of the names you propose to be Hurrian fit that pattern.
A.
***



So in order for the early Hebrew author of Genesis 14: 1-11 to come up with an apt nickname for Aki-Te$$up, we note the following characteristics: It should be a Hurrian common word that effectively means “Hurrian princeling”. It should not be Indo-Aryan, Sanskrit, Mitannian or Kassite.

You will doubtless ask why the early Hebrew author did not either (i) write down the historical name “Aki-Te$$up”, or (ii) write down an attested Hurrian name. For one thing, the early Hebrew author was not about to memorialize for eternity an outright, unambiguous blessing of a pagan god. So the historical name “Aki-Te$$up” was out for sure. Choosing an attested Hurrian name would have been confusing, because the early Hebrew author was picking out a nickname, that should have the generic meaning of “Hurrian princeling”.
***
The last sentence is your hypothesis and for the time being this hypothesis stands unproven.
A.
***


Now consider the four personal names that we have at Genesis 14: 2, and consider that the early Hebrew author may have made the non-obvious choice of using Hebrew ayin to represent Hurrian i.
***
It's perfectly fallacious to talk about a choice "made" by the author: this is your theory. You're deluding yourself with that kind of wording.
And this theory is definitely very strange and runs against what we know about alphabets and phonology.
A.
***


All four names mean “Hurrian princeling” in Hurrian! Is that neat or what? $M)BR starts out with two normal Hurrian syllables, not needing any vowel indicators: $u-mi. But then we have a more unusual Hurrian syllable that begins with a true vowel, an e. So aleph is used there to represent that true vowel, primarily so that we can figure out the syllable division. )B means the discrete Hurrian syllable ‘eb’. The final R needs no vowel indicator here, because we already know the other syllables and the final R is a normal Hurrian syllable, -ri. So $M)BR is $u-mi-eb-ri in Hurrian, literally meaning “on behalf of a lord”, and effectively meaning “Hurrian princeling”. That’s a fine generic nickname for Aki-Te$$up, because it’s a Hurrian common word, it means “Hurrian princeling”, the name “Aki-Te$$up” is a virgin pure Hurrian name, and nothing here has anything to do with Indo-Aryan, Sanskrit, Mitanni or Kassite.

As to $u-mi, it’s at p. 101 of F/B. “*[summi] [P x-] ‘hand’. EL šummi <šu-mi->. Prepositional use as ‘with, on behalf of’.”

$umi is a classic Hurrian word meaning “on behalf of”.

As to ebri, it’s at p. 17 of F/B. [The word ‘ebri’ is at the end of the line of Hurrian text. The English definition “lord” is near the very end of the English translation.] “- < 14. dIM-ub URU kum-mi-ni-i-bi da-la-a-wu-ši eb-ri > -- x : x x x : x x x: -- x : -- x. The paragraph means: ‘8. And Meki, on hearing the order, 9. whining about it: ‘woe on Meki’, said he, 10. he bends his two legs toward Teššub, 11. (empty), 12. Meki these words toward Teššub, 13. remaining knelt down, says: ‘May you hear, Teššub, strongmost lord of Kummi’.”

Ebri is a classic Hurrian word meaning “lord”.
***

As I told you before, this "Hurrian" word is most probably an Akkadianism from Akkadian abaru "strong".
A syntagm like Summi Ebri-wi should have the Genitive mark -wi.
In all cases this is not an attested name formation.
A.
***


$umi-ebri makes perfect sense in Hurrian as literally meaning “on behalf of a (Hurrian) lord”, and as effectively meaning: “Hurrian princeling”.

Thus we see a Hurrian common word, $umi-ebri, rendered in old Biblical Hebrew as $M)BR, effectively meaning “Hurrian princeling”, being used as an apt nickname for one of the five rebellious Hurrian princelings at Genesis 14: 2. How could it be any clearer than that? There’s nothing about Indo-Aryan, Sanskrit, Mitanni or Kassite here.
***
I wonder if anybody else than you sees that.
In all cases, I consider this analysis to be unacceptable.
A.
***


Dr. Fournet, I have shown that every single element of the four personal names at Genesis 14: 2 is right there on the Fournet/Bomhard website, without exception: ebri, -ssi, $umi-, and $an-a-b. Nothing is missing. The four personal names at Genesis 14: 2 are ebri, ebri-ssi, $umi-ebri, and $an-a-b. It’s just the Hebrew spelling of these Hurrian common words that’s throwing you off: BR(, BR-%(, $M-)BR, and $N-)-B. You’re letting the old Biblical Hebrew orthography get in the way of seeing these simple Hurrian common words, all of which effectively mean: “Hurrian princeling”. You’re upset because the Hurrian true vowel e is not expressly set forth at the beginning of BR( and BR-%(, but that’s par for the course in the defective spelling used in old Biblical Hebrew. You’ve got to imply vowels right and left in old Biblical Hebrew defective spelling. That’s just the way it is. That’s the way an early Hebrew would have done the orthography (even if it makes modern Hurrian linguists role over in their graves). It’s Hurrian common words with old Biblical Hebrew characteristics, as it were. There’s nothing in those four personal names at Genesis 14: 2 that’s not front and center on the F/B website. It’s very simple Hurrian. Anyone can see it, if you’ll just widen the strike zone a bit as to how these simple Hurrian words might be rendered in the defective spelling of old Biblical Hebrew. Forget Kassite. Think Hurrian!

Dr. Fournet, I think the following hypothetical may change your mind. As a hypothetical, assume that Ezra could read Akkadian cuneiform, and that Ezra found the following Hurrian word in a library in Babylon during the Exile: $umi-ebri. Using full spelling Hebrew of which Ezra was the master, here is how Ezra could be expected to record that Hurrian word in post-exilic full spelling Hebrew: $WMY)BRY. It’s an 8-letter exact match. In particular, all four Hurrian vowels are explicitly written down in Ezra-style, post-exilic full spelling Hebrew. But Genesis 14: 2 was composed prior to the 1st millennium BCE, when full spelling Hebrew had not yet been invented. So at that time, the vav/W and yod/Y would not be used as routine vowel indicators, as they are in the later full spelling. So dropping out those vowel indicators, which did not yet exist, this Hurrian word would be recorded in old-style defective spelling Hebrew as: $M)BR. That’s exactly what we see at Genesis 14: 2! Yes, $WMY)BRY “looks” like Hurrian, because it has all those blessed vowels. But there’s no way that a Late Bronze Age early Hebrew author would write down all those Hurrian vowels, since that Ezra-style full spelling was never done in Hebrew itself at that time. The absence of express vowels means that $M)BR does not “look” Hurrian, but it is Hurrian, just done in old-style defective spelling Hebrew, that’s all.

***
Anyway before it got written the document was orally transmitted so the issue of defective spelling is irrelevant. These names were first memorized under their real phonetic forms.
This is actually another objection to your theory.

Arnaud Fournet







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