Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Aramaic to Hebrew language switch?

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: edwalkwitz AT yahoo.com, kwrandolph AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Aramaic to Hebrew language switch?
  • Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:57:34 EDT


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




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page