Isaac Fried:
1. You wrote: “The editor of Genesis knew very well what עשו means.”
That’s almost right. The author of Genesis 25: 25 definitely knew what
the name “Esau” means, that’s for sure. But he wasn’t an “editor”. No, he
was the guy who came up with the name “Esau” in the first place.
2. You wrote: “He even resorted to a little sly visual obfuscation by
writing ayin for aleph, and waw for bet….”
No, you’re changing the Hebrew letters in the text there. There’s no
need for that. As we will see, ($W has an underlying meaning that perfectly
describes Esau’s appearance at his birth, with there being no need
whatsoever to change any of the Hebrew letters.
3. You wrote: “He even resorted to a little sly visual obfuscation by
writing ayin for aleph, and waw for bet to turn the alien אשאב or אישאב
into עשו, a clever spelling modification to take both the eye and the mind
away from idols and into thinking about עשב 'grass'. The theophoric איש
I$ is very common, as in ישמעאל I$MAEL, שמעון
$IMON, אכיש AKIY$, כמוש KMO$ (KMO-I$?), and many more.”
)Y$ is not present in a single one of the names that you cite! It’s not
there in “Esau”, or “Ismael”, or “Simon”.
4. You wrote: “Likewise the theophoric אב AB.”
Yes, )B means “[the divine] Father” in a proper name, and as such is a
theophoric. But the vav/W as the third letter in ($W/“Esau” is not )B, for
heaven’s sake.
5. There’s no )Y$- in ($W, and there’s no -)B in ($W either.
Rather, we should look at the Hebrew letters in the received text, as is,
and ask if Esau’s mother, Rebekah, who hailed from Bronze Age Syria, would
have viewed those three letters as forming a name and word that perfectly
reflect what Esau looked like at his birth. There’s no need to change a
single letter here. What’s needed, by contrast, is to be willing to a-s-k
how Rebekah from Bronze Age Syria would have viewed the name “Esau”.
After all, why would the Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives have gone
to all the trouble of portraying Rebekah as being born and raised to
adulthood at Harran, if he didn’t want his audience to ask themselves how a
woman from Bronze Age Syria would view the name ($W? Isaac Fried, certainly
you don’t think that Rebekah’s mother out in eastern Syria spoke Biblical
Hebrew as her native language, do you? Aren’t you curious as to how
Rebekah and her mother would have viewed the name ($W? If the Hebrew author of
the Patriarchal narratives didn’t want us to think like that, then why on
earth would he portray Rebekah and her mother as being native to eastern
Syria, with Rebekah giving her firstborn son a name that makes no sense on any
level in west Semitic?
At least you don’t take the scholarly view that the author of Genesis 25:
25 was like modern scholars themselves in having no earthly idea what the
name “Esau” means. But unfortunately you seem to accept the [100%
erroneous] scholarly view that the author of Genesis 25: 25 was incapable of
thinking how Rebekah from Bronze Age Syria would have viewed the name ($W.
The
key to solving this 3,500-year-old Biblical mystery is simply to ask how
Rebekah would have viewed the name ($W. Then the meaning and etymology of
the
name ($W will become clear, and we will see how truly brilliant the author
of the Patriarchal narratives was, and how ancient as a written text and
how historically accurate the Patriarchal narratives are.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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