Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

George Athas wrote:  “[T]he etymology of Jerusalem is usually based on a form of the verb ירה, which has within its semantic domain the concept of 'putting up' or 'founding' (cf. Gen 31.51; Job 38.6). On this basis, it is concluded that ירושׁלםmeans 'founded by/for Shalem'. The proper noun Shalem is the name of a deity known from cognate cultures (eg. Ugaritic).”

That is basically the view taken 50 years ago by J. Gray in “The Canaanite” (1964) at p. 125, where he saw the original name of Jerusalem as being the Canaanite phrase warawa-$alem.  But at that time, it was assumed that Jerusalem was a fortified city referenced in the 18th century BCE Execration Texts from Egypt, where the first half of the city name was rw, which more or less fits warawa, after a fashion.  But since at least 1992 many scholars have pointed out that archaeologically, there was no there there as to the site of Jerusalem at the time of the Execration Texts, and the alleged linguistic match as to this city name isn’t very close either:  “It seems therefore that a big question mark remains as to the identification of Jerusalem with rw$3mm of the Execration Texts (Na’aman 1992: 278-279).”  Amnon Ben-Tor, “The Execration Texts”, at p. 70 in “Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context” (2006).

If, as now seems likely, Jerusalem is  n-o-t  mentioned in the Execration Texts, then the first attested mention of the city name “Jerusalem” is in Amarna Letter EA 287 from the Hurrian princeling ruler of Jerusalem, IR-Heba, who in Akkadian records the first part of the city name as being:  úru [that is:  accented U – resh/R – unaccented U].  URU [with no accents] as a logogram means “city” in Sumerian, and is very frequently used in that way in the Amarna Letters.  In fact, at Amarna Letter EA 287: 63 we see:  URU úru-$alim. Given the fact that accented U is different from unaccented U, it’s not clear how úru should ideally be rendered in Hebrew.  WRW would have the disadvantages of W being used for both accented U and unaccented U, and W at the beginning of a word rendered in Hebrew would be viewed as being a true consonant.  For lack of any better alternative, YRW might be the least bad way to render in Hebrew the Akkadian phrase úru, where yod/Y is used for accented U, and the other two letters are natural.  Thus YRW in Biblical Hebrew may be a slight variant on, or simply the Hebrew rendering of, the original úru;  the sound is quite similar.  By contrast, the Canaanite word warawa is not close linguistically to úru.

Secondly, the claim that the pagan god Shalem [$lm at Ugarit] was the patron god of Jerusalem seems quite fanciful to me.  Ugarit is located in northwest Syria, far from the central hill country of Canaan, and to the best of my knowledge there is no attestation whatsoever of a god Shalem ever being worshiped, or even known, in Jerusalem.  As far as I know, the god Shalem is never attested south of Syria.  Moreover, in Ugaritic mythology Shalem is but one of a pair of gods, and it wouldn’t make sense for a city in central hill country to honor only one of a pair of obscure Ugaritic deities.  Also sometimes cited is the Assyrian god Shalman or Shulman, but that’s even farther from Jerusalem, and not as close a linguistic match.  In a word, there’s not one iota of evidence to support the scholarly view that the city name “Jerusalem” allegedly honors the Ugaritic god $lm, a pagan god that, as far as we can tell, was entirely unknown in Canaan.  

With the name “Jerusalem” first appearing in the Amarna Letters, at about the time that the Hebrews emerge as a distinct people, one suspects that the Canaanite name of the Amarna Age city of Jerusalem had been “Peace”, spelled $LM.  $LM [Hebrew shalom] appears in various forms in many west Semitic languages, and is thought to derive from proto-Semitic $alam and to pre-date the Amarna Age as a west Semitic common word in Canaan.  “The root $lm is attested since the earliest times in all branches of Semitic….”  Helmer Ringgren, Heinz-Josef Fabry, “Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 15” (2006), p. 15.  Whereas there is no evidence whatsoever that the Ugaritic god $lm [one of a pair of minor Ugaritic deities] was known in Late Bronze Age Canaan, we know that some form of $lm, meaning “peace”, was known by all the various west Semitic-speaking Canaanites throughout Canaan at the time.  Moreover, many Israelites have a name spelled $LM in unpointed text, so we’re sure that the common word $LM was very suitable to be used as a proper name.

Although it may be dismissed by some as allegedly being a “folk etymology”, the most straightforward etymology of “Jerusalem” is that it means “City of Peace”.  YRW in Hebrew originally was úru, meaning “city” in Sumerian/Akkadian in the Amarna Letters.  $LM is the west Semitic word for “peace”.  I myself do not see Canaanite warawa as ever having been part of this city name [with Jerusalem not being in the Execration Texts], nor do I see any evidence that anyone at Jerusalem ever knew of the pagan god Shalem.  Rather than meaning “Founded by/for [the pagan god] Shalem”, I see the city name “Jerusalem” as meaning, from day #1:  “City of Peace”.

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois