Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Nir Cohen:

I see $RX as being in basically the same situation as $RY.  The similarity of 
their names is obvious.  Neither name makes sense in west Semitic.  Each 
woman’s non-Semitic parents used a well-attested non-Semitic custom to insist 
that before a native west Semitic-speaking man would be allowed to marry 
their daughter, his father would have to adopt the young woman first and, 
most importantly, sign a written contract that the adopted daughter would in 
due course marry the father’s blood son and be such blood son’s sole main 
wife.  In particular, the entire inheritance from that blood son would 
eventually pass solely to any son or sons borne to that blood son by the 
adopted daughter.

So in both cases, $RY was adopted by Terah, and $RX was adopted by Asher, for 
the express purpose of marrying the man’s blood son.  That’s why Terah 
naturally thought of $RY as being his “daughter-in-law”, per Genesis 11: 31, 
not as being his daughter.  Likewise, Beriah like Abraham could refer to his 
wife as being his “sister”, per Genesis 46: 17, but Asher did not think of 
$RX as being his “daughter”, because he had adopted her for the express 
purpose of becoming the sole main wife of his blood son Beriah.  I see the 
pattern as being identical.  This type of adoption sequence is well-attested 
in non-Semitic customs from the Late Bronze Age.  [By contrast, despite 
earlier reports to the contrary, there is in fact no documented tradition of 
a husband adopting his non-Semitic wife as his sister.  Rather, the husband’s 
father adopted the prospective bride, with the husband’s father paying an 
adoption fee now instead of a bride’s-price later.  Of critical importance, 
the written contract specifying property rights was between the husband’s 
father and the bride’s parents, rather than being a unilateral act by the 
husband.]

The reason why $RX is the only woman named in chapter 46 of Genesis in 
addition to Jacob’s daughter Dinah is not because Jacob had no other female 
descendants.  No, it’s because these are the only two female descendants of 
Jacob who were greatly important in their own individual right.  $RX is 
important because she shows that Terah had not done wrong at the beginning of 
the Patriarchal narratives when Terah, a native west Semitic speaker who was 
indigenous to Canaan, adopted a non-Semitic young woman, pursuant to a 
written contract that specified that $RY would in due course marry Terah’s 
blood son )BRM as his sole main wife.  Note that even though polygamy was 
commonplace in the Patriarchal Age [for example Jacob marrying two sisters 
and Esau having multiple main wives], nevertheless Abraham is always 100% 
committed to having his inheritance pass solely to either a son borne by $RY, 
or perhaps to a son borne on behalf of $RY at $RY’s behest.  Abraham  
n-e-v-e-r  contemplates what would ordinarily be thought of as an obvious 
option here in the face of a long-barren wife:  marrying a second main wife 
with the hope that such second main wife would bear the man a proper male 
heir.

Modern audiences misunderstand the situation completely, and think that 
Abraham was so romantically in love with Sarah that he could never bear the 
thought of siring his heir by another woman.  Perhaps Abraham was 
romantically in love with Sarah, perhaps not, but that’s largely irrelevant 
here.  The actual situation was that all the parties involved -- Abraham, 
Sarah, Terah, and Sarah’s non-Semitic parents -- were obligated by a written 
contract that Abraham’s entire inheritance would pass solely to a son to be 
borne by [or perhaps on behalf of] $RY.  Setting aside anachronistic modern 
notions of romantic love and monogamy, the #1 story in the Patriarchal 
narratives simply does not make sense unless all parties are fully committed, 
both legally and morally, to the irrevocable proposition that Abraham’s 
proper heir could only be by $RY.  $RY’s non-Semitic parents had driven a 
hard bargain, and all parties always fully complied with their written 
contractual obligations.

Two additional points are very important here:

1.  We should be brave enough to ask if $RY is an attested non-Semitic 
woman’s name from the Late Bronze Age, namely $aru-ya, instead of being an 
unattested west Semitic name.  That fact fits perfectly with the non-Semitic 
adoption/marriage custom so prominently on display here.

2.  We now realize the critically important fact that Abraham was thus 
required to deal with  w-r-i-t-i-n-g .  It may well be that Abraham never 
used writing regarding his flock of sheep and goats.  But if he married a 
woman with a non-Semitic name that was his “sister” but was not viewed by 
Terah as being Terah’s “daughter”, then it’s certain that the arrangements 
here for adoption and marriage were done pursuant to a  w-r-i-t-t-e-n  
contract, which would have been insisted upon by his bride’s non-Semitic 
parents.  Anyone who could compose such a story would automatically know the 
great importance of reducing important compositions to  w-r-i-t-i-n-g .  And 
the only way that the Patriarchal narratives could feature dozens of 
non-Semitic names with accurate Late Bronze Age spellings is if the 
Patriarchal narratives were not only composed way back in the Late Bronze 
Age, but equally importantly, these ancient names in the Patriarchal 
narratives must have been committed to  w-r-i-t-i-n-g  from day #1.  The 
claim that the Patriarchal narratives started out for centuries as being an 
oral tradition told around innumerable campfires is demonstrably false.  The 
only way to get accurate Late Bronze Age spellings of dozens of non-Semitic 
names is by virtue of the fact that those names were committed to  
w-r-i-t-i-n-g  in the Late Bronze Age.  That was the non-Semitic way as to 
adoptions/marriages, and that is how we know that both Abraham and the Hebrew 
author of the Patriarchal narratives were very well aware of the critical 
importance of “putting it in writing”.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois