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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] words with the same root letters: XCC-N TMR

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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: JimStinehart AT aol.com, fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr, leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] words with the same root letters: XCC-N TMR
  • Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:26:06 EST


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




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