Dave Washburn:
You wrote: “The biggest problem with this kind of evidence is the fact
that we're transliterating the written form from an alphabetic script to a
syllabic one. What it actually indicates is that the writers using Akkadian
script didn't have a good way to indicate a closed syllable. Given the nature
of Akkadian script, this should come as no surprise. But it's also going
to be of very little value in telling us whether Hebrew did in fact have
closed syllables at those times in its history. That's the nature of the
Akkadian beast, and I have a problem with taking it as prima facie evidence
that
Hebrew was much more syllabic than we thought. It seems to me that we're
putting a square peg in a round hole, and then declaring that yes, the round
peg has parallel sides, just like the square one. I don't really buy it.”
That’s correct. Thus when the Egyptian word wr [meaning “great, much”] is
being rendered in the Akkadian cuneiform of the Amarna Letters, though it
might well in fact have been a closed syllable/CVC, nevertheless in
cuneiform it gets rendered as wu-ri or wu-ra, in the name Pa-wu-ra at Amarna
Letter EA 124: 44 or Pi-wu-ri at Amarna Letter EA 129: 97. Note that the
first
element of this name is pA, meaning “the” in Egyptian, and that’s
followed by an Egyptian word that begins with consonantal W. Thus P-W+ -Y-
P-R
at Genesis 39: 1 [mis-transliterated by KJV as “Potiphar”] similarly may
well be pA, represented by Hebrew peh/P, followed by an Egyptian word that
begins with consonantal W, namely wAt or wA.ti, represented by Hebrew vav/W –
Hebrew teth/+. We can’t tell if it’s CVC, namely wAt, or CV – CV, namely
wA.ti, in the Hebrew rendering of this Biblical Egyptian name, nor could
that distinction have been made in the cuneiform writing of the Amarna
Letters either. The universal assumption that the Hebrew vav/W in this
Biblical
Egyptian name should be totally ignored for all purposes makes no sense on
any level, and is one important reason why this Biblical Egyptian name has
always been terribly misunderstood. In fact, it’s an exact linguistic
match to pA wA.ti -- pA ra : “The Distant [God] -- The Ra”. W+/wA.ti
means “distant” or "you are distant", and implies “distant [god]”, and the
Hebrew yod/Y is a xireq compaginis, functioning like a modern dash. If we’re
willing to look at the Hebrew vav/W in this Biblical Egyptian name,
instead of ignore it, the meaning of this Biblical Egyptian becomes readily
apparent. Instead of being corrupt or inexplicable, this Biblical Egyptian
name
has letter-for-letter spelling accuracy.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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