Rahleenos

[Olavarria]

Abraham 1:14

That you may have an understanding of these gods, I have given you the fashion of them in the figures at the beginning, which manner of figures is called by the Chaldeans Rahleenos, which signifies hieroglyphics.

In Hurrian, a language of ancient Anatolia, lalinas means "speech".

In Egyptian, the writing we call "Hieroglyphics" , is called mdw ntr, "speech of god".

So we have:

lalinas = speech

mdw ntr = divine speech, hieroglyphics

Rahleenos = hieroglyphics

Thoughts? I'm thinking that the Hurrian might have been a loan word that crept in during Abraham's time.

[Robert F. Smith]

Abraham 1:14

That you may have an understanding of these gods, I have given you the fashion of them in the figures at the beginning, which manner of figures is called by the Chaldeans Rahleenos, which signifies hieroglyphics.

In Hurrian, a language of ancient Anatolia, lalinas means "speech".

In Egyptian, the writing we call "Hieroglyphics" , is called mdw ntr, "speech of god".

So we have:

lalinas = speech

mdw ntr = divine speech, hieroglyphics

Rahleenos = hieroglyphics

Thoughts? I'm thinking that the Hurrian might have been a loan word that crept in during Abraham's time.

Since Albright once argued (quite rightly, I think) that Abraham and the Patriarchs came from a region of "mixed Hurrian and Sumero-Accadian civilization" in "northern Mesopotamia" at a horizon "no later than the sixteenth century B.C." (Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, 91,93, and n. 101), Hurrian may indeed be promising.

However, lalinas is Luwian, not Hurrian, and I can't find a related word in Hurrian -- although very little is actually known of the full Hurrian vocabulary (see Arnaud Fournet, Dictionary of Hurrian Language ).

I might suggest one possible Hurrian element of Rahleenos:

agul-, a-ku-l "to carve"; aguγúrni, a-ku-ú-úr-ni "carving"; cf. Indo-European egw "hew, cut" (Pokorny IEW 9)

I think searching for Rahleenos via Luwian onomatopoiea is a stretch.