Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Rolf Furuli:
 
You wrote:  “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.”   
 
Writing in 2004, Ugaritic scholar Mark S. Smith, of the Department of Hebrew 
and Judaic Studies, New York University, said in his introduction to “A 
Bibliography of Ugaritic Grammar and Biblical Hebrew Grammar in the Twentieth 
Century”:  “I would refer to the balanced view expressed by Anson Rainey over 
thirty years ago:  Ugaritic is not Hebrew; it is not an older stage of 
Hebrew; it must even be differentiated from the dialect(s) reflected in the 
Amarna glosses. Its closest relative is undoubtedly Phoenician; but there are 
marked differences between them. One might agree that Ugaritic is a 
North-West Semitic language, evidently standing alongside Phoenician, Hebrew, 
Moabite and the Amarna glosses over against Aramaic.”
 
Thus we see that early Biblical Hebrew, Ugaritic, Moabite, and the Canaanite 
of the Amarna glosses are all very similar languages, commonly called 
North-West Semitic, and are readily distinguishable from Aramaic, Akkadian 
and Egyptian.  To talk about “loanwords” between Hebrew and Ugaritic does not 
make sense, because they share a majority of their vocabulary in common.  
With Ugaritic being very similar to Phoenician, note this comment by Ian 
Young at p. 22 of “Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew” (1993):  “82% of 
Phoenician words have the same meaning as their Hebrew cognates.”  Although 
scholars split as to whether there is a substantial overlap of vocabulary 
between Akkadian and Hebrew, I myself have cited a leading scholar from 
Harvard who found only 70 Akkadian loanwords in Hebrew, with many of those 
Akkadian loanwords (including month names) coming into Late Biblical Hebrew 
via Aramaic, long after the Patriarchal Age.
 
The very nature of the language of early Biblical Hebrew is telling us that 
the Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan, having no roots in Mesopotamia, and 
that the Hebrews never spent any substantial amount of time in Egypt.  The 
Hebrews are Canaan, all the way, in every way.  One cannot imagine a purer 
west Semitic language than early Biblical Hebrew.  Based on history, 
linguistics, and the text of the Patriarchal narratives, the Hebrews are 
indigenous to Canaan, and never spent any considerable amount of time in 
Egypt.  History, linguistics, and a textual analysis of the Patriarchal 
narratives all tell the same story.
 
The word “Hebrew”/(BR-Y at Genesis 14: 13 cannot, and does not, mean “the 
crossing over a boundary people”.  The Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan, 
never having crossed over a boundary regarding being in Canaan.  The Hebrews 
are a proud, strong, Patriarch people, who assertively called themselves 
(BR-Y.  If scholars would look at history, linguistics, and the text of the 
Patriarchal narratives, instead of blindly following later books in the Bible 
that were composed umpteen centuries after the fact, the meaning of 
(BR-Y/“Hebrew”, and the fact that the Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan, would 
become clear.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois



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