Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Vav Nun Suffix

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: jimstinehart AT aol.com
  • To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr, if AT math.bu.edu
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Vav Nun Suffix
  • Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 23:12:54 -0500



r. Fournet:

You wrote: “All this is nonsense in the first place. Who can believe that a
Semitic name could be suffixed by the grammatical morphemes of another
language?”

Leah names all 6 of her blood sons. Leah is portrayed in the text as living
exclusively in Naharim until middle age. Wouldn’t it make sense if 2 of
those 6 names are west Semitic names with a non-Semitic-sounding final
element? The vav nun/-WN/-we-ni- ending of the names of Leah’s blood son #2
and blood son #6 are, in my opinion, purposely designed to “sound
non-Semitic”. Many of the proper names in the famous non-Semitic letter on
your website, which in my view was written only 3 years before the
Patriarchal narratives were composed, feature long suffixes with the -we-ni-
suffix sequence element. That’s vav nun/-WN in Biblical Hebrew.

If the names of those two sons of Leah contained that vav in the Late Bronze
Age (which I believe they did), then that vav way back then would have been
pronounced by the early Hebrews something like “we”, because back then a vav
was a true consonant. The following nun then would likely have been
pronounced something like “ni”, being two true consonants back to back,
creating two syllables. So the original pronunciation of the name of Leah’s
#2 son would likely have been something like $ima-WE-NI. And at p. 23 of
your website you have Mi-zi- ir- ri- e- WE-NI-eš; and the name of Leah’s #6
son would have been pronounced something like Zebelu-WE-NI, and at p. 23 you
have Ši-mi-i- gi- ni- e- WE-NI- e-ma-a-an, and Zebulun named one of his own
sons Al-WE-NI at Genesis 46: 14, and at p. 24 you have d Ši- mi- i- gi- ni-
e-WE- NI- e- im- ma- ma- an; and Levi, another son born in Naharim and named
by his mother Leah, names one of his sons Gara$a-WE-NI, and back at p. 23
again you have at- ta- a- ar- ti- i- WE- NA-a- ma-a-an, and Genesis 26: 34
has Ayali-WE-NI, but that non-Semitic letter from the same time period never
lets up, as at p. 24 you report še-e-ni- ib-[WU]- ú- e-NI- e- wə, though the
Bible can counter with Ssibaiya-WE-NI at Genesis 36: 2, yet that short
portion of that famous non-Semitic letter on your website is not done yet, as
you report at p. 24 ti- WE- e- NA, though perhaps the Bible manages to have
the last word with Epiri-WE-NI at Genesis 23: 8. What your website reports
is what Leah heard from birth to middle age. So why doesn’t it make sense
for Leah to give two of her sons in Naharim in eastern Syria names whose
ending recalled the hundreds of -WE-NI- suffix sequences she had heard her
non-Semitic neighbors saying every day of her life until she finally left
Naharim and moved to Canaan? That letter on your website is what Leah heard
from her neighbors every day of her life, isn’t it?

If you insist that the vav nun endings of $M(-WN and ZBL-WN have no
non-Semitic connection, then please set forth your own view as to an all-west
Semitic analysis of the vav nun suffix in those two names. It seems unlikely
to me that a 1st millennium BCE editor would have jammed vavs into those two
ancient names. But if that is not your theory of the case, then what is your
theory of the case? Vowels were not recorded in early Biblical Hebrew.
Certainly the name $M(-WN in particular is a truly ancient name. Where did
the interior vav come from in that name? I myself cannot even find a
published scholarly theory as to where that interior vav came from. Do you
know of one? Other than ultra-generic statements that plene-type spelling
appears throughout the Bible, I have not been able to find any scholarly
explanation of why there’s an interior vav in the ancient name $M(-WN. How
did that vav get there, and when, and why, and by whom? Either the scholarly
theory is that a 1st millennium BCE editor took it upon himself to update the
spelling of that ancient name [though I have never seen a published statement
to that effect as to this name, so maybe that in fact is not the scholarly
theory of the case], or else, as far as I can tell, no scholar has ever
opined what that interior vav is doing in the name Simeon.

What’s your theory of the case? You’re quick to characterize my theory as
being “nonsense”, but that implies that there’s a more convincing theory of
the case out there. What would that be?

The whole point of this thread is to explore the vav nun suffix in Biblical
Hebrew. If I’m barking up the wrong tree in my proposed non-Semitic analysis
of the vav nun suffix, then why don’t you or someone else set forth a better,
more convincing theory of the case? I’m all ears.

My own theory of the case is that (i) the vav nun suffix was there in the
name $M(-WN from day #1, and has nothing whatsoever to do with plene spelling
issues, but rather dates all the long way back to the Late Bronze Age, and
(ii) the explicit purpose of that vav nun/-WN/-we-ni- suffix was precisely to
give the name of Leah’s #2 son a “non-Semitic sound”. On my view, it’s not a
“coincidence” that the name Simeon ends with -we-ni, and that so many names
in that famous non-Semitic letter you cite on your website similarly include
in their long suffixes the component -we-ni- [or some close variant thereof].

In your opinion, why is there a vav in the name of Jacob’s son #2?

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page