Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Prof. Yigal Levin:

You wrote:  “Jim, I'm not at all sure how you (and others – this is not your own personal theory) get the idea that the Jebusites were "Hurrian". Nothing in the Bible indicates that they were anything but "Canaanite", and as there is no extra-biblical evidence at all about the Jebusites, the Bible is all we have to go on. We also have no indication that the Jebusites were the inhabitants of Jerusalem before Josh. 15.”

In this post, as one critical part of the answer to your question, let me focus on linguistics, precisely because the scholarly community has failed to do that.  For reasons noted later in this post, I see YBWS-Y, which has the awful KJV transliteration of “Jebusites”, as being:  A-bu-u-se-ya.

The Biblical name YBWS-Y/Jebusites, and its root YBWS/Jebus, have seemed inscrutable to etymological analysis.  HALOT gives no etymology of its own, but rather states at p. 382:  “gentilic of YBWS…the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Jerusalem”.  [YBWS:] “trad. original name of the Hyksos (root BWS Gesenius Thes 189)”. 

No satisfactory etymology of “Jebusites” has been proposed to date, nor is there a consensus as to the Jebusites’ ethnicity.  “The identity of the Jebusites is also subject to debate.  Some propose that they were Hurrian or Horite in background, while others suggest a Hittite background.”  David Freedman et al, “Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible” (2000), p. 676.  “[T]he Jebusites are not recorded in any written document independent of the Bible.”  William Lipinski, “Itineraria Phoenicia” (2004), p. 502.  “According to Biblical tradition, Jerusalem, in the heart of the central hills, remained in the hands of the ‘Jebusites’ until David seized it by a ruse in the early 10th century B.C. (2 Sam. 5: 6-10;  cf. Josh. 15: 63).  We do not know who the Jebusites were and can only suppose that Jebus was the name of a local Canaanite clan (as in Gen. 10: 16).”  William G. Dever, “Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?” (2006), p. 216.

The Bible often associates the Jebusites with Jerusalem, and Jerusalem itself is sometimes referred to as ‘Jebus’.  Judges 19: 10-11;  I Chronicles 11: 4-5.  Although Dever sees the Jebusites as being Canaanites, many other analysts see the Jebusites as Hurrians.  One basis for that view is the phrase “Araunah the Jebusite” at II Samuel 24: 16.  Prof. Levin, I am going to assume here that you agree with the majority of scholars who see ‘Araunah’ at II Samuel 24: 20-24 as being a bona fide Hurrian name [which it is].  Accordingly, we might rightly expect YBWS-Y/Jebusite to be a colorful reference to the Hurrians [just as XT-Y is in the phrase “Uriah the XT-Y/‘Hittite’”, with “Uriah” being recognized by virtually all analysts as a Hurrian name, and with XT-Y being Xuti-ya, the most frequently-attested Hurrian personal name at Nuzi].  Historically, the process that II Samuel describes at length, regarding how the Hebrews finally came to dominate Jerusalem, would make sense if (i) the people who previously had dominated Jerusalem were a remnant of the Hurrians, and (ii) all of the following proper names are Hurrian:  )WRY[-H]/Evriya [“Uriah”];  XTY/Xutiya [“Hittite”];  )RWN-[H]/Erwin [“Araunah”];  and YBWSY or YBSY/Abuseya [“Jebusite”].  That is indeed the case. 

With it making historical, logical and textual sense for the Jebusites to be Hurrians, what’s sorely needed here, in order to confirm the matter, is a Hurrian etymology of YBWSY.  I view the Biblical name YBWS-Y as being A-bu-u-se-ya, and as such as being but a slight orthographic variant of the following Hurrian personal name attested at Nuzi:  A-bu-u$-$e-ia (Gelb, Purves, “Nuzi Names”, p. 23b).  On a more general level, I see the following six names at Genesis 15: 19-21 as being Hurrian personal names that are used as Patriarchal nicknames for the Hurrians:  Kenites, Kenizzites, Hittites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Jebusites.  That reflects the historical reality of the Amarna Age when, as we know from princeling names in the Amarna Letters, Hurrians dominated the ruling class of Canaan.  

Moving now to specifics regarding which Hebrew letters are used, as is routinely the case in the Hebrew rendering of Hurrian names, Hebrew yod/Y [here in initial position] represents the Hurrian vowel A as its own separate syllable.  [Lipinski sees the final Hebrew yod/Y in XTY as representing -a or -ia or -ya in Hurrian:  Xuti-ya.]  As always, the first of the doubled Hurrian consonants is dropped.  With shin/$ at Nuzi often interchanging with sin/%, and with Hurrian not distinguishing between a samekh/S or a sin/% for s, it is not surprising to see samekh/S in the Biblical spelling, instead of shin/$.  All other aspects of the Biblical name match exactly to the way Hurrian names are consistently rendered in Biblical Hebrew;  in particular, note that each Hurrian syllable is represented by one Hebrew letter.  The Hebrew author of Genesis 15: 21 treated the Hurrian name A-bu-u$-$e-ia as being A-bu-u-se-ya.  Y = a.  B = bu.  W = u.  S = se.  Y = [y]a.  YBWS-Y.  Thus everything is as expected for the Hebrew rendering of a Hurrian name that the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives conceptualized as being A-bu-u-se-ya.  That Late Bronze Age Hurrian personal name is used in Genesis as a Patriarchal nickname for Hurrians generally.

The applicable Hurrian common word here is abu$k- or a-bu-u$-ki-i-ti, which means “to save”.  Nozadze, “Vocabulary of the Hurrian Language”, p. 78.  As with the Hurrian proper name A-bu-u$-$e-ia, the root of this Hurrian common word is a-bu-u$ [with the -ki-i-ti ending consisting of optional suffixes].  With P and B often being interchangeable in Hurrian, both of the following names at Nuzi [Gelb Purves, p. 23b] are based on that Hurrian common word:  A-bu-u$-$e-ia, and A-pu-u$-qa.  The latter such name was very popular at Nuzi, being attested on numerous occasions using three slightly different spellings:  A-pu-u$-ka, A-pu-u$-qa, and A-pu-u$-ki.  Nozadze, p. 77.  A name that begins with either A-bu-u$ or A-pu-u$ is Hurrian, and would be expected to be rendered in Hebrew [if B instead of P is used] as YBWS [as we see as the root of YBWS-Y at Genesis 15: 21], or YBS [as we see as the root of YBSY at II Samuel 5: 6, 8 and 24: 16, 18], or YBW$ or YB$ [with sibilants having inconsistent spellings in Hurrian].  Indeed, once it is recognized that the Hurrian sibilant here may be represented by Hebrew samekh/S, the expected Hebrew rendering of the attested Hurrian name 

A-bu-u$-$e-ia is precisely what we see in the Biblical text:  YBWS-Y.

As always in the Biblical rendering of Hurrian names, the final Hebrew yod/Y represents the Hurrian hypocoristic theophoric suffix:  -ya [or -ia or -a, etc.].  

The meaning of this Hurrian name is:  “Saved by Teshup”.  YBWS-Y [“Jebusites”] is the expected Hebrew rendering of A-bu-u-se-ya.  That is an attested Late Bronze Age Hurrian personal name which [like the names Kenites, Kenizzites, Hittites, Perizzites, Girgashites and Hivites] is used as a colorful Patriarchal nickname for the Hurrians generally, who briefly dominated the ruling class of Canaan in the Amarna Age.

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois