Dr. Fournet: 1. You wrote: “For the time being, you have just claimed it was derogatory. I let you explain why gold statues offered by Mitanni kings to Pharaohs were shown all around Egypt at that time.” It was derogatory for Egyptians to call greater Canaan X3RW, referencing exclusively non-Semitic princeling rulers in Canaan in the mid-14th century BCE, because over 90% of the human beings in Canaan at the time were indigenous west Semitic speakers, like the Hebrews. Such name was not derogatory to non-Semitic Mitanni, but rather was derogatory to the people of Canaan like the Hebrews. 2. You wrote: “[Y]ou're trying to prove that CBYWN is not Semitic. In all cases Hurrian did not have emphatics and Zi-pa-ya cannot be rendered in Hebrew as CBYWN.
ogically it should be tsamekh -b- y- “ Hebrew ssade at the time may have been an emphatic sin. Gelb and Purves compare Zipaya to Akkadian Sippaya, and Zippe/Zi-ib-be-e to Akkadian Sippe. It’s hard to tell at this remove whether ssade/C, samekh/S, or sin/% would be the expected sibilant in early Biblical Hebrew. As against your suggestion of samekh, in the 25 non-Semitic proper names set forth in the Patriarchal narratives, not one has a samekh. In my view, all 25 have letter-for-letter accuracy in the spellings of these non-Semitic names. 3. In response to my statement that “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)”, you wrote: “This is not an attested word formation in Hurrian.” Anyone can check out p. 23 of your website and verify what I say. The most interesting word on that page to people on the b-hebrew list is the non-Semitic word for “Egypt”: “KUR [country] Mi-zi- ir- ri- e- wə-ni-eš”. Look at the key suffix element that comes after the base word for Egypt. It’s -we-ni-. That’s -WN in early Biblical Hebrew. The best way to represent the incredibly long non-Semitic suffix sequences by using just two letters in early Biblical Hebrew is precisely what we see in the received text of the Patriarchal narratives: -WN. If that doesn’t “sound non-Semitic”, what does? 4. To my assertion that Biblical XTY represents the expected early Biblical Hebrew defective spelling of the classic, very popular non-Semitic name XuT-iYa, you wrote: “It should have a -d- not a -t-.” Per Gelb and Purves at p. 64b regarding this non-Semitic name: “Xu-ti-…, var. (2) Xu-di-…” Thus either tav/T or dalet/D would work in Biblical Hebrew here, and Gelb/Purves give T as the first choice. 5. Once one realizes that in 25 out of 25 cases there is apparent letter-for-letter spelling accuracy of non-Semitic names in the Patriarchal narratives, one realizes that this text is based on a written record from the mid-14th century BCE, and then one starts to give a bit of deference to the spelling choices that the early Hebrew author made. Samekh or ssade, dalet or tav. Yes, those are legitimate questions for you to raise. But I see the non-biblical evidence as being essentially neutral as to the two above cases you raise, and if so, then the Biblical evidence should be decisive. From where I sit, you have not undercut the pinpoint historical accuracy of a single letter in the 25 non-Semitic names set forth in the Patriarchal narratives. The incredible accuracy as to these non-Semitic names from the Late Bronze Age confirms both the antiquity, and historical accuracy, of this Biblical text. Once people start looking at your website, they will gain a whole new appreciation for the antiquity and accuracy of the Patriarchal narratives in a mid-14th century BCE historical time period. Jim Stinehart Evanston, Illinois _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
