Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Nir Cohen:

 

You wrote:  “SULAM is used in modern hebrew. your logic seems to imply that we still
live in the 14th century BC because we use a word of (supposedly) hurrian origin.”

 

No, my logic is that if and to the extent the Patriarchal narratives contain several mysterious hapax legomenon like SLM that seem inexplicable on Semitic grounds but make perfect sense as Hurrian loanwords, then that is one important indication that the Patriarchal narratives likely were composed in the mid-14^th century BCE.  Only in the Amarna Age did Hurrian princelings dominate the ruling class of Canaan, so that is the only time when Hurrian common words would likely slip over into Hebrew.

 

Likewise, no west Semitic name Sarai is attested, nor is there even a west Semitic woman’s name attested that has the format of (i) west Semitic root + (ii) -ai as an archaic west Semitic feminine ending.  But $aru-ya is an attested Hurrian woman’s name, and that Hurrian woman’s name would come over into Hebrew as $RY.  Logically, that means that Sarah’s biological parents were Hurrian, with Sarah being adopted by Terah in order to marry Terah’s blood son Abram.  That particular type of marriage is well-attested in the 14^th century BCE, and in no other time period, which is another indication that the Patriarchal narratives were composed in, and accurately reflect, the Amarna Age.  The scholarly claim that Sarah’s birth name is allegedly a Canaanite name is simply false.  Each of Abraham and Isaac explicitly reams out Canaanite brides in no uncertain terms, yet each of Abraham and Isaac truly loved dear Sarah.  There’s no contradiction there at all, because Sarah was not a Canaanite bride:  Sarah was a Hurrian by birth with a vintage Hurrian woman’s name.

 

Finally, that in turn makes it sensible that the Patriarchs would call their beloved “valley”/(MQ [Genesis 37: 14] by a Hurrian name that means “nirvana”:  xa-bu-ru-u-ne : XBRWN [“Hebron”].  Instead of none of SLM and $RY and XBRWN making good sense on a Hebrew linguistic analysis, all three make perfect sense on a Hurrian linguistic analysis.

 

Please understand that I have little interest in Hurrian culture, nor do I see Judaism as borrowing much of anything from Hurrian culture.  Rather, my only real interest in Hurrian is to seek to document the true antiquity, and the pinpoint historical accuracy in a Years 12-14 historical time period, of the Patriarchal narratives.  The Hurrians basically went extinct at the end of the 13^th century BCE, so to the extent the Patriarchal narratives exhibit many Hurrian elements, that is testament to the Biblical text’s true antiquity and Late Bronze Age historical accuracy.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois