Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: K Randolph
To: Arnaud Fournet
Cc: JimStinehart AT aol.com ; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] H-XT-Y at II Samuel 11: 3


Arnaud:


On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 10:20 PM, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr> 
wrote:

…
***
I don't know much Hittite but I don't think Uwrihi could be Hittite 
(=Anatolian Indo-European).
It can be a Hurro-Urartian person name without much difficulty. The shape 
fits well and this name is attested.
This would mean that "Hett-" is rather loosely applied to any kind of Non 
Semitic people in the north.

Arnaud Fournet
***


Even back when I was in college, my professors told me that it was well 
known among scholars that “Hittite” did not necessarily refer to Hittites 
alone, but include what I have recently learned are now called the Hatti and 
the Hatti apparently included Hurrian and Urartan peoples, among others, in 
an apparently loose confederation of several peoples. Thus Jim’s objections 
are moot. Thus your identification of )WRYH as a Hurrian name is possible.
***
Normally Hatti and Hurrian are two separate people and two different 
languages.
I'm not aware Hatti people (as ethnolinguistically different from Hittites) 
ever united with Hurrian people.
Actually it seems that Hatti language became extinct before -2000 BC.
A.
***


One of the problems we have in reading the text is that we don’t have vowels 
written (those that we have are from a tradition far later, not original, 
and demonstrably sometimes wrong), thus the apparent Semitic sounding names 
may be mispronunciations of non-Semitic names.
***
I'm interested to have an example of "wrong" vowels.
A.
***


One of the problems of analyzing Biblical Hebrew is that the vowels were not 
included, which leads to that often different words would be written the 
same, though likely pronounced differently. There is no reason that does not 
extend also to names, making it possible that )WRYH the priest named in 
Kings had a different pronunciation than did )WRYH the Hittite mentioned in 
2 Samuel.
Karl W. Randolph.
***
Yes maybe, but Massoretic vowels are not based on thin air, I suppose, There 
must be some long-lasting tradition therein.

Arnaud Fournet