Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III:

You wrote:  “These are Hebrew names. Get off the Hurrian name kick. All you 
have done is given speculation. This is a Biblical Hebrew list NOT a Hurrian 
list.”

The main point of this thread is my contention that all 12 names of Jacob’s 
12 sons are Hebrew names.

On the other hand, however, why would you think that names of H-XTY would be 
Hebrew names?  Genesis 15: 18-21 explicitly says that H-XTY are divinely 
fated to be displaced by the Hebrews.  The XTY people are not Hebrews!  The 
Bible expressly says that the XTY people will be displaced from Canaan by the 
Hebrews.

Two of the names that Nir Cohen listed were names of XTY:  (PRWN at Genesis 
23: 10, and )YLWN at Genesis 36: 2.  It doesn’t make sense that the name of 
any XTY person would be a Hebrew name.  You are not saying, are you, that 
(PRWN, who is explicitly stated at Genesis 23: 10 to be H-XTY, has a Hebrew 
name?  What sense would that make?  In my opinion, XTY is Xu-Ti-Ya, the 
most-attested Hurrian name at the Hurrian province of Nuzi, which in Hurrian 
means:  “Praise Teshup”.  XTY/Xuti-ya is a Hurrian-based Patriarchal nickname 
that effectively means “Hurrian”.  

As support for my theory of the case, consider the KJV phrase “Uriah the 
Hittite”.  Ev-ri-ya, transliterated by KJV as “Uriah”, at II Samuel 11: 3, is 
the best-known individual whom the Bible calls H-XTY.  )WR-Y-H/“Uriah” is 
widely regarded as being a Hurrian name:  “[H]idden behind the Semitic form 
of his [Uriah’s] name is the Hurrian title ewri- ‘lord’."  Billie Jean 
Collins, “The Hittites and Their World” (2008), p. 211.  Ev-ri/)W-R means “to 
be lord” in Hurrian, and -ya/-Y is a Hurrian theophoric that references the 
Hurrian sky-god Teshup.  So )WR-Y-H : Evri-ya : “Uriah” means “Teshup Is 
Lord”.  Evri-ya the Xuti-ya is a Hurrian, and so is E-piri-enne [(PRWN] the 
Xuti-ya, with none of those names being Hebrew names.  (PRWN means “The 
[Hurrian] Lord” in Hurrian.

Genesis 15: 18-21 explicitly tells us that in the Patriarchal Age, there were 
a bunch of peoples in Canaan [most of whom, other than the Canaanites and 
Amorites, I view as being the Hurrian ruling class of Canaan in the mid-14th 
century BCE] whom the Hebrews are divinely fated to displace.  Why would you 
think that non-Hebrew peoples in Canaan prior to Israel would have Hebrew 
names?  All names of individuals in the Bible who are said to be 
XTY/Xu-Ti-Ya/“Hittites” or Kenites or Kenizzites or Jebusites appear to be 
Hurrian names.  Joshua’s companion KLB does not have a west Semitic name 
meaning “Dog”, but rather as a Kenizzite has a Hurrian name meaning “It 
Pleases [Deity]”.  The heroine (YL who kills Sisera does not have a west 
Semitic name meaning “Male Ibex” [or, per an unattested dialect, “Ibex”], but 
rather as a Kenite has a Hurrian name meaning “Grand Lady”.  The person from 
whom David takes over Jerusalem, rendered by KJV as “Araunah the Jebusite”, 
as a Jebusite/Hurrian has a vintage Hurrian name, Er-vi-na, meaning [just 
like “Uriah”] “[Teshup] Is Lord”. 

In my opinion the Bible is older, and much more historically accurate, than 
university scholars realize.  But people will never see that as long as they 
persist in the 2,000-year-old scholarly tradition of giving west Semitic 
re-interpretations/mis-interpretations of vintage non-Semitic Hurrian 
Biblical names such as KLB and (YL and (PRWN, which as Hurrian names do  
n-o-t  mean “Dog”, “Male Ibex”, “Fawn”!  To recover the historicity of the 
Bible, we must be willing to credit the Bible as knowing whereof it speaks 
when it tells us that those people are Kenizzites, Kenites and 
Xu-Ti-Ya/“Hittites”, that is, historical Hurrians, who quite naturally have 
Hurrian, non-Semitic, non-Hebrew names.

Ironically, the very point of this thread is to insist that, contra the 
scholarly view, all 11 names of Jacob’s oldest 11 sons are Hebrew names, that 
did not exist prior to the composition of chapters 29 and 30 of Genesis.  
That is an issue worthy of discussion, because those 11 sons are portrayed as 
being born in eastern Syria [which was the heartland of Hurrian country], and 
two of their names, $M(WN and ZBLWN, have names that seem to have 
Hurrian-type endings [like (PRWN the XTY].  We can see the Hurrian ambience 
of the endings of those names by comparing the Hurrian word for “the heaven”, 
xavur-unne, which is rendered by the Hebrew letters XBRWN, which KJV 
Semiticizes as “Hebron”.  Speaking of Semiticization, shortly after Leah’s 
death after returning to beloved Canaan, Jacob dropped the Hurrian-type 
ending -WN in his son’s name ZBLWN, so that thereafter in the Patriarchal 
narratives [at Genesis 35: 23, Genesis 46: 14 and Genesis 49: 13] we always 
see the Semiticized form:  ZBWLN.  Thus Jacob himself to a certain extent 
shared your view:  “These are Hebrew names. Get off the Hurrian name kick.”  
All of Jacob’s sons in fact have Hebrew names.  It’s just that two of those 
names, per Leah’s upbringing in eastern Syria, have a Hurrian ambience in 
their -WN endings.

The Hebrews [descendants of Jacob/“Israel”] distinguished themselves from the 
non-Hebrews, and largely displaced the non-Hebrews in Canaan, including 
H-XTY/the Hurrians.  But that’s not to say that all the peoples whom the 
Hebrews displaced had Hebrew names!  Not.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois