Karl:
You wrote: “[T]here is absolutely no historical evidence to back it up.
None whatsoever. That includes the claim that the ancient Hebrews didn’t
have an alphabetic writing system until late, while the historical evidence
points to that the ancient Hebrews brought their alphabetic system to
Canaan around 1400 BC with Joshua, only later picked up by the Phoenicians.”
South of Lebanon and Syria, there is no significant amount of
alphabetical writing attested until well into the 1st millennium BCE, long
after any
historical Patriarchal Age. If we go with what’s historically attested, the
only way for the Patriarchal narratives (a long, sophisticated
composition) to have been written down in the Bronze Age is by means of
Akkadian
cuneiform, which can readily be used to write down Canaanite/pre-Hebrew/Hebrew
words, including a sophisticated, lengthy composition like the Patriarchal
narratives.
The telltale sign of a composition that had originally been written down
in Akkadian cuneiform instead of alphabetically, and that was only
transformed into an alphabetical text many centuries later, is that in such
case
gutturals will sometimes be confused in non-Hebrew proper names. That’s
inevitable under those circumstances, because Akkadian cuneiform writing cannot
distinguish one guttural from another. [By contrast, there will be no such
confusion of gutturals in Hebrew common words, because the scribe in
Jerusalem who transformed the Akkadian cuneiform text into alphabetical
Biblical
Hebrew was a native Biblical Hebrew speaker, who naturally knew the proper
spelling of Hebrew common words like the back of his hand. But such
scribe could not reasonably be expected to have much knowledge of exotic
foreign
proper names from centuries earlier, so he could not guess all the
gutturals right in such proper names.]
If the Patriarchal narratives were originally written down in Akkadian
cuneiform in the Bronze Age, and then only in the 1st millennium BCE were
finally, for the first time, transformed into alphabetical Hebrew, we can
confidently predict in that event that in foreign proper names [but not in
Hebrew common words]: (i) gutturals will sometimes be confused in the
received
alphabetical text; but (ii) in all other respects there will be amazing
letter-for-letter spelling accuracy of these truly ancient, exotic foreign
proper names from various Bronze Age non-Hebrew languages [because they were
recorded in w-r-i-t-i-n-g by a contemporary]. Neither of those two
prominent characteristics could possibly apply to an oral tradition!
T-h-a-t is one key reason why my many threads on exotic non-Hebrew proper
names in the Patriarchal narratives are important regarding Biblical
Hebrew. No matter how well a Hebraist knows Biblical Hebrew, he cannot make
sense out of any of the following exotic foreign names in the received text of
the Patriarchal narratives, because there has been a confusion of
gutturals in transforming these proper names from the original Akkadian
cuneiform
into alphabetical Biblical Hebrew [while in all other respects the spelling
in the received text is exactly perfect, regarding all these many different
non-Hebrew proper names]:
1. XWBH at Genesis 14: 15. [The first guttural was intended to be he/H,
not heth/X.]
2. The -R( ending of the name of Joseph’s Egyptian priestly father-in-law
at Genesis 41: 45. [The last guttural was intended to be heth/X, not
ayin/(.]
3. PR(H at Genesis 12: 15, etc. [The last guttural was intended to be
heth/X, not he/H.]
4. BR( and BR$( at Genesis 14: 2. [Chapters 14 and 49 of Genesis were
transformed into alphabetical Biblical Hebrew 300 years before the rest of the
Patriarchal narratives was transformed from Akkadian cuneiform into
alphabetical Biblical Hebrew (which is why, uniquely in the Patriarchal
narratives, those two chapters have many archaic elements regarding Hebrew
common
words). The non-Indo-European language represented by the names BR( and
BR$( has no ayin. The final guttural ayin/( is a Semiticization. But
centuries later, in names otherwise of that same general type, that same final
letter was customarily rendered alphabetically in Hebrew as he/H, rather than
as ayin/(, such as )WRYH at II Samuel 11: 3.]
Karl, the way to prove that university scholars have underestimated how
old the Patriarchal narratives are as a w-r-i-t-t-e-n text is to show that
exotic proper names in the received text are replete with confusion as to
gutturals, yet in all other respects have letter-for-letter spelling
accuracy as to attested Bronze Age spellings in these various non-Hebrew
languages. That would never happen regarding an oral tradition, which would
get
many aspects of archaic foreign proper names mixed up, but would not have any
particular confusion regarding gutturals per se.
The linguistic key to showing the great antiquity and p-i-n-p-o-i-n-t
Bronze Age historical accuracy of the Patriarchal narratives is to show that
the confusion of gutturals in exotic foreign proper names in the received
text is the sure sign of a text that was originally written down in Akkadian
cuneiform, not alphabetically. The reason why that is super-exciting is
that there are very few Iron Age texts in Akkadian cuneiform: “[There are
only] “a small number of cuneiform documents from Iron Age Judah”.
Christopher B. Hays, “Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah” (2011), p.
24. So a Biblical text from south-central Canaan that was originally
recorded in Akkadian cuneiform is a Bronze Age text! That’s the Patriarchal
narratives, as shown by the confusion of gutturals in exotic foreign proper
names in the received text, with the received text otherwise having
letter-for-letter remarkable spelling accuracy in all other respects as to
attested
spellings in these various non-Hebrew languages.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
