Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Nir Cohen:

 

1.  You wrote:  “it is very difficult for me to accept a conjecture that the law of moses was written in any language but hebrew”

 

It’s Hebrew, in the sense of west Semitic words that for the most part fit classic Biblical Hebrew perfectly.  But it’s such west Semitic words written in cuneiform, not using an alphabet.

 

If you’re saying that the Patriarchal narratives were recorded in alphabetical Hebrew in the Bronze Age, that’s not possible.  Just look at how rudimentary the Qeiyafa Ostracon is.  There’s no way that the Qeiyafa Osatracon alphabet could have been used to record any significant portion of the sophisticated, complex Torah.  But if, on the other hand, you’re saying that the Patriarchal narratives weren’t recorded in writing at all until the Iron Age, that won’t work either, because of the pinpoint historically accurate details of the first Hebrews’ struggles in Years 12-14 of the Amarna Age that are faithfully recorded in the received text.  The Amorite princeling ruler in Years 12-13 of the valley where the Patriarchs sojourned is given the apt Patriarchal nickname of “Mamre the Amorite”, and his historical name is honored and set forth in full at Genesis 46: 17:  MLK  -Y-  )L [Milk-i-Ilu].  There’s no way that anyone in the exilic or post-exilic era could come up with details from Years 12-14 like that. 

 

No, all those details must have been recorded in the mid-14^th century BCE by a contemporary, in cuneiform, using west Semitic words.  50 cuneiform tablets, weighing only about 15 pounds or so in total, would be sufficient to record the Patriarchal narratives.  One of the very earliest Hebrew traditions, then, dating all the long way back to the Late Bronze Age, would be that the Hebrews carted along with them those 50 tablets of sacred Hebrew scripture in a sacred chest, wherever they went.  No, we don’t have those 50 cuneiform tablets today, but we do have in the received text of the Patriarchal narratives how they were transformed into alphabetical Hebrew in the early 7^th century BCE [with the poetry of Jacob’s Blessings having been put into alphabetical Hebrew earlier, as noted in #3 below].  The numbers, proper names, and substantive content in the received text of the Patriarchal narratives are all redolent of the first Hebrews’ struggles to survive and maintain their homeland in the Amarna Age.

 

2.  In a later post you wrote:  “jim, the queiyafa ostracon is NOT in cuneiform.”

 

That’s for sure!  And that, my good friend, is the point.  If you would look at Rollston’s fine article that I cited, you would see how rudimentary the alphabetic system of the Qeiyafa Ostracon was as of 1000 BCE.  Neither the Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives, nor Moses, could use such an inadequate writing system to record any substantial portion of the Torah.  Not.  Meanwhile, the most sophisticated and best writing system known to the ancient world was readily available to the early Hebrews:  cuneiform.  And we know from the Amarna Letters that cuneiform could easily be used to record west Semitic words.

 

Forget the alphabet.  Think cuneiform!  That is, cuneiform used to record west Semitic pre-Biblical Hebrew words.  Cuneiform worked equally well to record west Semitic words, or Hurrian words, or Akkadian words.

 

3.  You wrote:  “cuneiforms were used in the entire region between egypt, turkey and the persian gulf as a means of diplomatic and logistic communication. most probably, they were legible (in canaan) only by a handful of scribes. it is even doubtful whether the local rulers who sent them could read them directly without the scribe's help.  quite on the contrary, religeous texts have always been written in the language of the people, so as to be understood by a large number of people.”

 

Hello, hello?  King David’s scribe was of Hurrian ancestry, though his family had lived in Jerusalem for many generations.  His Hurrian ancestry meant that he knew cuneiform [the writing method in which Hurrian was recorded], but since he lived his whole life in Jerusalem he was bi-lingual in Canaanite/pre-Hebrew.  His name, $RYH, tells us the whole story.  In a Jerusalem dominated by Hurrians/“Jebusites”, King David had inherited a scribe of Hurrian ancestry whose family had lived in Canaan for many generations.  His name, $RY-H at II Samuel 8: 17, is based on the following frequently-attested Hurrian man’s name:  $ar-ri-ia.   That would be recorded in early alphabetical Biblical Hebrew as $RY.  To that Hurrian base name is added a Semiticized -H ending, as with the names Araunah and Uriah.  In all three cases, that Semiticization shows that the man’s family, though of Hurrian origin, had long lived in Canaan. 

 

King David’s scribe $ar-ri-iah may indeed have been the scribe who advanced the alphabet enough, a mere 50 years or so after the dreadful Qeiyafa Ostracon, to be able to record Jacob’s Blessings [chapter 49 of Genesis] in alphabetical Hebrew.  By contrast, the non-poetical portions of the Patriarchal narratives were not transformed from cuneiform writing of west Semitic words into alphabetical Hebrew until the early 7^th century BCE, when (i) the alphabet had greatly improved, (ii) there was more literacy, and (iii) most importantly, King Hezekiah desperately needed a religious boost for his devastated kingdom.  That’s why scholars tell us that the writing style, as to spelling and grammar, of Jacob’s Blessings is 11^th-10^th century BCE, whereas the writing style, as to spelling and grammar, of the rest of the Patriarchal narratives is 7^th century BCE.

 

See how everything makes logical sense?  Just think cuneiform, with cuneiform being used to write west Semitic words, and then everything falls right into place, just as it should.  The first written version of the Patriarchal narratives was really old, dating all the long way back to the mid-14th century.  It was written in cuneiform, using west Semitic/pre-Hebrew words that for the most part have a direct equivalent to Biblical Hebrew words.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois