Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Nir Cohen:

1.  In Hebrew city names, if one wants to use the Hebrew word that means “city”, we see QRYT.  Thus in the Bible we find:  (i) Kiriath-arba at Genesis 23: 2;  (ii) Kiriath-jearim at Joshua 15: 60 [and many other places in the Bible;  the Joshua cite gives Kiriath Baal as an alternate name];  (iii) Kiriathaim at Joshua 13: 19 [and many other places in the Bible];  (iv) Kiriath-Huzoth at Numbers 22: 39;  (v) Kiriath-Sepher at Judges 1: 11;  and (vi) Kartah at Joshua 21: 34.  So if one wants to incorporate the Hebrew word for “city” into a formal city name, the Biblical evidence is that one consistently uses QRYT.  

But of course, QRYT does not sound anything like úru or URU.

2.  (YR is very different.  (YR is used 1,074 times to mean “city” in the Bible.  Yet  n-e-v-e-r  is (YR used as the beginning of the proper, formal name of a city!  Rather, all we see in that regard is that on two occasions, (YR is used as an apt description of a city, being a colorful nickname as it were for the city:  (i) “city of the Salt”/(YR H-MLX at Joshua 15: 62, which seems to be a description of/nickname for En-Gedi, not the proper name of a separate city;  and (ii) “city of the sun-[god]”/(YR $M$ at Joshua 19: 41, which seems to be a colorful, descriptive nickname for the city whose actual, proper name was Beth-Shemesh.

Thus if one wants to incorporate the Hebrew word for “city” into a formal city name, the Biblical evidence is that one consistently uses QRYT,  n-e-v-e-r  (YR.

You seem to think that (YR sounds somewhat like úru or URU.  But even if you were right about that, the fact of the matter is that (YR is never used, to the best of my knowledge, to create the formal name of a city in Canaan.

3.  The earliest attested spelling of the city name “Jerusalem” is úru-$alim in the Amarna Letters from Hurrian princeling ruler IR-Heba of Jerusalem.  By the time the Hebrews come along and start recording city names in the Bible, úru-$alim was “just a name”.  That name had not been created by the Hebrews, so it’s not surprising that the Bible merely passively records the ancient Canaanite name for this city.  Since the first U is accented whereas the second U is not, and since an initial vav/W would have been taken as being a true consonant, in copying the  s-o-u-n-d  of úru, I see YRW as being quite close, in particular being closer than your suggestion of (YR.  Moreover, the Bible  n-e-v-e-r  starts out the formal name of a city with (YR.  N-e-v-e-r .

Will Parsons wrote:  “And in fact the transition of initial [w] to [j]/ is quite normal in

Hebrew, so that there is nothing inherently unlikely about ורו / [wuru]

becoming ירו / [juru-] -> [jeru-].”  That is a more sophisticated version of my own theory of the case.

4.  In my view, (i) the Canaanite name of this city meant “City of Peace”, and (ii) the Bible simply passively records a Hebraized version of the original Canaanite name, where úru is rendered as YRW.

Rather than merely being an inconsequential argument about etymology, though, there in fact are huge stakes involved here.  In my opinion, the city name “Jerusalem”  a-l-w-a-y-s  has some version of YRW at the beginning, both in the Bible and outside of the Bible.  I myself never interpret $LM as being a shorthand Biblical reference to Jerusalem.  Rather, I see the never-shortened name as being YRW$LM, which was “just a name”, and was not viewed by the Hebrews as being an optional way of spelling out “City of Peace”.  To the Hebrews, YRW didn’t seem like the word for “city”, but rather was an integral part of what was “just a name”:  YRW$LM.  In my opinion, the Hebrews  a-l-w-a-y-s  thought of this city’s name as being YRW$LM, and never thought of the city name as being “City of $LM” which could be shortened to $LM.

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois