Nir Cohen:
You wrote: “we know for sure that it [SLM] referred to a portable object
[due to the word MUCAV], was pretty much vertical [due to the word RO)$O]
and was used for climbing or moving up. i cannot imagine any other object,
except a wooden ladder, which would suit this description and be within the
technology at that time.”
Yes, but the whole problem, you see, is that based on Hebrew linguistics,
it’s very difficult to see SLM as meaning “ladder”. Linguistically, SLM
might be matched to either “baskets” or “ziggurat-style ramps”, but those
alternatives don’t fit historically and geographically.
That’s why I suggest cutting the Gordian knot and viewing SLM as being a
Hurrian loanword.
Your Latin suggestion is n-o-t “the same logic”, because there were no
Latin speakers in Canaan in the Patriarchal Age. By contrast, the ruling
class of Canaan at that time was, in my opinion, dominated by Hurrian
princelings. Thus on my view that the Patriarchal narratives were composed in
the Amarna Age, recorded in writing [albeit in highly abbreviated outline
form] at that time and, for the most part, never changed thereafter as to
substantive content, we should not be surprised to find some Hurrian loanwords
among the mysterious hapax legomenon Hebrew common words in the
Patriarchal narratives.
By linguistic analysis such as this, I am trying to establish the true
antiquity and pinpoint historical accuracy of the Patriarchal narratives. I
myself see the Patriarchal narratives as dating all the long way back to the
Late Bronze Age.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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