Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Stewart Felker:

 

[I  hope this was not intended to be an off-list communication.  I am responding on-list.]

 

You wrote:  “Do we have any external evidence of the name Mitanni being used in the Transjordanian region - or, for that matter, do we have any evidence of the _presence_ of anyone who could plausibly associated with Mitanni in the region you've specified?”

 

1.  On my theory of the case, Moses encounters the burning bush at Exodus 3: 2-4 about 100 miles south of MDYN/Mitanni [in the northeast Transjordan, near Ashtaroth, at Jabal al-Druze].  The traditional view of Exodus 3: 1 is correct in seeing Moses as taking his father-in-law’s flock out of MDYN, and traversing a distance of about 100 miles, before coming to the divine-like “desert”/XRB mountain where Moses is commanded to “serve God”.

 

Please note that if Biblical MDYN [“Midian”] is historical Mitanni, then Moses traversed those 100 miles over steppeland, which would be eminently sensible.  But on the traditional view, those 100 miles are through southern inland Sinai, which is terrible terrain.  It makes no sense for Moses to drive his father-in-law’s flock deep into the heart of southern Sinai, because the terrain is too rugged for a flock to handle that.

 

2.  The country name “Mitanni” is attested from the 15^th century BCE through the end of the 12^th century BCE:  not earlier, and not later.  Thus to the extent MDN and MDYN in the Patriarchal narratives and the Book of Exodus are referring to historical Mitanni, that would strongly suggest that such name was recorded in [cuneiform] writing by an early Hebrew author in the Late Bronze Age.

 

The Amarna Letters that use Akkadian often spell this country name in abbreviated form as mi-ta-ni, which corresponds to MDN.  The Hebrew scribe who, in the 7^th century BCE, transformed the Late Bronze Age Akkadian-style cuneiform writing into alphabetical Hebrew likely consulted with families of Hurrian [“Jebusite”] heritage in Jerusalem.  The root of mi-ta-ni was probably viewed as being the Hurrian verb mid- and/or the Sanskrit word midh, each of which means “to pay”;  accordingly, it would make sense to use Hebrew dalet/D to render the second consonant.  On the principle of one Hebrew letter per one cuneiform segment, and using Hebrew dalet/D for the T, mi-da-ni would be recorded in alphabetical Hebrew as:  MDN.

 

A slightly longer, and more proper, form of the name “Mitanni” is recorded in Hittite cuneiform as mi-ta-an-ni.  Since Hebrew never doubles consonants that have no intervening vowel, and with T being rendered by Hebrew dalet/D per the above analysis, this name was viewed by a Hebrew scribe as being:  mi-da-a-ni.  From names such as XTY in the phrase “Uriah the Hittite”, it can be deduced that XTY is Xuti-ia, an extremely popular name at Mitanni, and that the non-Semitic true vowel A as its own separate segment would be rendered in Biblical Hebrew as a yod/Y.  Hence the Biblical spelling:  MDYN.

 

The point is simply that each of MDN and MDYN is a fine linguistic match to the country name “Mitanni”.

 

3.  As to personal names, consider “Zipporah”.  It’s unlikely that Moses’ wife is from Arabia, since she initially did not allow Gershom to be circumcised, whereas circumcision was routinely practiced in ancient Arabia.  [Centuries later the Romans were unable to stomp out that custom in Arabia.] But if MDYN means historical Mitanni, then Zipporah is from Mesopotamia, where circumcision was not practiced.  Secondly, as a non-Hebrew Zipporah should not be expected to have a Hebrew name, and the traditional Hebrew meaning of her name -- “a little bird” -- does not fit Zipporah’s actions at all.  Rather, Zipporah seems “angry” and “tempestuous” in her one documented individual action, at Exodus 4: 25:  “Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.”  If Zipporah/CPR-H is from MDYN/Mitanni, then the root of her name, CPR, matches nicely with the consonants of a common word used in Mitanni, sapru, which means “angry”, and may imply “tempestuous”.  A similar analysis could be done regarding the name of Zipporah’s father, Jethro.  Whereas “Jether” is a good Hebrew name, “Jethro” ending in vav/W does not seem like a Hebrew name, or an Arabian name either, while working nicely as a name composed of two common words attested at Mitanni.

 

4.  Finally, Zipporah seems too assertive and aggressive in her public actions toward her husband at Exodus 4: 25 to be an Arabian woman;  Arabian women are not known for such qualities.  By contrast, the most assertive and aggressive women in the ancient world were probably from MDYN/Mitanni, based on the following key fact.  When their men were disastrously defeated by the Hittites and they had to marry Hittite husbands, historians are shocked to find that suddenly [in the days of Zipporah, for a 13^th century BCE Exodus] these Hittite families in Anatolia have children with Hurrian names!  That’s one key part of the so-called “Hurrianization of the Hittites”.  [The Mitannian meaning of Gershom/GR$M would be based on GR$ as the root, corresponding to the name Ge-ra-$e attested at Mitanni.]  Whereas many of her fellow countrywomen found themselves having to marry Hittite men in those unhappy times, Zipporah did better by marrying a Hebrew:  Moses.

 

In short,  e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g  makes sense if, in the Patriarchal narratives and the Book of Exodus, Biblical “Midian”/MDYN = historical Mitanni, the Late Bronze Age Hurrian state in eastern Syria.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois