Dr. Fournet:
1. “There is some absurdity in stating that a name ends with a waw when in fact it ends with a vowel, no?” No, what I’m saying is that the final consonant in these geographical place names at Nuzi is a consonantal vav. Naturally, in the non-Semitic way, that final consonant has a following vowel. But in MGD-W and X3RW, which are west Semitic and Egyptian, the final magnificent consonantal vav stands alone, without any final written vowel [though presumably in the original pronunciation, a prosthetic vowel sound would have been implied after the final consonantal vav]. 2. You wrote: “The root/stem is actually hurwu- possibly archaic and hurru- and it cannot be further analyzed.” Surely you jest. The root/stem is, rather: XR. So in Biblical Hebrew you get [as this non-Semitic people’s name] XR-Y, which is historically perfect. On the Israel/Merneptah Stele, you get [as the derogatory Egyptian name for Syro-Palestine in the Late Bronze Age] X3-RW, where the 3 is a vowel sound being dreamed up by the Egyptians for ease of their pronunciation, and the final vav/W is a consonant that is a suffix, being the consonantal genitive case marker that was routinely used in non-Semitic for geographical place names. The key is to note the presence of the consonantal vav/W after the XR root/stem of the name. 3. You wrote: “There is no basis for this claim. Kharu is an ethnonym for Syrian (=Hurrian) people.” What you assert has “no basis” is in fact the received wisdom of university scholars. As I quoted Anson Rainey, the #1 Biblical geographer in the world: “The fourth line from the top and the third line from the bottom refer to Canaan and Kharu (X3-rw = Xa-ru; = Xurru?), the latter being a confirmed synonym for Canaan during this period.” 4. You wrote: “All this strikes me as completely unsupported and undocumented in the first place.” Then please consider the three Biblical names of non-Semitic people in the Patriarchal narratives that end in -WN, which in non-Semitic would be -we-ni. (1) CBY-WN at Genesis 36: 2 is not “Zibeon”, but rather is non-Semitic “ Tsibeiyaweni”, that is, Tsi-be-iya-we-ni. The main part of this non-Semitic name, CBY/ssade bet yod, can be compared directly to Zi-pa-ya at Nuzi (p. 180a of Gelb and Purves, “Nuzi Personal Names”). (i) C/ssade is essentially indistinguishable from Z/zayin in non-Semitic (as noted on your website); (ii) B and P are often interchangeable in non-Semitic (per your website); and (iii) a final -iya in non-Semitic would be expected to have a -Y as its early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling equivalent [which recorded few vowels]. The suffix -WN in Hebrew is deliberately designed to be redolent of the ubiquitous -we-ni- suffix component of the incredibly long non-Semitic suffixes that appear in the famous non-Semitic letter at pp. 23-24 of your website. That -WN/-we-ni suffix was an effective way for the Hebrew author to make these names “sound non-Semitic” to his early Hebrew audience. (2) )YL-WN at Genesis 26: 34 and Genesis 36: 2 is not “Elon”, but rather is non-Semitic “Ayaliweni”, that is, A-ya-li-we-ni. A-i-li is attested as a name at Nuzi (p. 11a). Alternatively, A-y and A-a are attested as the initial element in the two-element name Ay-Aba at Nuzi (p. 11a). As to the non-Semitic name A-y, the yod/Y would be functioning as a true consonant. [In my view, a Hebrew yod/Y was probably not used in the original Biblical text to represent a non-Semitic vowel. Rather, either the Hebrew yod/Y is functioning as a true consonant, or else it was added centuries later as a plene spelling update.] -li is a non-Semitic suffix (see p. 232b). As noted above, the Hebrew suffix -WN is deliberately designed to “sound non-Semitic”. (3) (PR-WN at Genesis 23: 8, 10, 13-14, 16-17; 25: 9; 49: 29-30; 50: 13 is not “Ephron”, but rather is non-Semitic “Epiriweni”, that is, E-pi-ri-we-ni. Since an initial Hebrew ayin is used in Biblical (LM, which is the expected spelling of non-Semitic E-la-mi, meaning “Elam”, we know that an initial Hebrew ayin can represent a non-Semitic true vowel in initial position. The roots E-pi-ri [from the name Epiri-tu (p. 47b), where -tu is a suffix (see p. 268a)] and I-pu-ur [from the name I-pu-ur-ta (p. 72b), where -ta is a suffix (see p. 260b)], and the names I-ip-pa-ri (p. 71b) and A-pa-ri (p. 22b), are attested at Nuzi. So why do you say that my analysis of these non-Semitic personal names in the Patriarchal narratives that have a vav nun suffix is “completely unsupported and undocumented”? The above three non-Semitic names in the Biblical text are the “documentation” you seek. Note how all three Biblical names effortlessly match to names at Nuzi. And in writing or when speaking, those Nuzi names would have had added to them a very long string of suffixes, which very often included, shortly after the basic name, -we-ni- [Biblical -WN], as an integral part of the long non-Semitic suffix sequence (per pp. 23-24 of your website). This Biblical text has pinpoint historical accuracy in reproducing these non-Semitic names from the Late Bronze Age. No multiple 1st millennium BCE Hebrew or Jewish authors could possibly have come up with those vintage mid-14th century BCE non-Semitic names. No way. The Bible is much older and more historically accurate than scholars realize. Just focus on the interior vav in all those vav nun suffixes in the Patriarchal narratives and you’ll see it. The interior vav tells the tale. 5. Speaking of Biblical brilliance regarding non-Semitic names, the classic generic non-Semitic name, recorded in 92 (!) different places at Nuzi (pp. 64a, 65a,b), is XuT-iYa. [It means “Praise Te$up”, though without literally using the name of the chief non-Semitic pagan god Te$up.] And how would that non-Semitic name, XuT-iYa, appear in early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling? Yes, that’s right, exactly as we see in the received text at Genesis 15: 20; 23: 10; 25: 9; 26: 34; 36: 2; 49: 29-30; 50: 13; namely: XTY. The Patriarchal narratives literally reek of the world of the mid-14th century BCE, when Judaism was borne under adverse circumstances, including much of Canaan being ruled by non-Semitic militaristic princelings who worshipped Te$up and the goddess Xeba. The scholarly fantasy that this is all somehow multiple authors weaving 1st millennium BCE fiction is a non-starter. Jim Stinehart Evanston, Illinois _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
