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  • From: jimstinehart AT aol.com
  • To: jkilmon AT historian.net, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The Names "Abram" and "Abraham"
  • Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:47:52 -0400 (EDT)


Jack Kilmon wrote: “I don't think we need to go to Egypt to find a RA
theophoric to explain the name change but need to look for a Semitic root.”

I know people don’t like Egypt, because of the Book of Exodus. But if the
Patriarchal narratives are old [my view], then they were composed before
Egypt began to oppress the Hebrews. So back in the Patriarchal Age, there
should be little or no anti-Egypt bias among the first Hebrews. Thus unlike
in the rest of the Bible, one sees this surprising pro-Egypt ancient mindset
of the first Hebrews in Genesis: “And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy
brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of
Canaan; And take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I
will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the
land.” Genesis 45: 17-18

There is no Aramaic word ra, or anything similar, that means “Deity”, is
there? But as noted in my prior post, r’ or ra or re could have the generic
meaning of “Deity” in Egyptian.

We can see this more clearly if we look at the name “Sarah”. Gesenius states
that %RH, the divinely-changed name of Abraham’s wife, is the feminine of the
noun %R. %R means “prince, ruler, leader, chief, chieftain, official,
captain”. As I noted in my prior post, although %R/“ruler” is usually viewed
as deriving from the Hebrew verb %RR/“to rule” or “to act like a prince” or
“to have power”, it is possible that, alternatively, %R was originally a
2-syllable word, %a-ra, which derives from the world-famous Egyptian kingly
title sa-ra. The Egyptian way of making sa-ra feminine would be sat-ra, but
the Hebrew way of making a foreign word into a name, including a woman’s
name, is to add -H at the end, so that sa-ra would be Hebrewized into a
woman’s name by becoming sa-ra-h, or %RH. All of this works perfectly if, in
the Patriarchal Age, an early Hebrew could view R as being a generic
reference to Deity. On that analysis, %RH is %-R-H, where -H in effect means
“she” [indicating a woman’s name, the Hebrew way], -R- means God, with one
meaning of r’ or ra or re in Egyptian being a generic reference to Deity,
and % means sa, which in Egyptian means “son”. So %-R-H means “she[, from
whom will come] sons [who will be] kings”. That’s exactly what Genesis 17:
15-16 tells us the name “Sarah”/%RH means: “And God said unto Abraham, As
for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah [%RH]
[shall] her name [be]. And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of
her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be [a mother] of nations; kings of
people shall be of her.”

Thus if R means “God” in both the names “Abraham” and “Sarah”, based on the
Egyptian word r’ or ra or re, and if % in the name “Sarah” means “son”, based
on the Egyptian word sa, then both the names “Abraham” and “Sarah” have the
exact meanings that are stated for them in the text of chapter 17 of Genesis.
I know it’s hard for people to think that a Patriarch or Matriarch could
have a name that is in part based on Egyptian words, but remember that if the
Patriarchal narratives are old, then they reflect a time period before the
Hebrews were oppressed by Egypt. So why not use sa-ra, the best-known phrase
in the entirety of the ancient world, as the basis for the names of Patriarch
and Matriarch Abraham and Sarah? If the Patriarchal narratives are really
old, it makes sense.

The two exciting aspects of my controversial etymologies of the names
“Abraham” and “Sarah” are that then (1) those two names would mean exactly
what chapter 17 of Genesis tells us those two names mean, and (2) the
Patriarchal narratives are really old, having been composed [by a single
early Hebrew author] before Egypt began oppressing the Hebrews. “Accurate
and old”: that pretty much sums up my view of the Patriarchal narratives.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois







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