Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Rolf Furuli:
 
You wrote:  “[I]f I understand Jack correctly, he would say that this 
language definitely was not Hebrew because the ancestors of the later 
Hebrew-speaking people did not yet live in Canaan.”
 
The Hebrews always lived in Canaan.  Most historians agree that the Hebrews 
are indigenous to Canaan, and that there is no evidence of the Hebrews as a 
people spending any considerable time in Egypt.  Just look at the language of 
Biblical Hebrew, which is this list’s long suit.  The Northwest Semitic words 
found in the Amarna Letters are for the most part words that are found in the 
Bible (though naturally the form often varies).  There’s precious little 
Akkadian influence on Hebrew.  And there’s also very little Egyptian 
influence on Hebrew.  By contrast, Canaanite and Moabite, to the extent we 
can reconstruct those languages, and the vast corpus of Ugaritic literature, 
have a very similar vocabulary to Biblical Hebrew.  Biblical Hebrew has only 
70 loanwords from Akkadian (per Paul V. Mankowski), and only 40 certain 
loanwords from Egyptian (per T.O. Lambdin’s classic study in 1953).  Yet one 
cannot even talk about the concept of “loanwords” in Hebrew from Canaanite or 
Ugaritic, because the vocabulary is so similar.
 
If we look at the language of early Biblical Hebrew in the Patriarchal 
narratives, the history of the Hebrews is staring us in the face.  The 
Hebrews did not originate in Mesopotamia.  The word (BR-Y/“Hebrew” does not 
mean “the crossing a boundary people”.  Rather, the Hebrews are indigenous to 
Canaan, as the author of the Patriarchal narratives knows and reflects in his 
composition.  The language of the rest of the Bible confirms that the Hebrews 
did not spend their formative years in Egypt, because there is so little 
influence of Egyptian on Biblical Hebrew.
 
Some scholars say that NYXX at Genesis 8: 21, meaning “sweet” in Hebrew, 
comes from the Egyptian word for “eternity”, NXX, but that seems a big 
stretch to me.  Of course, “pharaoh” obviously comes from Egyptian, as would 
be expected.  Interestingly, going the other direction, Egyptian has a large 
number of Semitic loanwords.  But that is not surprising, considering all the 
Canaanites who wandered into Egypt over the centuries, and the period of 
Hyksos rule over Egypt.
 
You know Hebrew.  It’s difficult to distinguish Hebrew from Canaanite and 
Ugaritic and Moabite.  Yet it’s hard to find many Akkadian or Egyptian 
loanwords in Biblical Hebrew.  The language of Biblical Hebrew itself is 
telling us that (i) the Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan, and (ii) the 
Hebrews did not spend their formative years in Egypt.  The Hebrews were 
always in beloved Canaan.  That’s what the Patriarchal narratives say, and 
that’s what both history and linguistics confirm.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois