Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Isaac Fried:

You wrote:  “QNIZY may be a variant of KNISY כניסי from the root KNS כנס 
'collect', the same way that PRIZI is from the root PRD, PRZ, PRC, PRS, PRT 
פרש, פרד ,פרס, פרז, פרץ 'spread out'.”

Why would you think that QNZY and PRZY are west Semitic names?  The QNZY and 
PRZY are always presented as being foreigners.  Genesis 15: 18-21 explicitly 
states that the Hebrews will in due course become the dominant people of 
Canaan, displacing 10 peoples, including the QNZY and the PRZY and the 
Canaanites and the Amorites.  The only native west Semitic speakers in 
greater Canaan were the Canaanites and the Amorites.  So the other 8 peoples 
named must logically be non-west Semitic speakers.

Indeed, the classic -zi- or -zzi- formative in these two names in particular 
has caused many scholars to recognize them as being Hurrian:

“[O]f all the ethnic terms found in these early [Biblical] traditions Kenizzi 
comes closest to a Hurrian form….  With Kenizzi, Perizzi cf. a-ki-iz-zi king 
of Qatna during Hurrian preponderance…and Perizzi, name of a Hurrian envoy in 
an Amarna letter….”  Joseph Blenkinsopp, “Gibeon and Israel” (1972), pp. 18 
and 113.  As further support for the view that the QNZY [“Kenizzites”] at 
Genesis 15: 19 are Hurrians in Canaan, see also H.L. Ginsberg and B. Maisler, 
“Semitised Hurrians in Syria and Palestine”, JPOS 14 (1984), pp. 258-9.

One of the major themes throughout the Hebrew Bible is how the Hebrews came 
to displace the Hurrians as the dominant people in non-coastal Canaan.  But 
in order to see that major theme, we must do as pre-exilic Biblical authors 
consistently did:  recognize that the following six names at truly ancient 
Genesis 15: 19-21 are all Hurrian:  Qa-a-ni-ya/QYNY;  Qa-ni-zi-ya/QNZY;  
Xuti-ya/XTY;  Piri-izzi-ya/PRZY;  Gera-ge-$e-ya/GRGSY;  and 
A-bu-u-se-ya/YBWSY.  

Because these are non-west Semitic names, it does not make sense to make a 
creative west Semitic etymology of a non-west Semitic name.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois