Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>]

1. The city name is always ירושלם YRW$LM with no yod following the letter L. The awkwardly inserted xiriq for the current reading YERU$ALAIM is possibly in order to remove it away from the profane YIR-U-$ALEM, 'the city of (the god) $alem'.

2. It appears to me that the Hebrew plural suffix -YIM is but a slightly slurred הם HEM, 'they', and that the dual  -AYIM is but a slight variant of the plural, so that the ending -AYIM preserved in names of localities (or body parts) may be but a vestige of an ancient plural, to wit: RAMATAIM = two RAMOT or many RAMOT. Recall also the קרבי QRABAIY, 'internal organs', of Ps. 108:1. 

3. The attached ending -AYIM may also mean "very", as in the name אפרים EPRAYIM, 'the doubly, or very, dark'. 

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Apr 30, 2013, at 2:38 PM, Yigal Levin wrote:

Dear Uri, Uzi and all:

 

The –ayim suffix in Biblical Hebrew place names does NOT indicate a dual, but is rather something like a locative. Adoraim does not have two Adoras, Yerushalaim does not have two Yerushals, Ramataim does not have two Ramahs and so on. In fact, sometimes the same place is referred to by both forms (Gath/Gittaim, Ramah/Ramataim, Ophrah/(Ephraim – with an Ayin). For references you can see may recent BASOR article refuting the identification of Khirbet Qeyafa with Shaaraim (if anyone wants a PDF please contact me offlist). Although sometimes the biblical authors used such names in their stories as if they were duel forms. Look at Gen. 32 – first Jacob meets angels of God and names the spot Mahanaim, meaning "a camp of God", and then he also divides his group into two camps.

 

So despite the fact that the Egyptians referred to their country as "the two lands" (upper and lower), the SEMITIC name, Misr, meaning something like "strait", has nothing duel about it, and neither does the Hebrew version Misraim.

 

Syria is a Greek abbreviation of Assyria – although ancient Assyria was really in what is now Iraq, the Greeks knew the Persian province of Athura, which was in what became Syria.

 

Yigal Levin