Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Jim,

I have some questions for you: Many words (perhaps as much as 30-40%) 
are similar in Ugaritic and Hebrew. Do they represent Ugaritic loans 
from Hebrew or Hebrew loans from Ugaritic? Or did both languages take 
their words from a common Semitic stock?  How many words are similar 
between Akkadian and Hebrew?  Two word, five words, one hundred, or 
one thousand words? Do you know?  If there are a great number of 
similar words, why should Hebrew loan words from Akkadian? For 
example, would we expect that Hebrew loaned the word wa$abu (to sit 
dow, dwell) when it already had the word  ya$ab? To draw any 
conclusions regarding loans between Akkadian and Hebrew is futile, 
because of the similarities of the languages

I am not ignoring any data, but I simply open for different 
interpretations of these data. There may be a natural interchange 
between two languages, or one may loan words from another language. 
But there may also be situations where conscious efforts are made in 
connection with a particular language.  We have the "miracle" of 
modern Hebrew. Ben Yehuda helped to form this completely new 
language, and ben Gurion decided that Hebrew should be the official 
language of the Jewish state rather than Jiddish. Modern Hebrew has a 
great number of loan words, but these represent  conscious efforts to 
create a language. But the point is that the nature of languages are 
different, and we cannot extrapolate from one language to another.

The Middle Egyptian language is very different from Hebrew. But 
according to the book of Exodus, the Jews lived in a particular area 
rather isolated. And the people may have done conscious efforts to 
keep their language pure, just as the people who spoke old Hungarian 
that I mentioned. In order to draw balanced scholarly conclusions, 
one should admit that there also are other possible interpretations, 
and one should not accuse others for ignoring facts.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


> Rolf Furuli:
>
> 1. You wrote:  "[P]eople speaking a West Semitic language definitely 
> lived in the land of
> Canaan in the 14th century.  And they even may have worshiped YHWH."
>
> So far so good for the historical accuracy of the Patriarchal 
> narratives in a mid-14th century BCE Late Bronze Age historical 
> context.
>
> 2.  But unfortunately you also wrote:  "[I]n my view the number of 
> loan words from other languages in Hebrew will not tell us anything 
> regarding the origin of Hebrew or where persons speaking Hebrew 
> lived in ancient times."
>
> You are asking us to ignore the fact that Hebrew has only 70 
> loanwords from Akkadian?  And when Genesis 25: 8 says that Abraham 
> was gathered to his people in Canaan, we should ignore that as well 
> and think that 100% of Abraham's ancestors had died and been buried 
> in Mesopotamia?  And the fact that virtually all historians see the 
> Hebrews as being indigenous to Canaan (or greater Canaan) should 
> also be ignored?
>
> We also must ignore the fact that Hebrew has only 40 loanwords from 
> Egyptian?  And we are to ignore the fact that Joseph, all of whose 
> predictions have come true so far, says to his older half-brothers 
> and one younger full-brother at Genesis 50: 24:  "And Joseph said to 
> his brothers, 'I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring 
> you up out of this land [Egypt] to the land that he swore to 
> Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob'"?  And we're also supposed to 
> ignore the fact that historians have found no trace of any long 
> bondage of the Hebrews in Egypt?
>
> Rather than the customary approach of ignoring altogether the 
> foregoing six objective factors, why not instead admire the 
> p-i-n-p-o-i-n-t  historical accuracy of the Patriarchal narratives 
> in a mid-14th century BCE context?
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois