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  • From: jimstinehart AT aol.com
  • To: jimstinehart AT aol.com, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] TD(L
  • Date: Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:12:01 -0400



TD(L is the letter-for-letter alphabetic spelling (per Ugarit) of the Hittite
kingly name “Tudhaliya” from the Late Bronze Age. Scholars generally agree
that the Biblical story about Tudhaliya is truly ancient, being older than
most of the rest of the Bible, with its composition likely dating all the
long way back to the Late Bronze Age. Furthermore, the letter-for-letter
accuracy of the spelling of this Hittite name suggests that the names in the
Biblical story about Tudhaliya may have been committed to writing very early.
Could the Biblical story about Tudhaliya have been written down in a
language similar to Hebrew as early as the mid-14th century BCE?

Three different alphabetic spelling systems in and near Canaan pre-date the
14th century BCE time period. “By the beginning of the second millennium
B.C.E. (the late Middle Bronze Age in Canaan), the scribes of Ugarit began to
use a new script based on twenty-seven cuneiform characters. The southern
Canaanites also developed new scripts of their own, two variations in fact –
Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite – both of which were also based upon the
use of acronyms (Albright 1966; Cross 1967; Naveh 1982). …Today
archaeologists know of some thirty to forty Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions that
have been found [in the Sinai]…. [T]he Sinai inscriptions have been dated to
the…Middle Kingdom [approximately 19th – 18th centuries BCE]…(Gardiner 1962;
Sass 1988). …Further north, another version of this new script began to
emerge. Current knowledge of the script, Proto-Canaanite, is based on some
twenty-five inscriptions, the earliest dating to the Middle Bronze Age and
the latest appearing at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. These
inscriptions, most of which were found in a relatively small area in the
southern Shephelah, span much of the second millennium B.C.E…..” Jonathan
Michael Golden, Ancient Canaan and Israel: New Perspectives (2004),
ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California, at pp. 243-244. There are many more
detailed scholarly treatments of this subject. The trend is to push the
first alphabetic writings ever further back in time.

So it is possible that from the very beginning, way back in the Late Bronze
Age, the names in the Biblical story about a Hittite king nicknamed
“Tudhaliya” may have been written down in pre-Hebrew. That would explain how
the various non-Semitic words and names in that Biblical story have such
great accuracy.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois







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