Hi Jim, I'll only comment on some linguistic aspects of your analysis below...
On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 09:56:15 -0400 (EDT), [email protected] wrote: > ... > If, as now seems likely, Jerusalem is n-o-t mentioned in the > Execration Texts, then the first attested mention of the city name > “Jerusalem” is in Amarna Letter EA 287 from the Hurrian princeling > ruler of Jerusalem, IR-Heba, who in Akkadian records the first part > of the city name as being: úru [that is: accented U – resh/R – > unaccented U]. URU [with no accents] as a logogram means “city” in > Sumerian, and is very frequently used in that way in the Amarna > Letters. In fact, at Amarna Letter EA 287: 63 we see: URU > úru-$alim. Given the fact that accented U is different from > unaccented U, it’s not clear how úru should ideally be rendered in > Hebrew. I agree, it's not clear. > WRW would have the disadvantages of W being used for both > accented U and unaccented U, and W at the beginning of a word > rendered in Hebrew would be viewed as being a true consonant. I don't think that waw being used for both forms of U is an obstacle, since both the accented and unaccented forms of U apparently represented the same sound, but were in effect separate "letters" used in different contexts (cf. the use of C and K in English to represent the [k] sound). It's true that an initial waw in Hebrew would be viewed as being a true consonant, but this might not be an obstacle either. I think two reasonable possibilities of representing an Akkadian /uru/ in Hebrew might be ארו, i.e., /'uru/ (with a supplied glottal stop for the initial Akkadian vowel), or perhaps ורו, i.e., /wuru/ (supplying a glide to the initial vowel). > For lack of any better alternative, YRW might be the least bad way > to render in Hebrew the Akkadian phrase úru, where yod/Y is used for > accented U, and the other two letters are natural. Thus YRW in > Biblical Hebrew may be a slight variant on, or simply the Hebrew > rendering of, the original úru; the sound is quite similar. And in fact the transition of initial [w] to [j]/ is quite normal in Hebrew, so that there is nothing inherently unlikely about ורו / [wuru] becoming ירו / [juru-] -> [jeru-]. -- Will Parsons μη φαινεσθαι, αλλ' ειναι. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
