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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] NXWR
  • Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:59:55 EDT


1. George Athas: Thank you so much for allowing this thread to continue a
little longer. Much appreciated.

2. Yigal Levin: You wrote: “[W]hy shouldn't Abraham's brother be named
"nosey" or the like?” The Patriarchal narratives do not portray Nahor as
being “nosey” in any way, shape or form. NXWR makes no sense in west Semitic
as the name of Abraham’s middle brother.

3. In order to get a handle on the name NXWR, we should consider the two
main aspects of what Nahor does in the Patriarchal narratives. First and
foremost, as discussed in my prior post, Nahor provides the “Hurrian dowry”:
Nahor’s female descendants from Naharim in eastern Syria in the Hurrian
heartland marry Abraham’s successors as Patriarchs. Thus it makes perfect
sense
for the primary meaning of NXWR to be the Hurrian word ni-xa-a-ri, meaning “
Dowry” or “Hurrian Dowry”.

But let’s now consider the other, darker side of how Nahor is portrayed in
the text. This will involve looking once again at the mysterious interior
vav that appears in several of these ancient Biblical names. This can be
seen at Genesis 31: 53. Because )LHY can mean either “God” or “gods”,
depending on the context, and because the context here is that the speaker,
Laban,
is certainly a polytheist (not a Hebrew monotheist like the Patriarchs), I
propose the following translation/paraphrase of Genesis 31: 53, with Laban
speaking to Jacob as follows:

“‘The God of Abraham and the gods of Nahor, [and also] the gods of their
father[, Terakh, as well], judge between us.’"

With Nahor living most of his life in Hurrianland, the obvious implication
here should be that Nahor, unlike Terakh and Jacob, had taken to worshipping
Hurrian gods and goddesses. In order to make that point, NX + W + R may be
a negative pun, scandalously referencing the “bed” of the most famous
Hurrian goddess: Xeba. Since this aspect of the name NXWR is intended to be
a
negative pun, it makes sense for it to embody a scandalous, sexy reference
to the best-known Hurrian goddess. (The name of the ruler of Jerusalem in
the Amarna Letters likewise honors this famous Hurrian goddess [but not her
bed]: IR-Xeba.)

Per p. 96 of the Fournet/Bomhard Hurrian language website, the Hurrian word
that means “bed (especially the bed of Xebat, I$xara and $au$ka)” is as
follows:

na-a-at-xi

Note that even with all those vowels, the consonant heth/X immediately
follows the consonant tav/T. Such a consonant combination would have been
virtually impossible for the Hebrews to pronounce. Accordingly, the first
consonant likely dropped out, leaving NX as the remaining consonants in the
Hebrew
rendering of this Hurrian word for “bed of the Hurrian goddess Xeba”.
(Likewise in English, “arctic” is hard to say, because the consonant C is
immediately followed by the consonant T, with no vowel in between. So many
people drop the f-i-r-s-t consonant, C, entirely, and pronounce that word “
artic”. Indeed, for many hundreds of years the accepted spelling of that
word
dropped the C sound, for precisely that reason.)

So NX in early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling could be viewed as being
the Hebrew consonantal rendering of na-a-at-xi, the Hurrian word that means “
bed of the Hurrian goddess Xeba”.

With NX as the Hurrian root of this Hurrian name, then add -W- as the
Hurrian genitive case marker, and finally -R as the Hurrian comitative
suffix,
which means “together with” or “with” or “as”. The meaning of NX-W-R is
then: “as of bed of the Hurrian goddess Xeba”.

As a secondary meaning, being a negative pun, NXWR implies “As of Bed of
the Hurrian Goddess Xeba”, being the Hurrian word na-a-at-xi-we-ra, whose
pronounceable consonants are NX-W-R. Note that those two Hurrian meanings of
the name NXWR (including the primary meaning, “Hurrian Dowry”) perfectly
encapsulate the two aspects of Nahor in the Patriarchal narratives. On the
one
hand, it is good that Nahor supplied the “Hurrian Dowry” for the first
Hebrews, that is, Nahor’s female descendants Rebekah, Leah and Rachel, who
are
raised in the heart of Hurrianland in Naharim and who become the Matriarchs
of the Patriarchs who follow Abraham. But on the darker side, Nahor embraced
Hurrian gods and goddesses, being colorful deities that even Terakh had not
known or honored. So a meaning of “as of bed of the Hurrian goddess Xeba”
nicely captures the fact that Laban, as a male descendant of Nahor living
in the heart of Hurrianland, had “gone native” as to religious matters,
worshipping a whole panoply of Hurrian gods and goddesses.

Please note that these two Hurrian meanings of NXWR neatly sum up the
entire function of Abraham’s middle brother in the Patriarchal narratives.
Note
also that the frequent use of Hurrian names in the Patriarchal narratives
(as has been explored in several of my recent threads, including XBR-W-N as
meaning in Hurrian “Heaven of Mine”, and ‘PR-W-N as meaning in Hurrian “of
the (Hurrian) lord”) is dating the composition of this text to the 14th
century BCE, because that was the o-n-l-y time in 5,000 years of human
history
when the Hurrians had a presence in Canaan. The interior vav in these
ancient Biblical names says it all.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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