Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>]

From: jimstinehart AT aol.com 
Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2011 1:47 PM
To: jkilmon AT historian.net ; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org 
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The Names "Abram" and "Abraham"

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

JK] If Joseph is historical, Jim (and I think some form of it is), it 
predated Yahwistic Hebrews.  The Hebrew dialect of Canaanite had not yet 
developed and I think we need to look at Northwest Semitic for an L/R shift 
which was not uncommon.

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 have to consider that the Patriarchal narrative may have been constructed 
in Iron II or even Iron III and placed in the Bronze Age given the 
anachronism of “Ur of the Chaldees” (post-9th century BCE).  I am really hard 
pressed to look for Afro-Asiatic roots to a clearly NW Semitic name.

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.

Well, I use to be somewhat fluent in Middle Egyptian and R) (RA) means “sun” 
symbolized by a circle/disk and NTR means “god” symbolized by a flag-like 
glyph, three of them NTRW for “gods.”  Of course, it being difficult to find 
people to converse with that are not mummified, I have lost a lot of it. 
<grin> I think the possibility of the L-R shift makes an Egyptian origin 
unlikely based simply on homophonics.

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.

I have a chronology problem with that. If we speculate the patriarchal 
narrative dated to MBA1 there are no “Hebrews” until Iron1.  That these 
stories may have been the campfire stories of nomadic Canaanite shepherds, I 
can accept.
Jack Kilmon
Houston, TX
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

>From wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu  Sat Sep 17 17:43:58 2011
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The Names "Abram" and "Abraham"
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On Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:17:32 -0400 (EDT), jimstinehart AT aol.com wrote:
>
> William Parsons:
>
> 1.  You wrote:
>> $B!H(BAlthough the form "Ra" is commonly used in English for the 
>> Egyptian sun
>> god, this transcription is based on a earlier misunderstanding of the
>> Egyptian writing system, in which the name is written in a way
>> corresponding to   /R( in Hebrew.  The second letter corresponds to Hebrew
>> `ayin and is definitely consonantal in Egyptian, but was earlier thought to
>> represent a long "a".  The spelling "Re" is better in that it uses the
>> Coptic vocalization, but even this is far from how the name was pronounced
>> in much earlier times, such as that of Abraham.  We happen to have a
>> cuneiform transcription of a name containing r` from the Amarna period that
>> indicates the vocalization of the name at that time was ri`a, so I can't
>> see how this fits particularly well with the [ra] in "Abraham".$B!I(B
>
> I agree with everything you say except your conclusion.  We know that Ra or
> Re or r$B!F(B or ri$B!F(Ba is spelled R( in full form in the 
> Patriarchal narratives,
> because the name of Joseph$B!G(Bs Egyptian priestly father-in-law ends in 
> P-R(,
> representing pa-Ra, and meaning $B!H(BT-h-e Ra$B!I(B.  Genesis 41: 45.  
> But what would
> be the shortened form of R(?  Certainly it would be expected to be R, which
> we see in both the names $B!H(BAbraham$B!I(B and $B!H(BSarah$B!I(B: 
> )B-R-HM and %-R-H.

You assume there *was* a shortened form without the final consonant, but I
don't see evidence of that.

> 2.  You wrote:
>> $B!H(BOn another note, I don't see that "Ra" was ever used as a generic 
>> term for
>> God in Egypt.  As far as I can see, it always referred to a specific deity
>> (although there could be identification with other, specific, deities, such
>> as Ammon).$B!I(B
>
> Wouldn$B!G(Bt you agree that the Egyptian pharaonic title sa-ra was the
> best-known phrase in the ancient world?

No, I don't know that at all.  And the title was probably not pronounced
sa-ra.  I notice that you commonly use a transcription for Hebrew that
represents only the consonants.  That's fine when you don't want to pre-judge
what the vowels are, but if you do that, it is even *more* important to do the
same for Egyptian.  At least in the case of Hebrew, we have an oral tradition
ultimately resulting the Masoretic vowel signs.  While the Masoretic pointing
may sometimes be wrong, it's more that we have for Egyptian, where there is no
such equivalent.  So the Pharaonic title is better represented s3-r$B!F(B, 
which I
find only vaguely similar to Hebrew   /%R.

> Everyone knew that phrase, and many cultures had somewhat similar phrases,
> as I indicated in my prior post.  Most pharaohs didn$B!G(Bt care much 
> about a
> sun-god, but they all proudly bore the title sa-ra.  For example, Amen is
> totally unlike Ra the sun-god, yet the Amen-loving pharaohs of the early
> 18th Dynasty all proudly bore the title sa-ra [not sa-Amen].  Here$B!G(Bs 
> a
> standard explanation of pharaonic titles: $B!H(Broyal titulary.  Classic 
> sequence
> of names and titles held by each of the pharaohs consisting of five names
> (the so-called $B!F(Bfive-fold titulary$B!G(B), which was not fully 
> established until
> the Middle Kingdom.  It consisted of the Horus name, the Golden Horus name,
> the Two Ladies name (nebty), the birth name (nomen; sa-Ra) and the throne
> name (prenomen; nesu-bit).$B!I(B  Beatrix Midant-Reynes, $B!H(BThe 
> Prehistory of Egypt
> from the First Egyptians to the First Pharaohs$B!I(B (2000), at p. 273.  
> The
> point is that since e-v-e-r-y pharaoh had a sa-Ra title, but few pharaohs
> honored the sun-god Ra in particular [with Amen often being by far the most
> popular Egyptian god in the 18th Dynasty], in my view the grand pharaonic
> title sa-Ra effectively honored Deity, not just the sun-god.

First of all, in polytheistic societies, the gods important from the point of
view of the state were frequently different from those most popular with the
populace.  For example, in Roman society the state worship of Jupiter remained
important thoughout pagan times, but the gods one worshipped at home were more
likely lesser, more homely gods.  In the case of Egypt, the importance of Re
diminished over time, but that doesn't mean that the Pharaoh would abandon his
title s3-r$B!F(B in favour of another one.  Eventually the god Re was 
identified
with the god Ammon (or Amen if you prefer).  But saying "Oh Re, that's just a
different name for Ammon" is quite different from Re becoming a generic word
for deity.  And I see no evidence that s3-r$B!F(B ever became a generic 
term.

> It seems to me that an early Hebrew author could (i) use R as a shortened
> form of R(, and (ii) have the intended meaning of Deity, not focusing on a
> particular Egyptian sun-god.  That$B!G(Bs my theory of the case.

--
William Parsons