Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ The origin of the term Hbr ʕiḇrî (Ar ʕibrī) ‘Hebrew’ is, as Hopkins summarizes the state of affairs in etymological research about the word, still »a moot point, much discussed yet unresolved. None of the many etymologies proposed is satisfactory and so the origin of ‘Hebrew’ must be accounted unclear. Eccentricities apart, there are three main avenues of approach: (i) ʕiḇrî is an eponymous gentilic adjective, derived from the proper name ʕēḇär ‘Eber’, the great-grandson of Shem (Gen. 10.24; 11.14); (ii) ʕiḇrî is a geographical term, derived from ʕēḇär ‘across, beyond’, more particularly ʕēḇär han-nāhār ‘beyond the river’ (see especially Josh. 24.2). Depending upon the identity of the river in question, ʕiḇrî is to be understood as ‘trans-Euphrates’ or ‘trans-Jordan’«; while the ultimate etymon here would be Sem *ʕib(˅)r- ‘region beyond’, another geographical reading interpreted the Biblical ʕiḇrīm as ‘Bedouins’, i.e., a group of people who *‘cross, or wander around in, the desert’ (< Sem *ʕ˅b˅R- ‘to pass by, go beyond, cross’); »(iii) As opposed to (i) and (ii), which represent traditional views found in rabbinical sources, especially since the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna letters in the late 19th century it has been not uncommon in Biblical scholarship to find a connection between ‘Hebrew’ and the ḫabiru, groups of roving marauders mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna (and other) documents as having attacked Palestine in the mid-2nd millennium B.C.E.« – »Names of the Hebrew Language« (S. Hopkins), in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics.
▪ For more details see below, section DISC.

hist

▪ …

cogn

▪ If from Sem *ʕ˅b˅r- ‘to cross’ or *ʕib(˅)r- ‘the region beyond/across a body of water (river, lake, sea), (further) bank/shore’, then ʕibrī is cognate to ↗ʕabara.

disc

▪ LandbergZetterstéen1942: Sur Hbr ʕiḇrī = ‘bédouin’, voyez Spiegelberg, OLZ 1907, col. 618 ss.; sur ʕBR = ʕRB Paul Haupt, “Die Vorfahren der Juden”, OLZ 12 (1909), col. 163 n. 2: »Der Name Hebräer (ʕibr für ʕabĭr) bedeutet (mehr oder weniger unfreiwillig; vgl. JAOS 16: ci) ‘Umherziehender’ (OLZ 10: 620; AJSL 23: 261). ʕArab (eigentlich ‘das Durchzogene, worin man umherzieht’) ist nur eine Umstellung (JBL 19: 66; AJSL 24: 113) dieses Stammes; vgl. äthiop. ʕabra. Die Jordanspalte heisst ʕarabâ, weil sie überschritten werden muss. Kein Nomade würde ein Tal mit einem nie versiegenden Fluss als Wüste bezeichnen.«¹
▪ BDB1906 connects the Hbr n.gent. ʕiḇrī with Sem √ʕBR (Ar ↗ʕabara ‘to cross’, Hbr ʕēḇär ‘region across or beyond, side’): it is »either a. put into the mouth of foreigners (Egypt, and Philist.), or b. used to distinguish Isr. from foreigners (= ‘one from beyond, from the other side’, i.e. prob. [in Hbr trad.] ‘from beyond the Euphrates’ […], but poss. in fact (if name given in Canaan) ‘from beyond the Jordan’«. However, BDB also mentions the »connexion […] with Ḫabiri (Tel Am.)«, cf. next paragraph.
▪ Are the ʕibrîm identical with the Ḫabiru of the Tell Amarna letters? — »The Ḫabiru-Hebrew parallelism was first suggested by F. J. Chabas in 1862. Soon after the discovery of the Amarna letters in 1887, the dispute over the above equation gained momentum. From the outset, scholars were split into two camps: those defending the identification, who endeavored to combine the two groups and to integrate them into the early history of Israel, and those rejecting it. In the course of time, it became clear that Ḫabiru is an appellative for a certain social element, namely displaced persons who leave their homeland and seek their fortunes in neighboring countries. However, whereas the nature of the Ḫabiru was unanimously recognized, the Ḫabiru-Hebrew equation remained as controversial as ever.«²
▪ Hoch1994#70: cf. Eg */ʕapīrū/, */ʕapūra/ ? — »The Eg contexts seem to indicate that the term designated social and not ethnic classification. […] Although the etymology is uncertain, the word is known in Akk texts as ḫabiru, and Ug as ʕprm. The word is also very likely related to the Biblical term/name ʕiḇrî ‘Hebrew’, but the nature of the relationship is not easily determined.« [fn. 33:] »Scholars have variously equated, loosely associated, or rejected any connection between the ʕIbrîm and the ʕApiru. Loretz, although admitting an etymological derivation from ʕprw=ʕprm=ḫabiru, considers that all the occurrences of the word in the Bible are as a gentilic, and not as a social term. This is certainly true of the post-exilic usage, but it is possible that in I Sam. 4-29 the word is used in its original sense, although put in the mouths of the Philistines, perh. with a certain degree of contempt. That ʕApiru groups were still active is shown by the narrative of I Sam. 22-30 where David leads a band of brigands that are all but called ʕApiru. The later usage as a gentilic may have arisen as a re-interpretation of the term, whose original sense had been forgotten, such social groups having long since disappeared. The view that the I Sam. instances are genuine Biblical examples of ʕApiru, but that the other examples are the gentilic was also expressed by N. P. Lemche, “‘Hebrew’ as a National Name for Israel”, Studia Theologica: Scandinavian Journal of Theology, 33 (1979): 1-23.«

1. Translation (omitting references in parathenses in the original German): ‘The Name Hebrews (ʕibr, from ʕabĭr) means ‘(more or less voluntarily) wandering around, nomad’. ʕArab (lit. ‘what is traversed, crossed, where one wanders around in’) is just a metathesis of [the name of] this tribe; cf. Gz ʕabra. The Jordan Valley is called ʕarabâ because it has to be crossed. No nomad would ever call a valley with a river that never runs dry, a desert’. 2. Nadav Naʔaman, review of Ḫabiru–Hebräer: Eine sozio-linguistische Studie über die Herkunft des Gentiliziums ʕibrî vom Appellativum ḫabiru, by Oswald Loretz (Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 47.3 (Jul. 1988): 192-194.

west

▪ Not from Ar ʕibrī, but ultimately from the same source is Engl Hebrew, loEngl, »from oFr Ebreu, from Lat Hebraeus, from Grk Hebraîos, from Aram ʕeḇrāʔī, corresponding to Hbr ʕiḇrî ‘an Israelite’. Traditionally from an ancestral name Eber [ʕēḇär ], but probably literally ‘one from the other side’, perhaps in reference to the River Euphrates, or perhaps simply signifying ‘immigrant’; from ʕēḇär ‘region on the other or opposite side’. The initial H- was restored in Engl from C16. As a noun from c. 1200, ‘the Hebrew language’; lC14 in reference to persons, originally ‘a biblical Jew, Israelite’ – EtymOnline.

deriv

► ʕibrānī, adj., 1 Hebrew, Hebraic; 2 a Hebrew; 3 al-~, n., or al-~iyyaẗ, n.f., Hebrew, the Hebrew language.

For other values attached to the same root, cf. ↗ʕabara, ↗ʕabbara, ↗ʕabīr, ↗ʕabraẗ, ↗ʕibraẗ, ↗ʕibāraẗ, and, for the whole picture, ↗ʕBR.

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