Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Jack Kilmon:
 
For b-hebrew list purposes, the best way to date the composition of the 
Patriarchal narratives is by examining the proper names it uses. On this 
thread 
we have so far seen that TD(L and NHRYM are vintage Late Bronze Age 
nomenclature that fit the mid-14th century BCE perfectly.  In this post we’ll 
look 
at K$-D-YM and MLK (LM.  Those four names don’t fit the Early Bronze Age 
(Karl’s view), or the 1st millennium BCE (the scholarly view as to most of 
the 
Patriarchal narratives).  Let’s now examine your linguistic comments as they 
would apply to a mid-14th century BCE composition date for the Patriarchal 
narratives.
 
1.  You wrote:  “There was no Hebrew script at this time when 
proto-alphabetic acrophonic systems in Egypt and the Sinai were just emerging 
but 
certainly there was a Canaanite language.”
 
Pre-Canaanite is attested prior to the mid-14th century BCE in the 
Shephelah.  So at least the key names in the Patriarchal narratives could 
have been 
recorded, in writing, using pre-Hebrew script from day #1, given a mid-14th 
century BCE composition date for the Patriarchal narratives.
 
2.  You wrote:  “Aramaeans settled in Aram around the 13th century BCE….”
 
But who cares about the 13th century BCE?  The Patriarchal narratives are 
talking about the mid-14th century BCE.  The word “Arameans” is 
well-attested in the mid-14th century BCE:  “[R]eferences to individual 
Arameans occur 
in the Ugaritic texts along with a reference in a fourteenth century 
cuneiform text to eqleti aramima, ‘the fields of the Arameans’.” John Van 
Seters, “
Abaham in History and Tradition” (1975), at p. 30.
 
3.  You wrote:  “…and Abraham is reported to have been born in Sumerian UR 
(not of the Chaldees).”
 
There’s no Biblical reference to “Chaldees”!  No, the reference is K$DYM, 
meaning southern Mesopotamia under Kassite rulers in the Late Bronze Age.  
K$ means “Kassite” in Kassite.  Based on Sanskrit, dun or du- or tu-, or 
even just d- or t-, means “to overpower” in Kassite.  –YM is a standard west 
Semitic suffix [having nothing to do with the Kassite language], comparable 
to –ite in English.  So K$-D-YM means:  “the Kassite overpowerer people”.  
[The original Kassite form of the name of their own county was 
Ka-$ra-du-ni-ia$ (where the R is a comparative in Sanskrit/Kassite, and the 
final suffix 
means “land” in Kassite).  The meaning probably was “the land that has been 
overpowered by the wondrous Kassites”.  Because the consonant cluster was 
not pronounceable by most non-Kassites, non-Kassite Akkadian scribes dropped 
the first $, which is why this name comes out as “Karaduniash” in the Amarna 
Letters.  (Unless one knows to imply back in the omitted $, that particular 
rendering of the name of Kassite Babylonia makes little sense, which is why 
scholars have been unable to explain the derivation of that word in the 
Amarna Letters.  The Hebrew author made a much better choice here:  he wisely 
dropped out the relatively unimportant R, while keeping the $, so that his 
Hebrew audience would understand the reference, which in Hebrew nicely starts 
with K$, meaning “Kassite”.)  But they’re all simply three different 
versions of the same basic name.  The only two differences are that (i) most 
non-Kassites could not pronounce that consonant cluster, so either the R or 
the $ 
had to be dropped, and (ii) the Hebrews (not surprisingly) dropped the 
Kassite suffix and substituted a Hebrew suffix.]
 
4.  You wrote:  “Numerous anachronisms occur in the OT simply from the 
account being written centuries after the events.”
 
But not in the Patriarchal narratives!  Nothing of what you said is 
anachronistic in a mid-14th century BCE historical context.  Rather, 
everything 
that you said on the linguistic front fits a mid-14th century BCE composition 
date perfectly.
 
5.  Since this thread is being closed, I only have time to give one more 
example of wording in the Patriarchal narratives that fits the mid-14th 
century BCE perfectly, but that was unknown in both the Early Bronze Age and 
the 
1st millennium BCE:  Chedorlaomer’s kingly title.  Although the received text 
has MLK (YLM, the original spelling almost certainly was MLK (LM.  The 
kingly title MLK (LM, meaning “King Eternity”, is historically attested in 
only 
one place in 5,000 years of human history, concerning a title for a living, 
human king:  at Late Bronze Age Ugarit.  The six-letter-for-six-letter 
total accuracy is quite amazing.  Here’s a snippet of a fine scholarly 
analysis 
of MLK (LM at Ugarit:  “Gaal, like most commentators, noticed the occurrence 
of mlk ‘lm in Ugaritic as an epithet of [Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep 
III] Nmry (Ni-im-mu-a-ri-ia)…  …mlk ‘lm = hk3d.t/nb nhh [Egyptian epithets of 
Akhenaten].  …The idea of divine eternity did not flower in Mesopotamia as 
it did in Egypt during this period.”  Alan Cooper, “MLK ‘LM:  ‘Eternal King’
 or ‘King of Eternity’”, in “Love & Death in the Ancient Near East”, 
edited by John H. Marks and Robert M. Good (1987), at pp. 1-3, 7.
 
Unfortunately, Biblical analysts of the story of Biblical “Tudhaliya” 
ignore the foregoing Late Bronze Age historical facts completely, and analyze 
Chedorlaomer’s title exclusively on the basis of what is said in the 
post-exilic Book of Daniel.  But for anyone brave enough to cast a glance at 
non-biblical sources from the Late Bronze Age, the pinpoint historical 
accuracy of 
the Biblical story of Hittite King “Tudhaliya” is truly breathtaking.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois