Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

Hi Jim,

I don't feel knowledgeable enough to comment on most aspects of your
thesis that Midian = Mitanni, but I will make a few remarks on the
linguistic correspondence below...

On Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:22:42 -0500 (EST), JimStinehart AT aol.com wrote:
> ...
> 2.  The country name “Mitanni” is attested from the 15th century BCE
> through the end of the 12th 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 7th 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”.

From the little I know about Hurrian, I understand that that language
did not make a distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants, so
I don't have any problem with seeing a Hebrew ד/D as possibly
representing a Hurrian /t/.  I *do* however see the presence of Hebrew
י/Y in מדין/MDYN as a problem with this correspondence.  I'm afraid
I'm unpersuaded that a foreign /a/ would be represented in Hebrew by
yodh, since I don't see any evidence for this occurring, and it seems
unlikely on a purely phonetic basis.  So, while I would regard the
similarity of MDYN with "Mitanni" to be intriguing, I would not regard
it as an exact linguistic match.

-- 
Will Parsons