Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Karl wrote:  “The earliest examples of Semitic writing have examples of 
interior yods and waws, yet there are some but not that many in pre-Exile 
writings.”
 
To the extent that is true, that would greatly strengthen the argument I am 
making on this thread.  We have been seeing the following three rules 
regarding interior vavs and yods in old parts of the Bible:  (1) As to common 
words, interior yods and vavs were often added as spelling updates, though as 
Karl properly notes, this is much less common in the older parts of the Bible 
than in later parts of the Bible.  (2) As to proper names, however, 
interior yods and vavs were rarely added, unless there was a specific purpose 
for 
doing so.  Thus where (LM at Genesis 14: 1 looked potentially blasphemous to 
1st millennium BCE scribes, an interior yod was added to remove that 
potential blasphemy, so that the received text now has (YLM.  But interior 
yods and 
vavs were usually not added into proper names in old parts of the Bible for 
no reason.  (3) Of critical importance, a 1st millennium BCE scribe was not 
at liberty to remove a pre-existing interior vav or yod.  If a proper name 
from the Bronze Age had an interior vav, then no later scribe could delete 
it:  “[T]he Talmud indicates that to replace defective with plene was not as 
serious as the reverse – replacing plene with defective”.  Francis I. 
Andersen and A. Dean Forbes, “Spelling in the Hebrew Bible” (1986), at p. 72.
 
Based on those three rules, we should pay particular attention to proper 
names in the Patriarchal narratives that have an interior vav.  Scholars 
assume that such an interior vav is a later-added vowel indicator.  But why 
would 
a 1st millennium BCE scribe, if he saw the ancient name XBRN for the place 
where the Patriarchs sojourned, have taken it upon himself to update that to 
modern spelling, making it XBRWN?  That would undercut the antiquity, and 
hence the believability, of the sacred text.
 
Consider next that many scholars see at least part of the Patriarchal 
narratives as pre-dating the 1st millennium BCE.  One word and one name in 
chapter 14 of Genesis, for example, are last attested in the 15th century 
BCE.  
Proper names in particular may pre-date any later editing of the storyline in 
the text.  If some proper names in the Patriarchal narratives date all the 
long way back to the Late Bronze Age, which seems very likely, then we must 
remember that based on the Amarna Letters, we know that a majority of the 
ruling princelings throughout Canaan in the mid-14th century BCE were 
Hurrians. 
 We also know from the Amarna Letters that at that time, the mountainous 
city 20 miles south of Jerusalem was called Qiltu [not XBRN or XBRWN], though 
by King David’s time [or shortly thereafter] the LMLK seals know this city’
s name as XBRN [with no interior vav].  [Karl properly points out what my 
prior post had specifically said:  virtually all renderings of the name of 
Hebron in the Bible, including the King David sections of the Bible, are 
XBRWN, 
not XBRN.  What we are exploring on this thread is why that is the case.  
Why is that interior vav there?]
 
On the linguistic end (which is the b-hebrew list’s long suit), it is 
critically important to know that one way the Hurrians made a common noun 
into a 
geographical place name was to add a vav/W at the end of the noun:  “Place 
names deriving from personal names in the genitive form with -we are frequent 
at Nuzi in the fifteenth century BCE.” Giorgio Buccellati, Marilyn 
Kelly-Buccellati, “Urkesh and the Hurrians” (1998), at p. 148.  The “-we” in 
Hurrian would be rendered in early Biblical Hebrew as -W, as defective 
spelling 
recorded few if any vowels.
 
So if the noun here is the Hurrian word XBR, meaning “heaven” or “sky”, 
then to make it into a Hurrian geographical place name, one adds -W at the 
end:  XBR-W.  And in the Late Bronze Age (though apparently not later), west 
Semitic speakers often insisted on putting a west Semitic -N ending on 
geographical place names, even for non-Semitic place names.  So XCC, meaning “
wisdom” in Hurrian, becomes XCC-N at Genesis 14: 7, where the -N is a west 
Semitic suffix put onto a Hurrian word (though usually Xasi/Hasi has no 
suffix 
-N).  Likewise, XBR–W in Hurrian, meaning “Heaven” (as a geographical place 
name, per the final -W), or even literally “Heaven of Mine” (per -W being 
the genitive case marker in Hurrian), then got a -N suffix in west Semitic.  
So when Abraham settles in a lush “valley” (Genesis 37: 14) which is an 
ideal place for him to sojourn with his huge flock of sheep and goats and 318 
armed retainers, he uses the well-known Late Bronze Age Hurrian word XBR to 
nickname this historical place “Heaven of Mine”:  XBR-W-N.  Just as mythical 
Ugaritic King Keret called his ideal, idealized kingdom XBR (a Hurrian word 
being used by a west Semitic-speaking Amorite), so also Abraham calls the 
northern Shephelah ideal pastureland “Heaven of Mine” using a Hurrian word:  
XBR-W-N.  The key to the entire linguistic analysis here is to focus on the 
interior vav, which is the genitive case marker in Hurrian.  Almost a 
thousand years later, post-exilic scribes updated the original XBRN in the 
King 
David parts of the Bible to XBRWN, thereby creating retroactively, in 
post-exilic times, a linguistic link to the Late Bronze Age Hurrian name 
XBR-W-N, 
which is the lush valley where the Patriarchs sojourned [nowhere near the 
rugged, mountainous city of XBRN/Hebron 20 miles south of Jerusalem]. 
 
One key to understanding the antiquity and historical accuracy of the 
Patriarchal narratives is to focus on the interior vav in proper names like 
XBR-W-N and (PR-W-N.  Those are not 1st millennium BCE spelling updates.  No 
way! 
 Those are original, mid-14th century BCE Hurrian genitive case markers.  
Before we let scholars tell us that the Patriarchal narratives do not know 
where the Patriarchs are buried, we must ask those scholars if they have 
considered the realistic possibility that the interior vav in XBR-W-N is a 
Late 
Bronze Age Hurrian genitive case marker, rather than allegedly being a plene 
spelling update added in post-exilic times.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois