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49-495: The term was first discovered in its Akkadian version "ḫa-bi-ru" or "ḫa-pi-ru". Due to later findings in Ugaritic and Egyptian which used the consonants ʿ, p and r, and in light of the well-established sound change from Northwest Semitic ʿ to Akkadian ḫ, the root of this term is proven to be ʿ-p-r. This root means "dust, dirt", and links to the characterization of the ʿApiru as nomads, mercenaries, people who are not part of

98-407: A 600-year period from the 18th to the 12th centuries BCE and found at sites ranging from Egypt, Canaan and Syria, to Nuzi (near Kirkuk in northern Iraq) and Anatolia (Turkey). Not all Habiru were brigands: in the 18th century BCE a north Syrian king named Irkabtum (c. 1740 BCE) "made peace with [the warlord ] Shemuba and his Habiru," while the ʿApiru, Idrimi of Alalakh, was the son of

147-850: A B.D. in Biblical theology (May 1954); and an M.Th. in Old Testament (May 1955). From September 1953 until May 1954, Rainey was a teaching fellow in Hebrew, Old Testament and New Testament introduction. In 1954 he was appointed assistant professor and taught for two more years. From 1955 to 1956, he studied at the University of California, Los Angeles and completed the B.A. with Honors in August 1956. In 1957, he began graduate study at Brandeis University , where he earned an M.A. in June 1959. He spent

196-736: A course in historical geography during the academic years 1998–99, 1999–2000 and 2000–2001. He spent July 1999 in Jordan studying historical geography and archaeology. In August and September 1999 he spent the sabbatical time working at the British Museum collating el-‘Amârna tablets. Sixty-six texts were read and many substantial corrections were discovered. Four days were spent at the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin where eleven texts were collated, some with new readings and corrections. Further collations were made at

245-518: A deposed king, and formed a band of ʿApiru to make himself king of Alalakh . What Idrimi shared with the other ʿApiru was membership of an inferior social class of outlaws, mercenaries, and slaves leading a marginal and sometimes lawless existence on the fringes of settled society. ʿApiru had no common ethnic affiliations and no common language, their personal names being most frequently West Semitic , but also East Semitic , Hurrian or Indo-European . "The Conquest of Joppa" tale in hieroglyphs In

294-487: A fourth sabbatical in 1988–89, he was again visiting research scholar at that university. During a fifth sabbatical for 1995–96, he was again visiting research scholar at the university, where he also taught a seminar in Northwest Semitic inscriptions. From 1996 until September 30, 1998, he continued to teach as full professor at Tel Aviv University. On October 1, 1998, he became emeritus professor there but taught

343-536: A military leader and nomad native of the wild steppe-lands. In the Old Babylonian tradition, Šaggāšu is a ghost-murderer of the steppe. As stated above, the research defined "dust" or "dirt" as the most probable meaning of Apiru. The wandering Apiru, Rainey suggested, had to "hit the road," thus they were covered with dust and were called dusty. But this is a hypothetical suggestion not found in primary sources. The sources attested another meaning. In Sumerian there

392-695: A research assistant. Upon completion of his dissertation on the Social Structure of Ugarit , he was awarded his Ph.D. in June 1962. However, Rainey's main activity for the academic year 1962–63 was research and study under a grant from the Warburg Fund at the Hebrew University. This award was renewed for 1963–64, and the book that resulted was translated into Hebrew and published by the Bialik Institute in August 1967. It

441-584: A social category. For some scholars, however, the passage is confirmation rather than exception. Here Abram appears as a leader of host in a military alliance. He pursues and smites his enemy. The passage presents a warrior Abram, with a rather different character from that of Genesis other episodes, in which Abram is never a warrior. This associates with Apiru too. In the earliest Mesopotamian texts mentioning Apiru they appear as military contingents, auxiliaries, or bands of raiders. Babylonian and Mari tablets mention them particularly as military auxiliaries. Elsewhere in

490-677: A social class found in every ancient Near Eastern society but in the texts that describe the early periods of the Patriarchs and the Exodus the term Hebrew refers to a broad group of people in the Levant (like the Apiru), among whom the Israelites were a part. Joseph Blenkinsopp makes one exception: Except for its first appearance (Gen. 14:13), the biblical word "Hebrew", can be interpreted as

539-656: A third year of residence (1959–60), studying for his Ph.D . He came to Israel in June 1960, as the sole American recipient of the Government of Israel Award. From 1960 to 1961, he studied at the Hebrew University , first in an intensive Hebrew course and then in archaeology and in the Egyptian , Coptic and Phoenician languages , all in Hebrew. At the same time, he completed the basic research for his doctoral dissertation. In 1961, he returned to Brandeis as

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588-502: Is verb–subject–object (VSO) and subject–object–verb (SOV), possessed–possessor (NG), and noun – adjective (NA). Ugaritic is considered a conservative Semitic language, since it retains most of the phonemes , the case system , and the word order of the ancestral Proto-Semitic language . Anson Rainey Anson Frank Rainey (January 11, 1930 – February 19, 2011) was professor emeritus of ancient Near Eastern cultures and Semitic linguistics at Tel Aviv University . He

637-470: Is an extinct Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit , including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycle . Ugaritic has been called "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform ". The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from

686-481: Is based on nisba (like מִצְרִי – Egyptian). Moreover, Meredith Kline finds that Apiru were not even Semitic peoples. The matter was complicated when, in the light of the research on Apiru, scholars examined the context of Hebrews in the Bible. The new analysis indicated a group broader than the Israelites and more associating with Apiru, best seen in 1 Samuel 13, 14. Na’aman and Yoel Bin-Nun point out that “Hebrew”

735-719: Is found in the cuneiform SA of SA.GAZ. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, it is a logogram for Akkadian "šer'ānu", translated as "muscle." The root is present in Hebrew with "srir" (שריר) for "muscle" and a verb was derived from it meaning "to struggle." "Isra" (in Israel) means "struggling" (with God). In this light, Abram the Hebrew in Genesis 14 means Abram the warrior rather than Abram the dust, the earliest and one of prominent functions of Apiru. The consensus remains that Apiru and Hebrews were not identical groups, but scholars became divided whether

784-505: Is known in particular for contributions to the study of the Amarna tablets , the noted administrative letters from the period of Pharaoh Akhenaten 's rule during the 18th Dynasty of Egypt. He authored and edited books and articles on the cultures, languages and geography of the Biblical lands. Anson Rainey was born in Dallas, Texas , in 1930. Upon the death of his father that same year, he

833-645: Is the oldest example of the family of West Semitic scripts such as the Phoenician , Paleo-Hebrew , and Aramaic alphabets (including the Hebrew alphabet ). The so-called "long alphabet" has 30 letters while the "short alphabet" has 22. Other languages (particularly Hurrian ) were occasionally written in the Ugarit area, although not elsewhere. Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provide the earliest evidence of both

882-433: Is typically used to describe “Israelites in exceptional circumstances,” in particular, wandering, oppressed or enslaved Israelites struggling for liberation. Naaman finds that all biblical references to the "Hebrews" reflect some traits borrowed from the image of the second millennium Apiru. Greenberg confirms that Hebrew is an archaic term predating Israelites. Professor Albert D. Friedberg concurs, arguing that Apiru refers to

931-508: The Amarna letters and likely more closely associated with the Hebrews. Kline suggests that Apiru, besides being non-Semitic, were foes of Israel and their first oppressors in Canaan. Other scholars, by contrast, allowed the possibility of relation. As pointed out by Moore and Kelle, while the ʿApiru/Ḫabiru appear to be composed of many different peoples, including nomadic Shasu and Shutu ,

980-614: The Amarna letters from the 14th century BCE, the petty kings of Canaan describe them sometimes as outlaws, sometimes as mercenaries, and sometimes as day labourers and servants. Usually they are socially marginal, but Rib-Hadda of Byblos calls Abdi-Ashirta of Amurru (modern Lebanon) and his son ʿApiru, with the implication that they have rebelled against their common overlord, the pharaoh . In The Taking of Joppa (now Jaffa ), an Egyptian work of historical fiction from around 1440 BCE, they appear as brigands , and General Djehuty asks at one point that his horses be taken inside

