Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 7:52 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dagesh


> Perhaps the structure of Hebrew and Aramaic explains why we have a 
> distinction between unlenited double letters and lenited single letters. 
> Both Aramaic and Hebrew seem to have lost the fricative forms of gdtk, 
> (and didn't have pb) which would allow those consonants to weaken to 
> fricatives.  The other languages retained the fricatives and so lenition 
> was less likely.  I still think it is somewhat odd if it is due to Hurrian 
> influence that it is almost 1000 years before we see evidence of this. 
> Should it not have been more evident closer to Hurrian times?
>
> Kevin Riley
***

Anyway the list is constantly going off track with "Hurrian". None of this 
makes any sense. I suppose most of you are aware of that.

Hurrian was spoken in the mountains and hills of Northern Mesopotamia. It's 
obvious from all the Sumero-Akkadianisms that the cultural influence is 
unilaterally from the south to the north.
It happens that Hurrian people have exerted a short-lived power thanks to 
the temporary military superiority brought in by Indo-Iranians, who had 
domesticated horses and trained them for war.

It just does not make any sense that Hurrian could ever have had any 
influence on Semitic languages, spoken in areas where there probably never 
lived any Hurrian speakers and even fewer Hurro-Semitic bilinguals. The idea 
suggested by Bush of a Hurrian influence on Hebrew is nothing but an 
idiosyncratic and unsupported fancy, which does not even fit the reality of 
Hurrian in the first place. This fancy seems to have been proposed in order 
to justify a number of unsupported claims about Hurrian. In my opinion it's 
nothing but a smoke screen.

Would it be possible to get rid of all this absurd and constant 
Hurrianesquery and let Hurrian rest in peace?

Arnaud Fournet
***