Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal.Levin AT biu.ac.il>]

Jim, since you've said all of this before (several times), this thread is 
hereby CLOSED. 

Yigal Levin

Co-Moderator, B-Hebrew

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org 
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of JimStinehart AT aol.com
Sent: Monday, January 09, 2012 5:51 PM
To: chavoux AT gmail.com; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] (MQ: "Deep Place"


Chavoux Luyt:
 
1.  You wrote [near the end of your post]:  “Hebron is mentioned in 
Egyptian inscriptions from the Late Bronze Age (i.e. long before David) and 
in the 
same region as the later Hebron.”
 
That’s where you’re wrong.  The five letters XBRWN are never attested as a 
geographical place name prior to post-exilic times.
 
XBR, usually transliterated as Khibur, is attested in the 13th and 12th 
centuries BCE as a place in the Beqa Valley in eastern Lebanon.  To the best 
of 
my knowledge, no mainstream, respectable scholar accepts the non-scholarly 
claim that Khibur/XBR on those Rameside lists may possibly be XBRWN/Hebron 
in southern hill country.
 
2.  You wrote:  “Because there is no other indication that there ever were 
two separate cities with the same name.”
 
That’s not true.  Here are some of the things that Genesis says about the 
Patriarchs’ XBRWN, none of which could fit King David’s XBRWN high up in 
southern hill country.
 
(a)  The Patriarchs’ XBRWN is the opposite of “east” of Bethel.  Genesis 
13: 9, 11.
 
(b)  The Patriarchs’ XBRWN is “a deep place”:  (MQ at Genesis 37: 14.  (MQ 
is often applied to broad, true valleys in the Shephelah, but in the Bible 
(MQ is never applied to a high altitude mountain valley.
 
(c)  The Patriarchs’ XBRWN was ruled by an Amorite princeling who was 
allied with tent-dwellers and various princelings [Anir and Eshcol].  Genesis 
14: 
13.  That perfectly fits Milk-Ilu in the Amarna Letters, who historically 
dominated the Ayalon Valley and allied with habiru/tent-dwellers and various 
princelings.  Nothing of that type is attested historically in southern hill 
country.  Moreover, note that the XBR root of XBRWN, and the Hebrew version 
of Milk-Ilu, namely MLK-Y-)L, appear side by side at Genesis 46: 17 in the 
list of Jacob’s descendants.  The text thereby subtly lets us know that the 
location of the Patriarchs’ XBRWN, whose root is XBR, was where the dominant 
princeling in the Patriarchal Age/Amarna Age had the Amorite version of the 
name MLK-Y-)L, namely Milk-Ilu:  the Ayalon Valley!
 
3.  You wrote:  “Moreover, it is clearly stated that the place only got the 
name "Hebron" later, after the settlement of Israel in Canaan.”
 
That’s not stated in the Patriarchal narratives!  
 
At least in the Bronze Age, and likely in the Iron Age as well, most 
valleys in Canaan did not have formal names.  Each city and small town had a 
formal name, but not the valleys.  Biblical authors were therefore forced by 
necessity to come up with a Biblical nickname for (i) the deep valley where 
the 
Patriarchs sojourned well west of Bethel, and (ii) the high altitude 
mountain valley where King David made his first great conquests.  Based on 
the 
various meanings of XBRWN [not discussed in this post], the perfect nickname 
for 
both places was XBRWN.
 
4.  You wrote:  “The ")MQ" of Hebron can be any of the valleys around the 
city [in southern hill country].”
 
That simply is not true.  (MQ is used in the Bible only to describe “a deep 
place” that is either (i) itself a broad, true valley, like the Ayalon 
Valley in the Shephelah, or (ii) a valley that is connected to a broad, true 
valley, like the Rephaim Valley southwest of Jerusalem that connects with the 
Elah Valley in the Shephelah.
(MQ is never used in the Bible to describe a high altitude mountain valley 
that is neither itself a broad true valley nor connected to a broad true 
valley.  King David’s Hebron is the highest altitude place in Canaan where 
people lived, and as such it is antithetical to being described in Biblical 
Hebrew as “a deep place”:  (MQ.  Rather, the Bible repeatedly, and not 
surprisingly, uses the words (LH and HR in describing King David’s Hebron, 
way “up”
/(LH in the “mountains”/HR, while never ever using either of those two 
words to describe the Patriarchs’ Hebron.  Why?  Because those two Hebrons 
have 
completely different locales:  one is the low-lying Ayalon Valley west of 
Bethel in the Shephelah, and the other is an incredibly high place on the 
southern end of the Ridge Route.  The former is (MQ, whereas the latter is 
rightly characterized by (LH and HR, with such concepts being antithetical in 
the 
Bible.
 
If the last 40 chapters of Genesis were talking about the highest altitude 
place in Canaan where people can live [King David’s Hebron], where towering 
mountains dominate the scene, there’s no way that the word HR would never be 
used even once to describe such place.  Not!  The Patriarchal narratives 
use the word HR 15 times, but not once in connection with the Patriarchs’ 
XBRWN.  That’s because the Patriarchs’ XBRWN was the low-lying (MQ of the 
Ayalon Valley. 
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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