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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] City Nicknames
  • Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2011 05:23:03 +0200

Jim, you've written all of this before. Please stop repeating yourself.

Yigal Levin

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of jimstinehart AT aol.com
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 4:30 AM
To: JimStinehart AT aol.com; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] City Nicknames


No city in the Sinai Desert or the southern wilderness has an attested name
similar to QD$. But if the QD$ at Genesis 20: 1 may possibly be a slight
variant of [or nickname for] the historical name of the historical city of
QD$ in eastern Upper Galilee, where in the mid-14th century BCE there was a
strong Hurrian presence [the “Amalekites” at Genesis 14: 7, and Yamiuta as
its Hurrian princeling ruler at Amarna Letter EA 177], then consider the
following proposed etymology for QD$ as a city name.

1. In the beginning was the Akkadian name, ina qati$unu. It means “in their
hands” or “under their command”, and as a city name the implied meaning would
be: “under the command of the gods”. [In this post we will focus solely on
the qati$unu element (though Genesis 14: 7 reflects as well the ina element).]

2. The Hurrians pronounced qof/Q as kaf/K, so as a Hurrian city name once
the Hurrians dominated this city [perhaps as early as the mid-15th century
BCE], it would be ka-du-u-$a-na. [T and D are often interchangeable in
Hurrian.] Cf. Amarna Letter EA 24, in Hurrian, at IV: 31, where we see
ka-du-u-$a-a-a$-$a-na; the -a-a$-$a- element is an intensifier and could be
omitted, leaving: ka-du-u-$a-na.

3. The Egyptians picked up the Hurrian sound, not the etymology, and
recorded k-t-su-na at item #4 on the mid-15th century BCE Thutmose III list.
K-t-su-na in Egyptian is close to ka-du-u-$a-na in Hurrian.

4. By contrast to the Egyptians, the Hebrews picked up the etymology (not
the Hurrian sound), and ordinarily would have written QD$N. QD$N in Hebrew
is very close to qati$unu in Akkadian, and is quite close as well to
ka-du-u-$a-na in Hurrian.

But at Genesis 20: 1, the early Hebrew author wanted to portray Galilee as
being a “holy spot” for the Patriarchs, so as a pun/nickname/abbreviated
version, he lopped off the -N in QD$N [which to a Hebrew sounded like an
optional ending anyway], and wrote down QD$. It’s a natural pun in west
Semitic. In Ugaritic mythology, Danel likewise operates at qd$, though the
full city name would ordinarily be expected to be qd$n in Ugaritic. So QD$
in the received text of Genesis 20: 1 (i) is an abbreviated form of the
historical city name QD$N, and (ii) is also the Hebrew common word “holy
spot”.

5. The Amarna Letters are substandard Akkadian. The scribe at Amarna Letter
EA 177 didn’t know the etymology [Q], and as to sound, he confused Hurrian K
with Hurrian G [two letters that are closely related in Hurrian]. So he
wrote Gudda$una.

* * *

The spelling differences are quite predictable in these various languages.
These are all slight variations on the same city name: qati$unu [Akkadian]
vs. ka-du-u-$a-na [Hurrian] vs. k-t-su-na [attested city name in Egyptian]
vs. QD$N [normal Hebrew, but not in Bible] vs. QD$ [shortened Biblical form]
vs. Gudda$una [attested city name in Amarna Letters]. There is no place with
an attested name anything like this in the Sinai Desert or the southern
wilderness. But these names are attested both on the T III list and in the
Amarna Letters, as slight variations of the Biblical shortform name of this
city in eastern Upper Galilee. That’s the historical QD$ in eastern Upper
Galilee being referenced at Genesis 20: 1.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois



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