Chavoux Luyt: You wrote: “How do you square this origin for the word with the usage (the actual verse that I quote) of referring to the "Land of the Hebrews" and Joseph being a "Hebrew slave" when talking to the Egyptians?”
Joshua 24: 2 and Genesis 10: 21 [the latter of which you cite] were composed long after the Patriarchal narratives. By the time of Joshua 24: 2, the later Hebrews seem to have misinterpreted the Patriarchal narratives as saying that the Hebrews had been indigenous to Mesopotamia, even though the Patriarchal narratives in fact accurately portray the Hebrews as being indigenous to Canaan. Joshua 24: 2 has the phrase (BR H-NHR in stating where Terah and his family had lived. (BR in that phrase is a west Semitic common word that comes from the Hebrew verb meaning “to pass over” or “to go over” or “to pass through” [as at Genesis 12: 6], but here effectively means “the region on the other side”; H-NHR means “the river”, so that the phrase means “the region on the other side of the river”, and hence implies northern Mesopotamia, being the region [from the point of view of people in Canaan] on the other side of the upper Euphrates River. Having said that, the Hebrew common word (BR occurs about 650 times in the Bible, and rarely has anything to do with the Euphrates River or Mesopotamia. (BR is a person’s name at Genesis 10: 21. Regardless of when Genesis 10: 21 may have been composed, the name itself may well be very old. If it’s a west Semitic name, it presumably means “to pass over” or “to go over” or “to pass through” or “the region on the other side”, but as such it does not necessarily have any specific connection to the Euphrates River or Mesopotamia. The phrase you reference from Genesis 10: 21 is BNY (BR, which simply means “sons or children of Eber”. It is very possible that (BR is a name of foreign origin. The very next sentence, Genesis 10: 22, has several foreign proper names: “The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.” Thus it is possible that (BR as a proper name at Genesis 10: 21 is a Hurrian name, in which case it would be pronounced E-bi-ri, and it would mean “lord”. Perhaps (BR was originally and properly a Hurrian name, but the Hebrews later gave it a west Semitic re-interpretation. We in fact don’t know where exactly the various names in chapter 10 of Genesis came from. It seems more likely than not that many of those names are ancient names of foreign origin that later were re-interpreted by Hebrew authors. By using the name (BR at Genesis 10: 21, and introducing the phrase BNY (BR, that Hebrew author neatly provided the basis for giving a new, west Semitic interpretation of the ancient name of the people of Israel, which from the beginning had been (BR-Y. The final yod/Y was no longer viewed as being the Hurrian suffix -ya, which means “the divine”, but was re-interpreted centuries later to be a standard west Semitic suffix meaning “people”. So the Hurrian name (BR-Y which at Genesis 14: 13 had originally meant “God Is Lord” was, centuries later, re-interpreted on a west Semitic basis to mean “people from the region on the other side”, even though both historically and per the Patriarchal narratives, the Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan and are n-o-t “people from the region on the other side”. Please note that in the context of Genesis 14: 13, which is the first use of (BR-Y/“Hebrew” [with the original pronunciation having been E-bi-ri-ya], Abram needs to convince three princelings in the area, one of whom [A-ni-ir] is a Hurrian, that Abram is as powerful as a Hurrian princeling, so that those princelings will agree to join with Abram in trying to rescue Lot, who had been taken hostage by the Hittites [with “Tidal” at Genesis 14: 1 being a classic Hittite royal name, being the name of the older brother whom Suppiluliuma murdered to seize the Hittite throne near the beginning of the Amarna Age; Suppiluliuma’s conquests would soon spell the end of the Hurrians]. In the context of Genesis 14: 13, Abram needs to assert that he is a “lord” in a world [the Amarna Age] in which most of Canaan was dominated by Hurrian princelings. We know from the presence of dozens of Hurrian names in the text, as well as the description of many historical events, that the Patriarchal Age was the Amarna Age. In that context, it makes all the sense in the world for Abram to adopt for himself and his people a name based on the Hurrian word for “lord”, and to call himself the “God Is Lord” person: E-bi-ri-ya = H-(BR-Y = “the Hebrew”. At Genesis 40: 15 [which you also cite], Joseph refers to Canaan as being “the land of the Hebrews”: )RC H-(BRYM. Joseph’s great-grandfather Abraham had been the first Hebrew, and had been referenced at Genesis 14: 13 as being “the Hebrew”/H-(BR-Y. By the fourth generation, though, that originally Hurrian name (BR-Y has now become Semiticized by taking a standard Hebrew plural ending, -YM, meaning “people”. It is at Genesis 39: 17 [which you didn’t cite] where the wife of Joseph’s Egyptian master calls Joseph H-(BD H-(BR-Y: “the servant the Hebrew”. These uses of (BR-Y and the Semiticized (BR-YM in chapters 39 and 40 of Genesis simply reflect the fact that Abraham had chosen to call himself H-(BR-Y, the E-bi-ri-ya, the God Is Lord person, which is simultaneously both properly deferential to YHWH, while also firmly asserting that Abram is as powerful as the Hurrian princelings who dominated the ruling class of Canaan in the Patriarchal Age/Amarna Age. The Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan and certainly are not Hurrians. But the first Hebrew, who lived in a Hurrian-dominated Canaan, chose a Hurrian-based name to describe himself and his people: (BR-Y = E-bi-ri-ya. Jim Stinehart Evanston, Illinois _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
