Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Dr. Fournet:
 
Your entire argument against my view of XCC-N TMR at Genesis 14: 7 as being 
Hurrian boils down to this:
 
“If the word is originally Hurrian, then it cannot contain any emphatics 
[such as tsade/C], as stated before several times.  Period.”
 
Not true.  You are confusing the fact that Hurrian did not overtly denote 
emphatics in writing with the very different question of whether Hurrian had 
emphatic consonants such as emphatic tsade.  Consider the following evidence 
that Hurrian had emphatic phonemes, including emphatic tsade:
 
1.  Gelb and Purves in “Nuzi Personal Names” show 18 Hurrian names 
beginning with emphatic tsade, at pp. 175-182.
 
2.  Gelb and Purves show a whopping 71 names that begin with qof (the 
emphatic side of kaf), at pp. 77-89.
 
3.  At the advice of the #1 Hittite linguist in the world, I showed the #1 
Hurrian scholar in the world, Gernot Wilhelm, 30 Biblical names in the 
Patriarchal narratives that I consider to be Hurrian.  Some of those names 
have 
tsade, qof, ayin and aleph (but never samekh).  Prof. Wilhelm raised a series 
of technical issues concerning my analysis [such as the need for me to 
distinguish -nni from -ni in my explanations of Hurrian meanings (a point you 
recently made)], but he never said anything along the lines that a Biblical 
name containing an emphatic consonant like tsade or qof, or containing ayin 
or 
aleph, could not be a Hurrian name.  Indeed, in his published work, Prof. 
Wilhelm resists the temptation to say exactly how the various Hurrian 
phonemes were pronounced:  
 
“Since Hurrian was written with scripts that were designed for other 
languages, it is difficult – to a degree, even impossible – to establish the 
phonemic vocabulary of Hurrian.”  Gernot Wilhelm, “Hurrian”, Chapter 9 in 
“The 
Ancient Languages of Asia Minor” (2008), ed. Roger D. Woodard, a 
(http://books.google.com/books?id=J-f_jwCgmeUC&dq=gernot+wilhelm&sitesec=reviews)
 t p. 
84.
 
In your post you said:  “You keep confusing graphic issues with phonetic 
issues.”  But you’re the one who’s doing that.  The fact that Hurrian did not 
overtly record emphatics in writing does not mean that Hurrian did not have 
emphatic consonants like tsade.  Per the analysis of Gelb and Purves, and 
per Gernot Wilhelm never raising the issue, the better view would appear to 
be that Hurrian had emphatic tsade, though Hurrian did not overtly denote any 
emphatics in writing.
 
With everything else matching perfectly (ignoring the medieval pointing of 
vowels done by the Masoretes in the Middle Ages, which is totally irrelevant 
to a Hurrian analysis of names in the Patriarchal narratives, and which is 
another issue that no one but you has raised), to me it makes sense to see 
tsade as the early Hebrew author’s choice to record the Hurrian affricate 
[whether emphatic or not] in xa-tsi-tsi.  If so, then the expected Hebrew 
spelling of Hurrian xa-tsi-tsi-ni tam-ri/“Wisdom-the Nine” is the XCC-N TMR 
that 
we see at Genesis 14: 7.
 

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois