Ham's name (from Drunken Noah pt. 2)

[zev_steinhardt]

What’s up with the biblical story of drunken Noah? (Part 2)

A well-researched article, CK, but I have one question. I saw the second footnote discussing Ham’s name, wherein you stated:

David Goldenberg says the initial Kh of the name Ham was originally different from the initial H of the Hebrew ham meaning dark, but that the two sounds became confused over the centuries. Thus, to the earliest people telling or hearing the story, there was no confusion of Ham with dark, but by the rabbinic and early Christian period (100 BC to 400 AD), they no longer knew that the words were different, and they assigned the term “dark” to Ham.

I’m curious as to how Mr. Goldenberg came to this conclusion.

There is a word for “hot” in the Hebrew language, cham (spelled with a ches as the first letter). It’s used in Genesis at 18:1 (Abraham sat at the opening of his tent in the heat of the day).

There is another letter in the Hebrew alphabet that can make the ch sound (which is as in the German word ach, not as in the English word “chain”). That letter is a kaf, which sometimes makes a “k” sound and sometimes a “ch” sound depending on various factors (it’s position in the sentence, the letters surrounding it, etc.).

However, the names that start with this letter, when Anglicized, invariably begin with a hard k sound. Examples are Caleb, Cana’an, Cush, Koresh, etc.

In addition, many of the biblical names had actual meanings. Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, Shem, etc. all had meanings. Cham (with a ches) has a meaning, Kam (with a kaf) has none, to the best of my knowledge.

Zev Steinhardt

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

I don’t have any outside info, and I didn’t try to track it, Zev. My Hebrew is way too basic, so I just quoted what he said. I suppose one could find his book and see if he gives more explicit footnotes (there’s a huge bibliography and lots of references.) I’m hopping over to the library today to do some other research, I’ll check out the book and see what I find.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

Warning: very technical discussion follows.

The Goldenberg book has a whole chapter on the derivation of the name Ham. I don’t have the symbols, I don’t think, he uses an h with a dot under it, for which I will use kh, and he uses an h with a curved-underscore, for which I will use h. I also don’t have Hebrew letters available, I’ll spell them out in italic khet.
Among the theories held over the centuries that he analyzes and rejects:

• From the word kh-m-m meaning to be hot, which relates to Ham’s children all being from southern regions
• From kh-w-m meaning black. This word appears only once in Tanakh, namely in Genesis 30:25-43, describing the sheep that aren’t white. It’s usually translated black, but could mean something else. This gets tied into the notion that Shem (from the Akkadian samu = red) and Japeth (meaning beautiful = white) represents three colors (Africa, Asia, Europe.)
• From kh-m meaning servant, suggested by A.S. Yahuda in 1929
• From the Egyptian kmt. Plutarch says the Egyptians call Egypt Chemia (Greek: χημια ) , note the similarity (ch-a-m). This gets bolstered by the fact that Ham’s sons circumscribe Egypt, and Egypt is called the “Land of Ham” in four times in the book of Psalms (78:51, 105:23, 27, and 106:22).

He rejects these hteories, and says

reserach has shown conclusively that ancient Hebrew retained two distinct sounds from Proto-Semitic, h (a velar fricative) and kh (a pharyngeal fricative), as indeed modern Arabic still does. The alphabet that the early Hebrews inherited from the Phoenicians, however, had only a sign for the kh sound. The kh sign (Hebrew khet) therefore had to double duty representing both sounds, the kh as well as the h, and it was up to the ancient reader to know when to pronounce the sign one way and when the other way. The same situation, incidentally, occured with the Proto-Semetic ̀̀̀and g, respectively a pharyngeal and avelar sound. While Arabic preserved both of these soudns and represented them by two different signs by means of diacritis (ayn and ghayn), Hebrew had only one sign (ayin) which did double duty.

Although two originally distinct sounds are represented today by one sign, whether a khet or an ayin, we can sometimes know which sound was meant and heard by the ancient reader by looking at the early Greek transcriptions of Hebrew names. J.W.Wevers and Joshua Blau have independently shown that the Greek translation of the Pentateuch, especially of Genesis, reflects the Proto-Semitic h sound by transliterating as ̀̀̀Χ while the proto-Semitic h sound is not transliterated at all or is transliterated by a vowel (̀̀̀ α or ε, e.g., ̀̀Νώε for Noakh) – that is, it was not heard as a distinct consonantal sound. In other words, the Greek transliteration captured the two different sounds represented by khet by rendering it either ̀̀Χ or zero. By examining the Greek transliteration of Hebrew names, one coud therefore determine whetehr a particular name spelled with khet originally had a h or a kh. Now, the biblical name Ham (Hebrew: khet-mem, kham) is always transliteraed as ̀̀Χαμ in Greek, thus indicating that the initial letter of the name was h. Similarly we can know when ayin represents ghayin by looking at the LXX transcription of names – for example, Biblical Hebrew ̀`aza (ayin-zayin-hay) is written in the LXX as Gaza (Greek Γαζα ) . These conclusions are well accepted amontg Semitic linguists today.

Zev, I stupidly only copied the one page, and thus didn’t get the word that he thinks Ham is derived from. Sorry. I’ll try to get back later. Meanwhile, this answers your question, sort of: it’s not kaf, it’s a long-lost pronunciation that never had a separate representation in Hebrew.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

The coding here is driving me buggy, with the reverse quote mark ` and the Greek and all… ignore the little boxes, I can’t seem to get rid of them. Sigh. Zev if you want a fax of the page, email me. Meanwhile, have a shabbat shalom.