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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: kwrandolph AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Interior Yods and Vavs
  • Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:32:12 EDT


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




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