1029-900: The Metropolitan Museum of New York in November 1999, and at the British Museum and at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in January and February 2000, bringing the total of collated texts up to about 100. A third visit to the United Kingdom in April 2001 was made to complete the collation of texts in the British Museum and also those in the Ashmolean Museum , Oxford. Fall 2001

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1078-608: The University of Melbourne , Australia . From 2002 to 2007 he taught as adjunct professor at Bar Ilan University, Orot College and Jerusalem University College. From 2003 to 2004 he spent ten months collating the el-‘Amârna tablets at the Vorderasiatische Museum in Berlin and at other venues in Europe. A completely new edition of the tablets is envisioned along with photographic and internet recording. The edition of

1127-637: The anachronism of Ezekiel mentioning Daniel in Ezekiel 14:13–16 actually referring to Danel , a hero from the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat . The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform script used beginning in the 15th century BC. Like most Semitic scripts, it is an abjad , where each symbol stands for a consonant, leaving the reader to supply the appropriate vowel. Although it appears similar to Mesopotamian cuneiform (whose writing techniques it borrowed), its symbols and symbol meanings are unrelated. It

1176-665: The 14th through the 12th century BC. The city of Ugarit was destroyed roughly 1190 BC. Literary texts discovered at Ugarit include the Legend of Keret , the legends of Danel , the Myth of Baal-Aliyan , and the Death of Baal . The latter two are also known collectively as the Baal Cycle . All reveal aspects of ancient Northwest Semitic religion. Edward Greenstein has proposed that Ugaritic texts might help solve biblical puzzles such as

1225-609: The 1960s and 1970s, he pursued additional studies at the Hebrew University in Akkadian , Sumerian and Egyptian . He took a sabbatical leave in 1970–71, during which time he remained in Jerusalem to study. For a second sabbatical, he was awarded a grant by the American Council of Learned Societies . On the basis of this award he was able to spend 1976–77 as an honorary research fellow at Harvard University . Grants from

1274-942: The Brown Military Academy of the Ozarks, in Sulphur Springs, Arkansas , while attending university. He took the B.A. degree there in religious education in August 1949. From 1949 to 1951, he worked as a social worker for the San Bernardino County Welfare Department in California. He went on to enroll in the California Baptist Theological Seminary in Covina, California , where he took three degrees: an M.A. in Old Testament (May 1953);

1323-615: The Fertile Crescent they are also often depicted as auxiliary warriors. In the Amarna letters, Apiru are most prominent in military activity. Some hypotheses on Genesis 14 suggested a foreign, perhaps Babylonian, document at the core, or a memory of time when Abram belonged to Apiru before the term Hebrew obtained an ethnic meaning. Elsewhere in the Bible, the Israelites are called Hebrews when enslaved or oppressed and struggling for liberation. The military context associates with one of

1372-637: The Levantine ordering of the alphabet, which gave rise to the alphabetic order of the Hebrew , Greek , and Latin alphabets; and the South Semitic order, which gave rise to the order of the Ge'ez script . The script was written from left to right. Ugaritic had 28 consonantal phonemes (including two semivowels ) and eight vowel phonemes (three short vowels and five long vowels): a ā i ī u ū ē ō . The phonemes ē and ō occur only as long vowels and are

1421-589: The Research for Peace Project of Tel Aviv University made possible three visits to the Cairo Museum from 1980 to 1982 and the el-‘Amârna Tablets in the museum were all collated. From 1982 to 1985 he began teaching part-time at Bar Ilan University in the Department of Eretz-Israel Studies. During a third sabbatical in 1983–84, he was visiting research scholar at the University of Pennsylvania . During

1470-456: The ancestor of the Israelites. "Hebrew" will then be a peculiarly Biblical adaptation of the social term. A considerable possibility remains that the beginnings of the Israelite history are bound with the wandering Apiru. The Bible might have preserved a vague memory that the Patriarchs had once been Apiru. Ugaritic Ugaritic ( / ˌ j uː ɡ ə ˈ r ɪ t ɪ k , ˌ uː -/ )

1519-402: The biblical Midianites , Kenites , and Amalekites , as well as displaced peasants and pastoralists, they also may be related to the biblical Hebrews. A hypothesis emerged that Hebrews were one offshoot of Apiru, a larger whole from which the Hebrews originated. It has become a commonplace assumption that all Israelites were Hebrews but not all Hebrews were Israelites. The ethnic connotation of

ʿApiru - Misplaced Pages Continue

1568-1025: The city lest a passing ʿApir steal them. Since the discovery of the 2nd millennium BCE inscriptions mentioning the Habiru, there have been many theories linking these to the Hebrews of the Bible . Most of these theories were based on the supposed etymological link and were widely denied basing on the Egyptian sources and later following the Ugaritic and Hittite discoveries. There are two main barriers, linguistic and group identity. Most scholars, Anson Rainey and R. Steven Notley among them, deny any linguistic relationship between Abiru and Hebrew, or at most admit only "a bare possibility." But this view remains short of academic consensus. Philologically, argued Moshe Greenberg , Apiru and Hebrew though not transparently related are not irreconcilable. Nadav Na’aman had no doubt that

1617-434: The cultural society. The morphological pattern of the word is qatilu, which point to a status, condition. The Akkadian term Ḫabiru occasionally alternates with the sumerograms SA.GAZ. Akkadian dictionaries for sumerograms added to SA.GAZ the gloss "ḫabatu" (raider), which raised the suggestion to read the sumerograms as this word. However, the Amarna letters attested the spelling SA.GA.AZ, and letters from Ugarit attested

1666-558: The editorial boards of Israel Oriental Studies , an annual, and of Tel Aviv , a quarterly, both publications of Tel Aviv University. He continued his connection with the American Institute of Holy Land Studies – now the Jerusalem University College – teaching Historical Geography and, for six years, from 1964 to 1969, conducting their intensive program of geographical field trips. During

1715-413: The identity, the academic consensus is well established that Apiru and Hebrews represent two different groups. The Biblical Hebrews are an ethnic group while Apiru were a much wider multi-ethnic group distinguished by social status. The morphological pattern of the word ʿApiru is, as mentioned above, qatilu, which point a status, as opposed to the morphological pattern of the ethnonym עִבְרִי (Hebrew) which

1764-456: The interpretations suggested for Apiru. In Sumerogram SA.GAZ, SA could mean "muscle" and GAZ "to strike" or "kill." The meaning "murderer" or "killer" was suggested for the combination SA.GAZ, or literally "muscle killer." SA.GAZ was supposed to be a transliteration of the Accadian pseudo-ideogram šaggāšum or murderer. The Epic of Gilgamesh (1:4:7) uses saggasum for Enkidu describing him as

1813-495: The original meaning of the word has been changed." Loretz assigns all mentions of Hebrew in the Bible to post-exilic period centuries after Apiru disappeared from the sources. Greenberg concluded his research: The ʿApiru were ethnically diverse but this term can be related to the term "Hebrew" both in etymology and meaning. The ethnic and social spheres may have met in Abraham the Hebrew, who may at once have been an Apiru as well as

1862-714: The result of monophthongization of the diphthongs аy and aw , respectively. The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Ugaritic, Classical Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew : Ugaritic is an inflected language , and its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Akkadian , Classical Arabic and, to a lesser extent, Biblical Hebrew . It possesses two genders (masculine and feminine), three grammatical cases for nouns and adjectives ( nominative , accusative , and genitive ), three numbers (singular, dual, and plural), and verb aspects similar to those found in other Northwest Semitic languages . The word order for Ugaritic

1911-503: The spelling SAG.GAZ, which points that these sumerograms were read as written, and did not function as ideograms . The only Akkadian word which fits such spelling is "šagašu" (barbarian), but an Akkadian gloss to an Akkadian word seems odd, and the meaning of "šagašu" doesn't fit the essence of the Ḫabiru. Therefore, the meaning of SA.GAZ should probably be found in West Semitic word such Aramaic ŠGŠ which means muddy, restless, while

1960-459: The term Hebrew synonymous with the people of Israel were attributed to the later Jewish tradition. "It could well be", writes Stuart A. West, "that the word Hebrew was originally only a sociological designation, indicating status or class - in which case the words Hebrew and Habiru are synonymous. The fact that in the later Books of the Bible and in its usage in post-biblical times, the word Hebrew has been used as an ethnic designation simply means that

2009-411: The term “Hebrew” was derived from “Habiru.” The Christian priestly scholars, such as Manfred Weippert, Henry Cazelles and Oswald Loretz, are the least ready to give up the relation between Apiru and Hebrew. For them the linguistic equation between Apiru and Hebrew is easy and comfortable. Loretz, however, admits the etymological possibility despite denying all equations between Apiru and Hebrew. Regarding

ʿApiru - Misplaced Pages Continue

2058-706: The texts and the notes derived from collations will be placed on the internet. During the 53rd Rencontre of the International Association of Assyriologists in Moscow in July 2007, he collated the last three el-‘Amârna tablets, at the Pushkin Museum . Anson Rainey died, aged 81, from pancreatic cancer in Tel Hashomer , Israel . His wife Zipora Cochavi-Rainey , continued his research on

2107-409: The two groups were related. Some scholars remained unmoved and deny any relation. Those relating Apiru and Hebrews were mistaken, states Rainey. All attempts to relate the two are wishful thinking. He notes that while ʿApiru covered the regions from Nuzi to Anatolia as well as Northern Syria, Canaan and Egypt, they were distinguished from Shutu (Sutu) or Shasu (Shosu), Syrian pastoral nomads named in

2156-506: The word "ḫabatu" should be interpreted as "nomad", and that fits the meaning of the word Ḫabiru/ʿApiru. In the time of Rim-Sin I (1822 BCE to 1763 BCE), the Sumerians knew a group of Aramaean nomads living in southern Mesopotamia as SA.GAZ, which meant "trespassers". The later Akkadians inherited the term, which was rendered as the calque Habiru , properly ʿApiru . The term occurs in hundreds of 2nd millennium BCE documents covering

2205-565: Was a revision of his earlier dissertation, expanded to include new source material that had subsequently become available. He began teaching Ugaritic and Akkadian at Tel Aviv University . From 1965 to 1966, he served as acting chairman of the Ancient Near Eastern Studies Department. In 1966, his status was changed to lecturer in Semitic languages. A year later he was appointed senior lecturer. In 1970 he

2254-561: Was a verb "to dust," meaning "to fight" or "to struggle." Gilgamesh and Aga twice (70-81, 92-99) says "myriad dusted," meaning "myriad fought." Andrew R. George translated this literally as "myriad rolled in the dust," and the Sumerian Corpus, less successfully, as "multitudes were smeared with the dust." Whether borrowed from Sumer or not, a similar combination is present in Hebrew, with "abak" (אבק) for "dust" and "maabak" (מאבק) for "struggle." Another link between Apiru and struggle

2303-500: Was elevated to associate professor of ancient Near Eastern cultures. The department was reorganized under the title, Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, in which he served as coordinator for Mesopotamian studies until October 1975. A new department of Semitic linguistics was also organized, and from 1971 to 1972 he was its acting chairman. He was promoted to the rank of full professor of ancient Near Eastern cultures and Semitic linguistics effective July 1, 1981. Rainey served on

2352-655: Was left with his maternal grandparents. He attended Brown Military Academy in San Diego, California , from 1943 to 1946. After one semester of study there – as a cadet battalion commander – he served as assistant commandant at Southern California Military Academy in Long Beach, California , for the spring semester of 1947, before transferring to John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas . From 1948 to 1949 he worked as assistant commandant at

2401-629: Was spent at the University of California, Los Angeles , where consultation began with the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative in digitizing the Amarna tablets in the Berlin Museum. During the spring 2002 semester, he was invited to teach as a visiting professor of historical geography and Ancient Hebrew at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea . In August and September 2002 he was a visiting research scholar at

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