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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: George.Athas AT moore.edu.au, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] RB
  • Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2010 09:47:39 EST


George Athas:

You wrote: “Jim, that first paragraph of yours is filled with so many
logical leaps, errors, fallacies, and unrealistic expectations that you are
completely contorting evidence. It is so unscholarly and illogical that I
hesitate even to call it an ‘argument’. I’m dumbstruck!”

I take it that by that you mean that you consider a Hebrew ayin at the end
of a word or name to be a rock-solid consonant. But is it?

As a common word, )RB( in Hebrew is like erbe in Akkadian. Both mean “four”
, and they have only two key consonants: RB. The last letter is either a
vowel or a letter that has some attributes of a vowel. In cognate words,
true Hebrew consonants usually have a consonant equivalent in Akkadian, but
by
sharp contrast, Hebrew ayin has as its Akkadian counterpart either nothing
or a vowel. Thus the Hebrew verb $M( is $em- or $emu in Akkadian.

When one sees the ubiquitous RB in a Late Bronze Age proper name or title,
such as )RB( as the name of an Anakim giant or QRYT )RB( as the name of the
city where Abraham bought Sarah’s gravesite, one naturally thinks of “great”
, not “four”.

In fact, a meaning of “City of Four” makes so little sense for QRYT )RB(
that commentators have had to be very creative. There are only 3 Patriarchs,
so Adam is often added in to make four great men buried there. That makes
no historical sense. Absent that, many commentators give up on the notion
of “four” altogether and insist that it means “City of [the Anakim Giant]
Arba”. Then the giant’s name “Arba” is not commented upon, as if it were
just a name, with no meaning. But a giant’s name would logically be “Big”,
and would not logically be “Four”. Gesenius even goes so far as to venture
that the giant’s name may mean “homo quadratus”. Can such wild
speculations be taken seriously? Nothing about “four” fits either an Anakim
giant or
the city where Abraham buys Sarah’s burial plot. Meanwhile, RB meaning “
great” is the historical basis for more city names in Canaan than virtually
any other root. Since the Hebrew verb RB( does not seem to mean “be four”,
but rather in Leviticus seems to mean “be big (in a manly way)”, there’s no
reason to think that QRYT )RB( can only mean “City of Four”. That ending
ayin in this ancient proper name is not part of the archaic root, that’s all.

Isaac Fried is right to ignore the final ayin in )RB( in determining its
root. In context, the only sensible interpretation of QRYT )RB( is that it
means “Great City”, based on the archaic 2-consonant root RB. Adam is not
buried there, and no ancient author had the slightest idea what a homo
quadratus was. Rather, based on its archaic 2-consonant root, RB, Biblical
QRYT
)RB( is historical Rubutu, in the Aijalon Valley. That’s the gated city
where
Abraham bought Sarah’s gravesite from a non-Semitic lord. The setting is
fully verified to the nth degree, including not only the geographical
location but also the specific ethnicities of all the various peoples
involved, in
a Late Bronze Age historical context. It’s simply a question of considering
that QRYT )RB( may well have a 2-consonant root: RB.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois






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