Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Nir Cohen:
 
Continuing our discussion as to whether the Patriarchal narratives are a 
late composition by multiple authors in the 1st millennium BCE, none of whom 
knew much of anything about the Bronze Age, as opposed to my own view that 
this Biblical text has pinpoint spelling accuracy as to non-Semitic proper 
names attested in the Late Bronze Age, let’s now consider Esau’s first wife.  
 
The scholarly analysis is that Esau’s first wife is a “Hittite”, who 
nevertheless has a west Semitic name, and that the west Semitic meaning of 
that 
allegedly west Semitic name of Esau’s first wife is [are you sitting down?]:  
“Jewess”.  
 
If you think I’m making that up, let me quote verbatim the leading scholar 
in the world on the book of Genesis:
 
Gordon Wenham, “Genesis 16-50” (1994), pp. 204-205, re Genesis 26: 34:  “
Esau marries two Hittite women.  …‘Judith’ only used here as a proper name 
in the OT.  In later texts it means a female Judean, i.e., Jewess.”  
 
Nir Cohen, do you think that Genesis 26: 34 is telling us that Esau married 
a Hittite woman with a west Semitic name that means “Jewess”?  [How can 
university scholars publish analyses like that?]
 
Shouldn’t we at least  a-s-k  whether XT-Y means “Hurrian”, not “Hittite”
, and whether YH – WD – Y – T is a perfectly good non-Semitic woman’s name 
with an appropriate meaning, with each element of such name being attested 
in the Late Bronze Age?
 
How can we possibly decide whether the Patriarchal narratives are or are 
not old and accurate, and whether they record attested Late Bronze Age 
spellings of non-Semitic names in  w-r-i-t-i-n-g  in the Late Bronze Age with 
letter-for-letter spelling accuracy, if not a single scholar in the world 
will 
even a-s-k  those questions about the name of Esau’s first wife?
 
And remember, if Esau married a non-Semitic woman, then you can bet your 
bottom dollar that she and her non-Semitic parents would have insisted on 
there being a binding marriage contract, specifying future inheritance 
rights,  
i-n  w-r-i-t-i-n-g .  So even if Esau didn’t use writing in tending his 
sheep and goats, nevertheless he couldn’t get to first base with those 
prospective non-Semitic wives of his unless he first “put it in writing”.  
The claim 
that the tent-dwelling Patriarchs were allegedly ignorant of writing, and 
that the Patriarchal narratives could not possibly have been reduced to 
writing in the Late Bronze Age, is falsified by the substantive content of 
the 
story itself!  Show me a story about someone like Esau marrying a non-Semitic 
woman, and I’ll show you a character [Esau] and an author [the author of the 
Patriarchal narratives] who knew darn well that not only were Hurrian women 
legendary for their incredible beauty [Sarah and Tamar, and on their mother’
s side Rebekah and Rachel], but also those knock-dead gorgeous Hurrian 
brides were ruthlessly consistent in always insisting from their prospective 
bridegrooms:  “put it in  w-r-i-t-i-n-g ”.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois