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  • From: jimstinehart AT aol.com
  • To: chavoux AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Samson's "Jawbone": Geography and Linguistics
  • Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2011 08:48:54 -0500


Chavoux Luyt:

You wrote: “I'm just not sure that the pun would have worked with the ancient
Hebrew pronunciation.”

1. I agree with you that in Biblical Hebrew, a kaf without a dagesh did not
have the exact sound of a heth. But the sounds were similar. A pun usually
works on the basis of similar sound, not identical sound.

2. Now consider how the Hebrews dealt with non-Semitic city names in Canaan.
LWZ/Luz became LY$/Laish, which means “lion” as a Hebrew common word.
Ka-da-u-$a became QD$, which means “holy” as a Hebrew common word. And
L-KY-$ was likely pronounced/mispronounced either as LXY-$, where LXY means
“jawbone”, or as L-XY-$, where L-XY means “of living” [though in this one
case, the original spelling was retained intact].

Do you see the pattern? An inexplicable non-Semitic geographical place name
in Canaan got (deliberately) mispronounced by the Hebrews into sounding like
something that made sense in Hebrew.

So when I see all of Hagar, Isaac and Samson as being in the Lachish Valley,
in part based on puns involving either LXY or L-XY, one important part of my
case is that the original name, L-KY-$, did not make sense to the Hebrews,
and so some sort of Hebrew pun was almost inevitable in order to make sense
out of that non-Semitic name.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois








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