Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Dr. Fournet:
 
In order to keep this post from becoming too long, I will confine my response 
to linguistic issues.
 
1.  As to the various dating issues you raise, the linguistic answer is as 
follows.  The  Amarna Age is the historical time when the first Hebrews were 
concerned about all those many non-Semitic princelings who ruled cities like 
Jerusalem and Hebron throughout Canaan.  That’s the only time when it would 
make sense for a Biblical text to have 25 non-Semitic names [all of which 
have letter-for-letter spelling accuracy].  And that’s the only time when it 
would make sense for the Patriarchal narratives to have an incredible 40% of 
the vav nun suffix common words and vav nun suffix personal names in the 
Bible, with vav nun/-WN/-we-ni- at the end of a word or name having a 
distinctive non-Semitic sound [noted at #3 below]. 
 
2.  You wrote:  “This is nonsense.  How could these people possibly know that 
3500 years later *we* would decipher cuneiform signs as being either Xu-ti-ya 
or Xu-di-ya in *our* system???   The only information at their disposal is 
actual phonetics [xudiya].”
 
As to the non-Semitic name whose early Biblical Hebrew spelling I assert 
could be XTY, noted scholars Gelb and Purves write the following in “Nuzi 
Names”:  “Xu-ti-ya, var. (2) Xu-di-ya” (p. 64b).  Similarly, they report both 
Xut-Arrapxe and Xu-da-ra-ap-xe (p. 64a);  Xu-ti and Xu-di(p. 64b);  
Xuti-Xamanna and Xu-di-xa-ma-an-na (p. 65b);  Xutip-Kanari and 
Xu-di-ip-qa-na-ri (p. 65b);  Xutip-$arri and Xu-di-ip-$arri (p. 66a); and let 
me stop with a name that is of direct relevance here:  Xutip-Te$up and 
Xu-di-ip-te-$up (p. 66a).  Your insistence that “Praise the Lord” in Hurrian 
could not be written down as Xu-ti-ya/XTY in early Biblical Hebrew is thereby 
refuted.  It’s true that Ugaritic scribes recorded D, but non-Semitic T/D may 
have been pronounced a little differently in southern Canaan, just as 
non-Semitic ebri or erwi in Canaan comes out as erwi at Nuzi.  Or maybe the 
early Hebrew author heard it a little differently, or used a slightly 
different convention to record it.  Although the Hebrews did not confuse 
D/dalet and T/tav in non-loanwords, that certainty goes out the window 
completely when it comes to recording a foreign, non-Semitic proper name.  
For example, D and T are hopelessly confused on the Thutmose III list of 
places in Canaan.  Even many native English speakers might stumble in trying 
to explain the past tense of “pass”:  it’s always spelled D today;  it is 
pronounced T by most, but not quite all, English speakers today;  and older 
archaic spellings might have featured a DST spelling, where perhaps the 
written D was pronounced as D.  Today we spell the past tense of “walk” with 
a D, pronounced as a T, but in Shakespeare’s time it was spelled “walkedst”.  
Many native English speakers would be stumped if asked whether “passed” and 
“past” have identical, or merely only similar, sounds.  If there’s a bit of 
confusion in modern English about D vs. T, why would you expect there to be 
absolute clarity in the way non-Semitic T/D would have to be recorded in the 
Bible?  That’s not a reasonable position to take.  Your own website gives 
Xuti-b-Te$$up and Xuti-Te$$ub, featuring a T, not a D.  Given all that 
contradictory evidence from the ancient world, it makes no sense to take the 
dogmatic position that an early Hebrew author could not possibly have used 
the spelling XTY in Biblical Hebrew.  He knew those non-Semitic sounds much 
better than you do.  He had grown up in a world largely dominated by 
non-Semitic maryannu [though he may have suspected that very soon, that world 
would vanish forever, for better or worse].
 
3.  You wrote:  “$M(-WN with ( cannot be a Hurrian word.  I think you should 
stop trying to make un-Semitic words which contain obviously Semitic sounds.  
This is just absurd.”
 
As I specifically stated in my post, $M( is a virgin pure west Semitic root 
that has nothing to do with non-Semitic.  But the -we-ni-/-WN/vav nun suffix 
at the end of the name of Jacob’s #2 son sounds non-Semitic.  Many of the 
proper names in the famous non-Semitic letter you in small part reproduce on 
your website have -we-ni- as part of a long suffix sequence.  In addition to 
the Egyptian reference, that includes on your website both the city of 
Simige, and the god’s name Simige.  And the meaning you proposed for -we-ni- 
regarding Egypt in that famous letter works very nicely with the name of 
Jacob’s son Simeon.  Why is it “absurd” that Leah, who is portrayed as living 
exclusively in Naharim until middle age, would give two of her sons names 
that in part sound non-Semitic?  Wouldn’t one rightly expect “local color” 
like that if this Biblical text knows what it’s talking about [which I for 
one think that it does]?
 
4.   You wrote:  “You're trying to show that a word containing a tsade could 
derive from languages with no emphatics.  That's just impossible.”
 
Far from being “impossible”, it is indeed the case.  All 25 non-Semitic names 
in the Patriarchal narratives use only three sibilants:  zayin/Z, shin/$, and 
ssade/C.  There is no tsamekh/S and no sin/%.  Gelb and Purves show many 
names at Nuzi that, in their expert opinion, reflect ssade/C:  Ca-xa-ay-eri$ 
(p. 174b), Ca-li-im-mu-du (p. 175a), Ca-al-me-ki, Ca-al-mu, Cill (p. 177b), 
Cill-abe, Cill-a-be-xe, Cill-adad, Cilli-ya, Cilli-marta (p. 178a), 
Cilli-nikarrak (p. 178b), Cill-duri (p. 179b), Cillutu, Ci-ma-an-ni, 
Cuxartiya (p. 181a), and Cupr-adad (p. 182a).  Unless both Gelb/Purves and 
the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives don’t know what they’re 
talking about, your contention that a ssade at Nuzi is “impossible” is 
refuted.
 
5.  What you consider “nonsense” and “absurd” and “impossible” is in fact 
verified out the wazzoo in the non-Semitic letter you in part reproduce on 
your own website, and in the well-known non-Semitic names at Nuzi.  Your view 
to the contrary is idiosyncratic, and does not refute either the antiquity or 
pinpoint historical accuracy of the Patriarchal narratives.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois