Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

In analyzing the tsade in XCC-N TMR at Genesis 14: 7, let me just briefly 
set forth my own view as to Late Bronze Age sibilants.  Although scholars 
disagree about the pronunciation of sibilants in early Biblical Hebrew, I 
believe the following is one mainstream view, being the view that I have 
adopted. 
 
 
Z/zayin is a voiced affricate.  C is an emphatic affricate:  TS.  $/shin is 
SH.  %/sin is emphatic s.  S/samekh is non-emphatic s.  [On that view, the 
only change in the sibilants by the Middle Ages was that %/sin had come to 
be pronounced as non-emphatic s;  there no longer was any emphatic s in 
Hebrew, and sin/% and samekh/S had come to have the identical sound.]
 
If Hurrian usually, though not always, pronounced s as SH, and if Genesis 
slightly simplifies the Hurrian pronunciation, then only 3 sibilants are 
needed to record Hurrian in Hebrew:  Z and $ and C.  No % or S is needed 
[emphatic or non-emphatic s], because s was usually pronounced $ in Hurrian 
[and 
was always so treated in Genesis].  
 
Based on my own research as to dozens of names in Genesis that I see as 
being Hurrian names, samekh/S and sin/% were  n-e-v-e-r  used in rendering 
Hurrian names in Hebrew.  Hebrew tsade/C, an emphatic affricate, was used to 
render the Hurrian affricate TS, even if that Hurrian affricate may have been 
non-emphatic.  So xa-tsi-tsi in Hurrian is XCC in Biblical Hebrew.  XCC-N TMR 
at Genesis 14: 7 represents xa-tsi-tsi-ni tam-ri in Hurrian, it means “
Wisdom-the Nine” in Hurrian, and it’s referring to xa-si/Hasi in the 
Hurrian-dominated Beqa Valley where, per Amarna Letter EA 175, there was an 
enclave of 
Amorites in Year 14.  Amarna Letter EA 175 and the second half of Genesis 
14: 7 are reporting the identical event, with Genesis 14: 7 having been 
composed a mere one year after that traumatic event.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois