Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr ; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 4:16 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Goshen


Dr. Arnaud Fournet:

In determining whether G%-N/“Goshen” is Qis, we start with the fact that Qis 
is spelled with the following four Egyptian hieroglyphs:  N29-M17-S29-O49. 
http://hieroglyphs.net/000501/cgi/lookup.pl?ty=en&ch=q&cs=0
***
Apparently you don't seem to be aware that the rendition of Egyptian 
hieroglyphs is fairly conventional.
A.
***


1.  N29 comes out as Hebrew gimel/G on the T III list for GZR/Gezer.  You 
characterize that as being “a dialectal highly divergent pronunciation”, but 
another way of saying the same thing is:  “historically attested”.
***
No,
Egyptian Q should be Hebrew Q. Period.
Gezer for expected Qetzer <q d_ r> can only be a dialectal and divergent 
pronunciation.
A.
***


2.  M17, a single plume, originally had been a Y,
***
Actually it's more a leaf and it stands for glottal stop.
A.
***


but:  “The "y" in Egyptian was so weak that it was rarely pronounced.” 
http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm  Thus in the Late Bronze Age, M17 would 
have sounded like a nondescript vowel indicator:  perhaps I or E, or maybe 
A, but definitely not U or O.  Though technically M17 is not a vowel, as an 
unpronounced Y it effectively functioned as a vowel indicator of sorts.
***
No
it never stands for a vowel.
A.
***


As such, the defective spelling of early Biblical Hebrew simply left it out, 
as it did all vowels.  That’s why XBR-W-N is so super-exciting, because the 
interior vav/W is not a post-exilic vowel indicator.  Dr. Fournet, you are 
one of the few people on earth who can interpret XBR-W-N, if only you would 
give up your reliance on the medieval Masoretic pointing.  The classic case 
of letter-for-letter accuracy in the Late Bronze Age, but with the medieval 
Masoretic pointing guessing the wrong vowel, is TD(L at Genesis 14: 1, which 
matches the Ugaritic rendering of “Tudhaliya” letter for letter.  See pp. 
536-537 at: 
http://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=334&Itemid=158
Why should we care that the medieval pointing done in the Middle Ages by the 
Masoretes got the first vowel sound completely wrong in TD(L?  That’s 
utterly irrelevant.

3.  S29, which is S, appears at item #44 on the T III list, KNT JSN.  As I 
noted in my prior post, per Egyptologist Paul James Cowie the Hebrew 
equivalent is GT )$N, in which case this Egyptian hieroglyph is sin/shin in 
Biblical Hebrew.

4.  O49 is the crossroads hieroglyph, which is an ideogram for “place” or 
“city” or, in context, “nome”.  The west Semitic equivalent of the 
crossroads hieroglyph was the suffix -N, which is ubiquitous on the T III 
list.  Though the crossroads hieroglyph had no sound, it had the same 
meaning as west Semitic -N:  “place” or “city” or, in context, “nome”.

5.  We see that there is letter for letter accuracy in comparing Qis to 
G%-N.  The Q in Qis is G in Hebrew, per GZR on the T III list.  The I in Qis 
is effectively a vowel indicator, which naturally is omitted in the 
defective spelling of early Biblical Hebrew.  The vowel sound here 
definitely is not long U!  The S in Qis is S in G%.  And the crossroads 
ideogram meaning “city” or “place” or “nome” is the -N west Semitic suffix. 
That is letter-for-letter accuracy.

When Genesis 45: 10 tells us that Joseph lived near G%-N, that means that 
Joseph lived at Amarna, just north across the Nile River from the nome of 
Qis/G%-N/“the land of Goshen”.  So in coming from the south to see his 
family, Joseph first (LH/“goes up” north to Qis/G%-N/Goshen to see Jacob, 
and then Joseph continues to “go up”/(LH north to see Pharaoh.  Note that 
everything makes perfect sense in the historical context of the mid-14th 
century BCE.  By contrast, the traditional and scholarly east Delta locale 
for Goshen will not work on any level in any time period.
***
Goshen cannot be Q s <Qu:sa>.

This is my last mail on this non issue.
As far as I'm concerned, moderators can close this thread.

Stay well.
Arnaud Fournet