Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

George Athas:
 
You wrote:  “I just find it quite unfathomable that almost every geographic 
name in the Bible has somehow been misspelled and the multiple misspellings 
perpetuated by scribes who knew about the places (and perhaps even lived in 
some of them) and therefore didn't bother to correct things. Unfathomable. 
I'm just saying…Over to you for the critique of Hegelian proportions.”
 
1.  I only see one misspelling:  XWBH at Genesis 14: 15 should be H-WBH.  
That’s the one and only true scribal error I see in all the many spellings of 
geographical place names in the Patriarchal narratives.
 
2.  L-XY sounds like LKY, when the kaf/K has no dagesh.  In describing the 
world-famous wells at Lachish/L-KY-$ where Isaac sojourns for many years, 
the early Hebrew author is making a nifty pun, with no misspellings being 
involved.  The author of Judges makes a pun on L-KY-$ as well, punning on LXY.
 
3.  After Isaac moves to GRR, Isaac digs a series of four wells, each 
spaced about a day’s walk from each other, in chapter 26 of Genesis, with the 
last well being Beer-sheba.  Certainly that must be Beer-sheba of Galilee, 
which is one in a series of wells in northwest Upper Galilee.  It cannot be 
the 
more famous Beer-sheba of the Negev Desert, where the Patriarchs stop on 
their way to Egypt, because what makes the Beer-sheba of the Negev Desert 
world-famous is precisely the notable fact that outside of that Beer-sheba, 
there 
are no other wells whatsoever in that desert-like area.  There is no 
misspelling involved.  That series of wells in northwest Upper Galilee is 
probably 
attested in the Late Bronze Age as BR at item #50 on the mid-15th century 
BCE Thutmose III list, and as B?-R at item #12 on the early 13th century BCE 
Seti I list of places in Upper Galilee.
 
4.  GRR is gararu in Akkadian.  It’s KRR at item #80 on the Thutmose III 
list.  And it’s shortened to Garu in Amarna Letter EA 256 (Gari in genitive 
case).  All those terms are referring to the “rolling” hills of Galilee.  In 
Akkadian, the various words for “rolling” all feature R, not L, and that is 
why the original, Late Bronze Age spelling of the area of “rolling” hills 
was GRR, not the later GLYL.  Your co-moderator Prof. Yigal Levin “wrote the 
book” on QD$, so if anyone knows that there’s no name QD$ attested in the 
southern wilderness, whereas QD$ is attested out the wazzoo in eastern Upper 
Galilee, it’s Prof. Levin.  The QD$ at Genesis 20: 1, and Isaac’s 
Beersheba as well, are all in Galilee, and GRR in the Patriarchal narratives 
is the 
correct Late Bronze Age original spelling of “Galilee”.   
 
5.  When Abraham tells Lot that Abraham will go the opposite direction from 
Bethel that Lot does and the text explicitly says that Lot went  e-a-s-t  
from Bethel, shouldn’t we realize that Abraham then went west, not south, of 
Bethel, to the northern Shephelah?  If you’re looking for oak trees and 
Amorites and a place for a huge flock of sheep and goats and a place for 
camels 
and a place that is described in the text as being a “valley” to which no 
one in the last 40 chapters of Genesis is ever said to go “up”, then isn’t 
that the lush Aijalon Valley, not the rugged mountainous city of Hebron on 
the edge of the brutal Judean Desert?  The  Bronze Age name of the city of 
Hebron was “Qiltu”.  A suitable nickname for a beloved place, similar to “
nirvana” or “shangri-la” in modern English, would be XBR for King Keret’s 
kingdom in Ugaritic mythology, or X-BR-W-N as the Patriarchal affectionate 
nickname for the Aijalon Valley.  As far as we know, most valleys had no 
attested, formal names in the Bronze Age, so the best one can do here, as to 
an 
historical inscription of the name, is to point to a similar nickname in 
other 
Late Bronze Age literature. 
 
Note that for every geographical place name discussed in this post, I have 
supplied a Late Bronze Age historical inscription.  Meanwhile, university 
students are taught every fall that there are no places named XWBH or LKY R)Y 
or GRR in ancient Canaan, and no QD$ in the place [allegedly the southern 
wilderness] where Abraham begins to sojourn upon hearing from YHWH twice that 
Sarah will get pregnant and give birth to Isaac less than 12 months hence.  
The problem is not misspellings.  No, the problem is that university 
scholars are not looking in the right places to find these historical Late 
Bronze 
Age spellings of these authentic Late Bronze Age geographical place names.
 
Subject to a single letter at Genesis 14: 15, I see no misspellings or 
other scribal errors regarding the geographical place names in the 
Patriarchal 
narratives.  The text, as is, is perfect.  The problem has nothing to do with 
the text, which is perfect [except for that one letter], but rather has 
everything to do with the scholarly misunderstanding of what the text is 
saying.
 
You aptly note that “scribes…knew about the[se] places (and perhaps even 
lived in some of them)”.  Correct.  Prior to exilic times, those scribes, and 
100% of the audience, all knew that (a) Isaac wouldn’t sojourn for years in 
the Negev Desert, when the lovely Lachish Valley beckoned, and was south of 
where Abraham was sojourning in the northern Shephelah, (b) no one could 
dig a series of 4 wells, spaced a day’s walk or so apart, ending at 
Beer-sheba 
of the Negev, (c) Isaac got rich growing wheat in Galilee/GRR, not in the 
southern wilderness, and (d) a “valley” to which no one ever goes “up” 
cannot possibly be the mountainous city of Hebron.  Yes, George, prior to 
exilic 
times, everyone knew those basic geographical facts about Canaan.  So why 
is it, then, that university scholars don’t pay attention to those basic 
geographical facts about Canaan? 
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois