Shasu or Habiru: Who Were the Early Israelites?
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
Already a library member? Log in here.
Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username
Footnotes
1.
See Strata, “A 3,500-Year-Old Inscription From a Syrian Kingdom May Tell Us Who the Habiru Were,” BAR 22:06.
2.
See “Can You Name the Panel with the Israelites?” containing “Rainey’s Challenge” and “Yurco’s Response,” BAR 17:06.
Endnotes
1.
The true Semitic form of the word is obscured by the Akkadian syllabic script of the Amarna Letters and other cuneiform documents. The word is really ‘apiru meaning “dusty, dirty.”
2.
For Abdi-Heba’s letters, see EA 280, 285, 286, 287, 288 in William Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 279–280, 325–332.
3.
Anson Rainey, Review of O. Loretz, Habiru-Hebräer, Eine sozio-linguistiche Studie über die Herkunft des Gentiliziums ‘ibr zum Appellativum ‘abiru, in Journal of the American Oriental Society 107 (1987), pp. 539–541.
4.
Anson Rainey and R. Steven Notley, The Sacred Bridge (Jerusalem: Carta, 2006), p. 89.