Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann:
 
1.  You have written a fine (if brief) scholarly defense of the view that 
%HDWT) at Genesis 31: 47 is an Aramaic word, albeit focusing exclusively on 
the issue of why the first letter in the received text is a sin/shin, not the 
more expected samekh for Aramaic.  You state first that Aramaic sibilants 
are “not so simple to deal with”, and you cite Degen’s Grammar.  You then go 
on to make a point that was made in those two November 20, 2004 posts that 
I previously cited, but which [in order to keep my post fairly short] I did 
not reference as to this specific issue this time around, namely that “
SHDWTH, is nothing that the abstract-emphatic of the root SHD ‘(to) witness’, 
which alone in the Elephantine papyri appears more than 120 instances and 
constantly written with Sin”.  To that argument one might respond, however, 
that 
whereas %HD is written with a sin in Aramaic routinely, %HDWT) is not 
attested in Aramaic as being written with a sin, rather than the expected 
samekh, 
until the very late time of the Nabateans.
 
2.  But here’s my real point in this post.  As a scholar, doesn’t it make 
you nervous that no fellow scholar has  e-v-e-r  asked if %HDWT) may 
originally have been $H-D-T), and be a Hurrianized Sanskrit phrase?  Laban is 
presented at Genesis 24: 10 as living in NHRYM in the Bronze Age, and you 
know 
that (i) Hurrian was the main language spoken at NHRYM, and (ii) most of the 
kings of Naharim/Mitanni had Hurrianized Sanskrit names.  So shouldn’t 
scholars at least  a-s-k  if $H-D-T) may be $H, as a simplified Hebrew 
version of 
Sanskrit svaa, and D-T) may be Sanskrit da-ta, with the phrase being similar 
to the Hurrian princeling name $u-wa-ar-da-ta [substituting svaa for svar] 
attested in the Amarna Letters, and meaning in both cases:  “Given by the 
[Hurrian] Sky(god) [Te$$up]”?
 
Wouldn’t the scholarly view here be stronger and more convincing if 
scholars had at least considered the Hurrianized Sanskrit alternative?  I 
think you 
might agree with me that if $H-D-T) is Hurrianized Sanskrit, then this text 
likely dates all the long way back to the Late Bronze Age, and may have 
pinpoint historical accuracy, whereas if $HDWT) is Aramaic, then this text 
must 
be 1st millennium BCE fiction.  That is to say, the entire integrity of the 
Patriarchal narratives is riding on this linguistic issue.  With so much 
being at stake, shouldn’t the scholarly community address in writing the 
possibility that $H-D-T) may be Hurrianized Sanskrit?
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois