Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Yigal Levin and Will Parsons: 

 

To Prof. Yigal Levin’s comment that “If they wrote at all, the Patriarchs would have written in Canaanite and the Israelite slaves in Egyptian”, Will Parsons responded:  “Well, I would think that the Patriarchs would have written in Canaanite because that was their language, but I do think that the Israelite slaves would be unlikely to write in Egyptian.”

 

Why are you two gentlemen talking about something that is never attested historically?  Based on what’s attested historically, there were never any “Israelite slaves” in Egypt.  Moreover, there’s no basis for such a supposition linguistically either:

 

“There are very few foreign (i.e., non-Hebrew) words in the text of Genesis.  If one would expect the intrusion of these non-Hebrew words anywhere in the Bible, surely it would be in the Joseph story, which is set in Egypt.  In his study of Egyptian loanwords in the Hebrew Bible, T.O. Lambdin identifies about 40 Egyptian loanwords in the Bible.  But only 5 of these occur in the Joseph story, and none of them is unique to Genesis 37-50.”  Victor P. Hamilton, “The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17” (1990), p. 73.

 

On the other hand, back in the historically-attested world, we’ve got Amarna Letter EA 273 which is talking about the  i-d-e-n-t-i-c-a-l  situation as is the bulk of the Patriarchal narratives, namely the crisis for tent-dwellers in the eastern Ayalon Valley in Year 14 when tentdweller-hating Yapaxu, the firstborn son of the prior princeling ruler, the Amorite Milk-i-Ilu, threatened to drive the tent-dwellers out of their beloved homeland.  We should focus on what happened historically:  the early Hebrew tent-dwellers seem to have used IR-Heba’s former scribe to write down Canaanite/Hebrew words in Akkadian cuneiform, so that the Patriarchal narratives were reduced to writing about four years after Year 14.  What’s there to gain by talking about hypothetical Israelite slaves in Egypt who did not exist historically?   There are only 40 Egyptian loanwords [excluding Egyptian proper names] in the entire Bible, very few of which show up in Genesis.

 

We should instead be discussing what actually happened to the early Hebrews, namely the perilous situation of the tent-dwelling first Hebrews who were trying to live a peaceful life in south-central Canaan in Year 14.  We should ask whether we can prove linguistically that the first Hebrews retained a scribe to write down the Patriarchal narratives shortly after this succession crisis in the Ayalon Valley, using Akkadian cuneiform to write Canaanite/pre-Hebrew/Hebrew words.  As such proof, we should look for a confusion of the gutturals in non-Hebrew foreign names, yet otherwise letter-for-letter perfect Late Bronze Age spelling of all those exotic foreign names, which could only have resulted from the Patriarchal narratives having been written down in Akkadian cuneiform a few years after Year 14.  Isn’t it more exciting and fruitful to talk about what actually is historically attested as having happened, and what actually is in fact in the received text of the Patriarchal narratives, rather than talking about non-existent Israelite slaves in Egypt and the virtual absence of Egyptian loanwords in the Joseph story [excluding Egyptian proper names]?

 

Why steer the conversation to what did  n-o-t  happen historically [Israelite slaves in Egypt], based on what’s attested, and what is  n-o-t  in the received text of the Patriarchal narratives [any significant number of Egyptian loanwords in the Joseph story]?  Why not instead compare, on the historical side, what’s reported in the Patriarchal narratives straight up to what’s reported in Amarna Letter EA 273, and on the linguistics side examine the confusion of the gutturals in the Egyptian proper names in the Joseph story, whereas in all other ways the spelling of these Late Bronze Age Egyptian names is absolutely perfect?

 

We may be able to prove, based on historical linguistics, that the Patriarchal narratives as a written document are a good 700 years or so older than is currently thought.  What’s needed in that regard is to focus on the non-Hebrew proper names in the received text, and ask whether they bear all the telltale signs of a composition that was recorded in Akkadian cuneiform shortly after Akhenaten’s death, and then for the most part (excluding chapters 14 and 49 of Genesis) not transformed into alphabetical Biblical Hebrew until 7^th century BCE Jerusalem.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois