Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Nir Cohen:

 

You wrote:  “it is quite possible that SRH is simply the hebrew translation of the aramaic SRY. and so, it may also be possible that ABRHM was merely a BH translation of the aramaic AB-RM.”

 

But no Aramaic version of $RY could possibly mean what Genesis 17: 15-16 tells us the name %RH means:  “And God said unto Abraham, As for $RY thy wife, thou shalt not call her name $RY, but %RH shall her name be.  And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her:  and she shall be a mother of nations:  kings of people shall be of her.”

 

We need 4 elements for that meaning of %RH/“Sarah”:

 

1.  She,

2.  [a] Son [will bear],

3.  [per] Divine [blessing],

4.  [who will have a line of sons who are] King

 

(1) She  (2) Son  (3) Divine  (4) King

 

Here are those 4 elements in the divinely-given name %RH:

 

1.  -H = “She”.  -H is the classic west Semitic feminine ending, applying to a majority of women’s names in the Patriarchal narratives, and thus effectively meaning:  “She”.

 

2.  % = sA = “Son”.  Where ssade is emphatic sin [so that “Isaac” starts out being spelled with a ssade, but in later books of the Bible is often spelled with a sin, because the sounds were similar in Hebrew], ssade/C as the first letter in Joseph’s Egyptian name = sA = the Egyptian word for “son”.  [The aleph/A that follows is not expressed by a separate Hebrew letter in any of these Biblical Egyptian names.]  Instead of the emphatic sin/ssade/C that is in Joseph’s Egyptian name, we have regular sin/% in Sarah’s divinely-changed name.  In the divinely-changed name %RH:  % = sA = “Son”.  The same early Hebrew author who created the names “Abraham” and “Sarah” also created Joseph’s Egyptian name and the name of Joseph’s Egyptian master, so he knows what all of the elements in all of these names in his composition of the Patriarchal narratives mean.

 

3.  R = ra = “Divine”.  As I noted previously, the final resh/R standing alone at the end of the name of Joseph’s Egyptian master at Genesis 39: 1, “Potiphar”, is agreed by all to be a divine reference, meaning “ra”.  In the Amarna Letters, the divine name ra [which occurs in Akhenaten’s prenomen], although in Egyptian being spelled with an ending ayin/a, is recorded by the Akkadian cuneiform sign ri, which is R + generic vowel, with no Akkadian cuneiform sign for ayin.  The Biblical Hebrew equivalent of the Akkadian cuneiform sign ri is simply resh/R, with the generic following vowel not being represented by its own separate Hebrew letter in defective spelling.  So in the divinely-changed name %RH:  R = ra = “Divine”.

 

4.  %R = sA ra = “King”, being the grandest, and most famous, title of kingship held by the pharaohs.  Though literally meaning “son of Ra/God”, the actual meaning is:  “divinely-appointed King”.

 

In my opinion, the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives created the names )B R HM and %R-H, and those names mean  e-x-a-c-t-l-y  what he tells us they mean at Genesis 17: 5, 15-16.  In particular, %R as the Egyptian phrase sA ra in the divinely-given name “Sarah” is but a different rendering of C P NT [sA pA nTr, where per Amarna Letter EA 60: 10 “na-te” in Akkadian cuneiform renders nTr/netjer/divine, with na-te being NT in alphabetical Biblical Hebrew] in Joseph’s Egyptian name, with both literally meaning “son of God”, but with the actual meaning being:  “divinely-appointed King”.  

 

Don’t you see the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives as being utterly brilliant beyond belief?  I do.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois