Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

George Athas:
 
1.  You wrote:  “Updating of the text at a later time to reflect later 
phonology.”
 
That is to say, the names of two of Jacob’s sons were originally spelled $M(N 
and ZBLN, but centuries later, a 1st millennium BCE editor put a vav in those 
two names, to reflect how those two names had come to be pronounced.
 
But on that theory of the case, why are 40% of the personal names in the 
Bible that have a vav nun suffix in the Patriarchal narratives?
 
2.  You wrote:  “The waw is a vestige of an old diphthong which eventually 
evolved into a pure vowel in a later stage of the language.”  
 
What diphthong would that be?  Hebrew diphthongs are usually vowel clusters.  
But early Biblical Hebrew did not record vowels.
 
The “diphthong” is likely -we-, that is, consonantal vav, with a following 
vowel that was needed for pronunciation.  I see the vav in a vav nun suffix 
in the oldest parts of the Bible as having started out being a true 
consonant, but then, over the centuries, that consonantal vav softened in 
Hebrew to a vowel.  In my opinion, the reason why that happened is that once 
the Hurrians disappeared from Canaan, the old Hurrian genitive case marker 
vav became inexplicable and totally archaic.  By sharp contrast, the -N 
portion of -WN still made good sense in west Semitic, so -WN was 
re-interpreted to mean -N.  Only at that point did the formerly consonantal 
vav get downgraded into being a vowel.
 
3.  You wrote:  “The ון- diminutive suffix is common enough in Hebrew as a 
native feature that there’s really no need for recourse to another language 
to explain it. It really 
is no big deal.”
 
It’s true that -WN is a diminutive suffix in modern Israeli Hebrew, but I am 
not aware of such a phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew.  Even if -WN were a 
diminutive suffix, that would not explain why there is such a concentration 
of vav nun suffixes in common words and personal names in the Patriarchal 
narratives. 
 
4.  Yigal Levin wrote:  “Yes, what he said...”
 
You gentlemen seem to be confirming what I suspected.  On an all-west Semitic 
basis, there seems to be no credible explanation out there as to why 40% of 
the common words and personal names in the Bible with a vav nun suffix are 
found in the oldest part of the Bible -- the Patriarchal narratives.  On the 
other hand, if this were due to Hurrian influence, as I have surmised, then 
it would make perfect sense to see this concentration of vav nun suffixes in 
common words and personal names in the Patriarchal narratives, which are the 
oldest part of the Bible, that date all the way back to when Hurrian 
princelings ruled many cities throughout Canaan.  And the good part about 
that is that then the true antiquity of the composition date of the 
Patriarchal narratives would be demonstrated, on a linguistic basis.  If we 
focus on the interior vavs, we can, in my opinion, date the Patriarchal 
narratives. 
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois