Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Ed Walkwitz wrote:  “I can't see in the text that Abraham went from Canaan 
to Ur. It is worded pretty clearly the other way around.”  Jack Kilmon then 
wrote:  “The 


Biblical texts Genesis-2Kings were composed in Hebrew in the late 7th 


century-early 6th century BCE.  …If Abraham was an historical person who 
migrated to Canaan with his family in the Bronze Age, it is safe to assume 
they adopted the language [of Canaan].”  Ed Walkwitz later added:  “Your 
study 
has informed you about the names as they occur in the text, not about 
whether they may have been changed or adapted before or when the text was 
written.
”
 
If the west Semitic language of Canaan was adopted only after the Hebrews 
got to Canaan, then Abraham’s birth name could not possibly be )B-RM, which 
is the most virgin pure west Semitic name one could imagine.  I am quite 
surprised that people seem to be saying that Abraham’s actual birth name was 
Akkadian, not being anything like west Semitic )B-RM, but that either 
Abraham, 
and/or the narrator, later changed Abraham’s birth name to a west Semitic 
birth name, )B-RM.  Is that a realistic theory of the case?  If the narrator 
wants to claim that the Hebrews are transplants from Ur in southern 
Mesopotamia, why then does he tell us twice that Abraham’s birth name was the 
west 
Semitic )B-RM?
 
As to how old the Patriarchal narratives are, even mainstream scholars 
admit that the Hittite and Hurrian names at Genesis 14: 1 mean that chapter 
14 
of Genesis is a truly ancient text, not a 7th century BCE product of Jewish 
imagination.  In my view, the Patriarchal narratives do not assert, 
non-historically, that the Hebrews originated in southern Mesopotamia, near 
Ur, where 
the main language was Akkadian.  Rather, Genesis 11: 31 starts us out in 
the middle of the story.  Old TRX [whose name likely derives in part from the 
Ugaritic verb TRX] is trying to get from Ur in Kassite Babylonia [Ur Kasdym] 
to Canaan.  Why?  Because TRX, )B-RM, and all their relatives were 
indigenous to Canaan, and they’re trying to get back to their beloved 
homeland of 
Canaan, that’s why, after buying lapis lazuli on a one-time-only arduous 
caravan trip way out east to Ur.  Both the name TRX, and most all of his 
descendants except Nahor, have west Semitic names, including TRX’s 
descendants who 
were born in Naharim/Mitanni and never left eastern Syria.  That’s because 
the family is indigenous to Canaan and were Hebrew native speakers, who 
continued to speak Hebrew at home after getting stuck in Hurrian-speaking 
Harran 
in eastern Syria.
 
Why would an elderly TRX be trying to move from urban, urbane southern 
Mesopotamia to a life of living in tents in rural, modest Canaan?  And why 
does 
)B-RM know exactly where to go, what to do, and how to do it, in passing 
through and returning to Canaan, if neither he nor any of his ancestors had 
ever seen Canaan before?  Why doesn’t Abraham resent living in tents in rural 
Canaan, and try to change that status, especially after he comes back from 
Egypt flush with gold and silver?   Does Abraham seem like a stranger in a 
strange land?  Doesn’t he act, rather, like he knows Canaan like the back of 
his hand, from the first moment we see Abraham in Canaan?  In fact, Abraham 
loves the rural area where he pitches his tent in modest Canaan so much that 
he calls it XBRW-N, which seems to be an equivalent name to Ugaritic 
XBR/Khuburu, referring to the ideal, idealized mythical kingdom of King 
Keret.  [Or, 
XBR-W-N could mean “the heaven-and-earth of mine” in Hurrian.]  Any way 
you slice it, Abraham really likes modest, rural Canaan, acting like an 
appreciative indigenous Canaanite, and not acting like an ex-pat from urban 
Kassite Babylonia in any way, shape or form.
 
Abraham is not an immigrant from southern Mesopotamia.  He doesn’t know a 
word of Aramaic or Akkadian.  The idea that Abraham grew up speaking Akkadian 
and then developed his own dialect of “western Akkadian” called Hebrew, 
under influence in his middle age from Canaanites, makes no sense on any 
level.  Rather, Abraham is a native Hebrew speaker.  There is virtually no 
Akkadian or Egyptian influence on early Biblical Hebrew, which on the 
contrary has 
all the hallmarks of being an insular Canaanite language largely 
uncontaminated by any non-west Semitic languages (or by Aramaic, which did 
not exist 
yet in the Patriarchal Age).  Early Biblical Hebrew doesn’t have the wealth 
of Hurrian or Akkadian borrowings that one sees in the more cosmopolitan west 
Semitic language of Ugaritic, except, of course, when it records foreign 
proper names, such as the names of Hurrian princelings in Canaan.  How could 
Moses, who supposedly was in Egypt during most of his formative years, 
compose the Patriarchal narratives concerning events centuries earlier, and 
all 
without any discernible trace of the Egyptian language influencing his 
Hebrew? 
 Is that a plausible scenario?  By contrast, just look at the “Akkadian” 
language of the Amarna Letters from Canaan, which is almost as much Canaanite 
as it is Akkadian.  There’s nothing like that in the Patriarchal 
narratives, which are absolutely perfect Hebrew from beginning to end, 
showing little 
influence from either Akkadian from southern Mesopotamia, or Egyptian, and 
no Aramaic influence at all.
 
If we pay attention to the language of Biblical Hebrew, we will see that 
early Biblical Hebrew is a virgin pure west Semitic language, and that the 
Hebrews must have been indigenous to west Semitic-speaking Canaan.  Exhibit A 
is Abraham’s birth name:  )B-RM.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois