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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>, <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] HALOT Etymologies
  • Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 17:56:02 +0100


----- Original Message ----- From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr ; leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il ; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 4:51 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] HALOT Etymologies


Prof. Yigal Levin and Dr. Fournet:

1. Prof. Levin wrote: “I'd also suggest that the name [BR$(] is a play on the word "Rasha'", "evil", befitting the king of evil Gomorra.”

The traditional view is that BR$( is a west Semitic name, meaning “In Wickedness”, or per Gesenius, “Son of Iniquity”, or per HALOT, “Arabic...ugly”. Likewise, the traditional view of the immediately preceding name, BR(, is that it is a west Semitic name meaning “In Evil”, or per Gesenius “Son of Evil”, or per HALOT, “Arabic…to triumph”. But there was no Arabic in the Patriarchal Age, and BR( is not associated with “triumph”. As to these names allegedly being highly pejorative [the traditional view], what if one of Prof. Levin’s students were to ask this question:
***
BR$ appears to be a variant form of Semitic Root *B_R "powerful, lord".
A.
***


Why would the great Patriarch Abraham, after leading a heroic military mission way up north to Syria to rescue Lot and Lot’s family from the four evil attacking rulers, be portrayed as turning over Lot and Lot’s family to a ruler whose name in west Semitic, being Abraham’s native language, means “In Evil”? That does not seem sensible at all. It is not until much later, in chapters 18 and 19 of Genesis, that Sodom and Gomorrah go over to the dark side, and note how their leaders in chapter 14 of Genesis, BR( and BR$(, are notably absent in chapters 18 and 19. Besides, historically we know that in Year 14, a league of 5 Hurrian princelings was smashed by four attacking rulers in a valley of fields (the Orontes River Valley in western Syria) that is near a salt sea (the Mediterranean Sea) and that has pits, pits of bitumen (that was sold to Ugarit for its great sailing ships). So shouldn’t we at least a-s-k if BR( is a dead ringer for the best-known Hurrian common word of all time, that effectively means “(Hurrian) princeling”?
***
As emphasized in a previous mail,
this supposedly Hurrian word is a Semitic borrowing.
A.
***



2. Dr. Fournet, let’s consider now the expected early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling of eb-ri, literally meaning “lord” or “king”, but effectively meaning “(Hurrian) princeling”, being one of the very few Hurrian common words that most early Hebrews would be expected to have known. In my view there are 10 Hurrian names in the Patriarchal narratives that have an ayin. In all 10 cases, that ayin is a generic vowel indicator for the Hurrian vowels A or E or I.
***
This idea makes little sense.
A.
***


Thus KN(N [meaning “Canaan”] makes perfect sense if the ayin is the Hurrian vowel A, as the name then is kina + -N, with kina being the root of the Hurrian word for “purple”. [We also know that both Phoenician and Punic used ayin to represent such vowels in names.] On that basis, how would eb-ri be spelled in Genesis? The first vowel would not be represented, because the Hebrews would have viewed it as being merely prosthetic. But BR won’t do, because that’s the Hebrew word for “corn” at Genesis 41: 35, 49. So the expected early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling of the best-known Hurrian common word of all time is exactly what we see in the received text of Genesis 14: 2: BR(. The final ayin there represents the Hurrian vowel I, and shows that this is a two-syllable Hurrian word, not bar/BR in Hebrew.
***
As a matter of fact,
it seems Hebrew has as a word )abiYr "lord, ruler", does it not?

Arnaud Fournet
***





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