From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
To: <if AT math.bu.edu>, <jimstinehart AT aol.com>
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Vav Nun Suffix
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:33:54 +0100
----- Original Message -----
From: jimstinehart AT aol.com
To: fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr ; if AT math.bu.edu
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2010 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Vav Nun Suffix
Dr. Fournet:
In order to keep this post from becoming too long, I will confine my
response to linguistic issues.
1. As to the various dating issues you raise, the linguistic answer is as
follows. The Amarna Age is the historical time when the first Hebrews were
concerned about all those many non-Semitic princelings who ruled cities like
Jerusalem and Hebron throughout Canaan. That’s the only time when it would
make sense for a Biblical text to have 25 non-Semitic names [all of which
have letter-for-letter spelling accuracy]. And that’s the only time when it
would make sense for the Patriarchal narratives to have an incredible 40% of
the vav nun suffix common words and vav nun suffix personal names in the
Bible, with vav nun/-WN/-we-ni- at the end of a word or name having a
distinctive non-Semitic sound [noted at #3 below].
***
Yes
this is your theory, which you present as a "fact",
but so far it's only an hypothesis.
A.
***
2. You wrote: “This is nonsense. How could these people possibly know
that 3500 years later *we* would decipher cuneiform signs as being either
Xu-ti-ya or Xu-di-ya in *our* system??? The only information at their
disposal is actual phonetics [xudiya].”
As to the non-Semitic name whose early Biblical Hebrew spelling I assert
could be XTY, noted scholars Gelb and Purves write the following in “Nuzi
Names”: “Xu-ti-ya, var. (2) Xu-di-ya” (p. 64b). Similarly, they report
both Xut-Arrapxe and Xu-da-ra-ap-xe (p. 64a); Xu-ti and Xu-di(p. 64b);
Xuti-Xamanna and Xu-di-xa-ma-an-na (p. 65b); Xutip-Kanari and
Xu-di-ip-qa-na-ri (p. 65b); Xutip-$arri and Xu-di-ip-$arri (p. 66a); and
let me stop with a name that is of direct relevance here: Xutip-Te$up and
Xu-di-ip-te-$up (p. 66a). Your insistence that “Praise the Lord” in Hurrian
could not be written down as Xu-ti-ya/XTY in early Biblical Hebrew is
thereby refuted.
***
No it's not.
You are confusing the conventional transcription with -t- with the actual
phonetic reality which is -d-.
A.
***
It’s true that Ugaritic scribes recorded D, but non-Semitic T/D may have
been pronounced a little differently in southern Canaan, just as non-Semitic
ebri or erwi in Canaan comes out as erwi at Nuzi. Or maybe the early Hebrew
author heard it a little differently, or used a slightly different
convention to record it. Although the Hebrews did not confuse D/dalet and
T/tav in non-loanwords, that certainty goes out the window completely when
it comes to recording a foreign, non-Semitic proper name. For example, D
and T are hopelessly confused on the Thutmose III list of places in Canaan.
Even many native English speakers might stumble in trying to explain the
past tense of “pass”: it’s always spelled D today; it is pronounced T by
most, but not quite all, English speakers today; and older archaic
spellings might have featured a DST spelling, where perhaps the written D
was pronounced as D. Today we spell the past tense of “walk” with a D,
pronounced as a T, but in Shakespeare’s time it was spelled “walkedst”.
Many native English speakers would be stumped if asked whether “passed” and
“past” have identical, or merely only similar, sounds. If there’s a bit of
confusion in modern English about D vs. T, why would you expect there to be
absolute clarity in the way non-Semitic T/D would have to be recorded in the
Bible? That’s not a reasonable position to take. Your own website gives
Xuti-b-Te$$up and Xuti-Te$$ub, featuring a T, not a D. Given all that
contradictory evidence from the ancient world, it makes no sense to take the
dogmatic position that an early Hebrew author could not possibly have used
the spelling XTY in Biblical Hebrew.
***
It has nothing to do with dogmas.
Hut/diya was [xudiya] with a -d-.
Period.
A.
****
He knew those non-Semitic sounds much better than you do. He had grown up
in a world largely dominated by non-Semitic maryannu [though he may have
suspected that very soon, that world would vanish forever, for better or
worse].
3. You wrote: “$M(-WN with ( cannot be a Hurrian word. I think you should
stop trying to make un-Semitic words which contain obviously Semitic sounds.
This is just absurd.”
As I specifically stated in my post, $M( is a virgin pure west Semitic root
that has nothing to do with non-Semitic. But the -we-ni-/-WN/vav nun suffix
at the end of the name of Jacob’s #2 son sounds non-Semitic. Many of the
proper names in the famous non-Semitic letter you in small part reproduce on
your website have -we-ni- as part of a long suffix sequence. In addition to
the Egyptian reference, that includes on your website both the city of
Simige,
***
??
There is no city Simige.
A.
***
and the god’s name Simige. And the meaning you proposed for -we-ni-
regarding Egypt in that famous letter works very nicely with the name of
Jacob’s son Simeon. Why is it “absurd” that Leah, who is portrayed as
living exclusively in Naharim until middle age, would give two of her sons
names that in part sound non-Semitic? Wouldn’t one rightly expect “local
color” like that if this Biblical text knows what it’s talking about [which
I for one think that it does]?
***
All this is nonsense in the first place.
Who can believe that a Semitic name could be suffixed by the grammatical
morphemes of another language?
A.
****
4. You wrote: “You're trying to show that a word containing a tsade could
derive from languages with no emphatics. That's just impossible.”
Far from being “impossible”, it is indeed the case. All 25 non-Semitic
names in the Patriarchal narratives use only three sibilants: zayin/Z,
shin/$, and ssade/C. There is no tsamekh/S and no sin/%. Gelb and Purves
show many names at Nuzi that, in their expert opinion, reflect ssade/C:
Ca-xa-ay-eri$ (p. 174b), Ca-li-im-mu-du (p. 175a), Ca-al-me-ki, Ca-al-mu,
Cill (p. 177b), Cill-abe, Cill-a-be-xe, Cill-adad, Cilli-ya, Cilli-marta (p.
178a), Cilli-nikarrak (p. 178b), Cill-duri (p. 179b), Cillutu, Ci-ma-an-ni,
Cuxartiya (p. 181a), and Cupr-adad (p. 182a). Unless both Gelb/Purves and
the early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives don’t know what they’re
talking about, your contention that a ssade at Nuzi is “impossible” is
refuted.
***
These pages in NPN correspond to the *Akkadian* names, not the Hurrian
names.
A.
***
5. What you consider “nonsense” and “absurd” and “impossible” is in fact
verified out the wazzoo in the non-Semitic letter you in part reproduce on
your own website, and in the well-known non-Semitic names at Nuzi. Your
view to the contrary is idiosyncratic, and does not refute either the
antiquity or pinpoint historical accuracy of the Patriarchal narratives.