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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: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:27:43 EDT


Dr. Fournet:

Let me first say that I have learned a great deal from your posts on this
thread. Thank you! (And thank you to the moderators as well, for allowing
all these posts concerning Hurrian.)

To me, it has become clear that the problem you and I are having is not
really about Hurrian, but rather is about the orthography of early Biblical
Hebrew defective spelling. One of your recent comments illustrates this key
point perfectly.

You wrote: “A syntagm like Summi Ebri-wi should have the Genitive mark -wi.


In all cases this is not an attested name formation.”

1. As to your first point, see the Fournet/Bomhard Hurrian language
website at p. 11: “The Genitive of älami ‘oath’ is attested as
<e-la-mi-ni-e>
*[älaminiji] instead of the regular form <e-la-mi-ni-we>. The glide /w/, and
even /b/, are sometimes pronounced [j] as shown by abi ‘face, front’ and the
variant aye.”

The normal genitive mark in Hurrian is –we or -wi. But as the F/B website
aptly points out, a genitive mark in Hurrian does not have to have the true
consonant W, as in ‘we’ or ‘wi’, but rather at times can be indicated by a
pure vowel, ‘e’, at least where the preceding syllable ends with a vowel
[which is the case for alami, elamini, and ebri]. Defective spelling Hebrew
did not record pure vowels. A final e would routinely not be recorded in
defective spelling old Biblical Hebrew.

In effect, you keep demanding post-exilic Ezra-style full spelling of these
Hurrian common words, where many Hurrian vowels would be expressly recorded
in the Hebrew rendering. That’s simply impossible at Genesis 14: 2, whose
composition pre-dates the introduction of full spelling post-exilic Hebrew
by about 800 years or so. You’re just not going to find those vowels in
old-style defective Hebrew spelling. The early Hebrew author of Genesis 14:
2
did the best he could to record these simple Hurrian common words, but there’
s no way that he could adopt Ezra’s post-exilic practice of using Hebrew
vav/W and Hebrew yod/Y to record most, if not all, of the many Hurrian vowels
in Hurrian common words.

You see, the real problem we keep having is about early Hebrew orthography.
When Genesis 14: 2 was composed, there’s no way that most Hurrian vowels
would be expressly recorded by specific Hebrew letters. No way. That is
antithetical to the defective spelling used in old Biblical Hebrew. You must
give up your demand to see multiple Hurrian vowels expressly recorded in
old-style Hebrew. Yes, Akkadian scribes wrote down all those blessed Hurrian
vowels, but there’s no way that an early Hebrew would do that. There is only
one vowel indicator in each of the four personal names at Genesis 14: 2. By
defective spelling old Biblical Hebrew standards, that’s a lot of vowels.
There’s no way a pre-1st millennium BCE Hebrew composition like chapter 14
of Genesis could be reasonably expected to expressly set forth more vowels
than that. True, Ezra might have spelled it $WMY)BRY [or maybe, stretching
things a bit, even $WMY)BRYWY]. That “looks” Hurrian, with all those many
vowels. But in the defective old Biblical Hebrew spelling of Genesis 14: 2,
the expected spelling of that Hurrian common word is precisely what we see in
the received text: $M)BR. It’s pure Hurrian, all the way, in every way.
But very few of the Hurrian vowels are expressly recorded in the old-style
defective spelling of early Biblical Hebrew.

2. The Hurrian common words at Genesis 14: 2 are not attested Hurrian
names. The fact that $umi-ebri “is not an attested name formation” is
irrelevant. The Hurrian common words at Genesis 14: 2 are simple,
run-of-the-mill
Hurrian common words, which the early Hebrew author is using as nicknames for
Hurrian princelings. The key there is to recognize that all four personal
names at Genesis 14: 2, when viewed as being Hurrian common words,
effectively mean “Hurrian princeling”. In order to keep these personal names
understandable to his contemporary Hebrew audience (who only knew a tiny
handful
of Hurrian words), all four personal names at Genesis 14: 2 are based on only
two basic Hurrian common words: ebri and $eni. As such, the Hurrian
common words used for personal names at Genesis 14: 2 are ideal nicknames for
the
Hurrian princelings who made up the five-party league of rebellious Hurrian
princelings in the Great Syrian War in western Syria in the mid-14th
century BCE. That momentous historical event is accurately recorded at
Genesis
14: 1-11 as the “four kings against five”.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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