Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Tory Thorpe:

 

You wrote:  “Have you considered that even tent-dwelling Asiatics living within and just outside Egypt's borders in Canaan may have been just educated enough to read and write hieratic? I find it a bit difficult to picture nomads moving about laden down with so many clay tablets in Akkadian. On the other hand, "Sinuhe" was presumably popular and perhaps available to them. Hebrew can be written in Akkadian cuneiform. It can also be written in hieratic, much easier. I would think if the patriarchal narratives were composed as early as the 14th century BC by "Hebrews" near Egypt, hieratic was the script used and parchment or leather was the writing material most of the time.

 

(a)  One possibility, as you mention, is that the early Hebrews themselves were literate, using hieratic to write Hebrew, rather than retaining a scribe to record Hebrew words in Akkadian cuneiform on clay tablets.  Both of those theories could account for the accurate historical details in the received text of the Patriarchal narratives as of the mid-14^th century BCE.  But consider the points set forth below that favor a scribe having been retained by the first Hebrews to record the Patriarchal narratives on cuneiform tablets.

(b)  You wrote:  “I find it a bit difficult to picture nomads moving about laden down with so many clay tablets in Akkadian.”  But that is  p-r-e-c-i-s-e-l-y  the Hebrew tradition!  One of the most enduring aspects of Hebrew tradition is that Moses carried tablets with him for 40 years in the wilderness;  then Joshua carried those tablets throughout the Conquest;  then King David finally put those tablets into their proper place in the Temple at Jerusalem.  The historical reality underlying that tradition may well be that the Patriarchal narratives were recorded on 50 clay cuneiform tablets at the end of the Amarna Age, and carefully placed in a small chest [the “Ark of the Covenant” in later tradition].  That small chest, still containing those original 50 cuneiform tablets, ended up in the Temple in Jerusalem.  This tradition can be viewed as continuing at II Kings 22: 8, 10:  “⁸ And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.  …¹⁰ And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king.”  One logical interpretation of that story is that what was found there in the Temple were the semi-forgotten 50 tablets on which the Patriarchal narratives were written in Akkadian cuneiform, using Canaanite/pre-Hebrew/Hebrew words.  Only the scribe and his assistants could read Akkadian cuneiform [which they had to do in communicating with Assyria and Babylonia], so the tablets were given to the scribe, who promptly transformed them into alphabetical Biblical Hebrew.

My point is that Hebrew tradition can easily be viewed as reflecting “nomads moving about laden down with so many clay tablets in Akkadian.”

(c)  Now consider that if and only if the Patriarchal narratives were written down in cuneiform in the mid-14^th century BCE, (i) there will be a confusion of gutturals in the spelling of foreign proper names, but (ii) otherwise every proper name will be letter-for-letter perfect as to spelling as of the mid-14^th century BCE.  I have often cited the example of XWBH in the received text at Genesis 14: 15.  If that was originally in cuneiform, then since cuneiform cannot distinguish heth/X from he/H, it could just as easily have meant to be H-WBH.  Whereas the XWBH in the received test is utterly inexplicable, H-WBH explains itself:  the he/H means “the” in Hebrew, and “the Uba” was the way to refer to the Damascus area in Year 14 [per Amarna Letter EA 189, line 12 on the reverse side].  Similarly, scholars claim that the Biblical Egyptian name “Potiphar”, which does not end with a guttural, is allegedly the  s-a-m-e  name as “Potipherah”, which ends with a guttural.  The underlying problem there is confusion of gutturals, based on these Biblical Egyptian names having originally been recorded in cuneiform.  The final guttural in “Potipherah” was not intended to be the ayin/( that we see in the received text, but rather was intended to be heth/X.  Please note that once we account for the inevitable confusion of gutturals in these foreign proper names, every single Egyptian name near the end of Genesis makes complete sense in a Year 14 context [in the 17-year reign of Akhenaten].

 

(d)  Finally, let me now pull this together with your geographical comment:  “I too question some conventionally accepted sites with places named in the biblical narratives.”  The key to seeing that )LN  -Y-  …at Genesis 13: 18, 14: 13 and 18: 1 is “Ayalon -- [dash] --” is to consider how this name was written by the scribe of IR-Heba, who was the ruler of Jerusalem in the Amarna Letters.  At his Amarna Letter EA 287: 57 we see:  ia-lu-na.  Since there are only three cuneiform signs, there will be only three Hebrew letters, and thus the full-form spelling of “Ayalon” that begins with )Y cannot be used.  Instead, the abbreviated spelling [that one sees at Judges 12: 12 as to the name spelled in full in the immediately preceding verse] of “Ayalon” is used that omits the interior yod/Y, hence we see:  )-L-N.  Secondly, the only Amarna Letters from south of Lebanon that use xireq compaginis are from IR-Heba’s scribe, and the Patriarchal narratives likewise are the only part of the Bible that uses xireq compaginis in Hebrew common words.  On that basis, we can recognize the yod/Y that comes after )LN here as being xireq compaginis, being in effect a dash, which separates yet connects )LN/“Ayalon” with “Mamre”.  An (MQ [the site of the Patriarchs’ XBRWN, per Genesis 37: 14] must be west or east of the watershed ridge route, and since Lot goes “east” from Bethel, Abram must have gone west, to the Ayalon/)LN (MQ.

 

For reasons such as that, I myself think that it is likely that the first Hebrews retained IR-Heba’s former scribe, very shortly after Akhenaten’s death, to record in cuneiform the Patriarchal narratives on 50 clay tablets, using Canaanite/pre-Hebrew/Hebrew words.  Many longstanding Biblical mysteries such as the above can be figured out on that theory of the case.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois