Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Dave Washburn:

 

You wrote:  “The biggest problem with this kind of evidence is the fact that we're transliterating the written form from an alphabetic script to a syllabic one. What it actually indicates is that the writers using Akkadian script didn't have a good way to indicate a closed syllable. Given the nature of Akkadian script, this should come as no surprise. But it's also going to be of very little value in telling us whether Hebrew did in fact have closed syllables at those times in its history. That's the nature of the Akkadian beast, and I have a problem with taking it as prima facie evidence that Hebrew was much more syllabic than we thought. It seems to me that we're putting a square peg in a round hole, and then declaring that yes, the round peg has parallel sides, just like the square one. I don't really buy it.”

 

That’s correct.  Thus when the Egyptian word wr [meaning “great, much”] is being rendered in the Akkadian cuneiform of the Amarna Letters, though it might well in fact have been a closed syllable/CVC, nevertheless in cuneiform it gets rendered as wu-ri or wu-ra, in the name Pa-wu-ra at Amarna Letter EA 124: 44 or Pi-wu-ri at Amarna Letter EA 129: 97.  Note that the first element of this name is pA, meaning “the” in Egyptian, and that’s followed by an Egyptian word that begins with consonantal W.  Thus P-W+  -Y-  P-R at Genesis 39: 1 [mis-transliterated by KJV as “Potiphar”] similarly may well be pA, represented by Hebrew peh/P, followed by an Egyptian word that begins with consonantal W, namely wAt or wA.ti, represented by Hebrew vav/W – Hebrew teth/+.  We can’t tell if it’s CVC, namely wAt, or CV – CV, namely wA.ti, in the Hebrew rendering of this Biblical Egyptian name, nor could that distinction have been made in the cuneiform writing of the Amarna Letters either.  The universal assumption that the Hebrew vav/W in this Biblical Egyptian name should be totally ignored for all purposes makes no sense on any level, and is one important reason why this Biblical Egyptian name has always been terribly misunderstood.  In fact, it’s an exact linguistic match to pA wA.ti  --  pA ra : “The Distant [God] -- The Ra”.  W+/wA.ti means “distant” or "you are distant", and implies “distant [god]”, and the Hebrew yod/Y is a xireq compaginis, functioning like a modern dash.  If we’re willing to look at the Hebrew vav/W in this Biblical Egyptian name, instead of ignore it, the meaning of this Biblical Egyptian becomes readily apparent. Instead of being corrupt or inexplicable, this Biblical Egyptian name has letter-for-letter spelling accuracy.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois