ʿApiru

Hapiru, Habiru, and 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 Ḫabiru, properly ʿApiru. The term occurs in hundreds of 2nd millennium BCE documents covering a 600-year period from the 18th to the 12th centuries BCE and found at sites ranging from Egypt, Canaan and Syria, to Nuzi (Upper Mesopotamia near Kirkuk, northern Iraq) and Anatolia (now 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 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 names being most frequently West Semitic, but also East Semitic, Hurrian or Indo-European.

In 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 refers to Abdi-Ashirta of Amurru (modern Lebanon) and his son Aziru as 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 the city lest a passing ʿApir steal them.

Habiru and the biblical Hebrews

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 based on the Egyptian sources and later following the Ugaritic and Hittite discoveries. There are two main barriers, linguistic and group identity.

Some scholars, Anson Rainey and R. Steven Notley among them, deny any linguistic relationship between Ḫabiru 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 the term "Hebrew" was derived from "Habiru". The Christian priestly scholars, such as Manfred Weippert, Henri 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 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 points to a status, as opposed to the morphological pattern of the ethnonym עִבְרִי (Hebrew) which 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 the Apiru, scholars examined the context of Hebrews in the Bible. The new analysis indicated a group broader than the Israelites and more associated with the Apiru, best seen in 1 Samuel 13, 14. Na’aman and Yoel Bin-Nun point out that "Hebrew" is typically used to describe "Israelites in exceptional circumstances", in particular, wandering, oppressed or enslaved Israelites struggling for liberation. Na’aman 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 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 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 (Genesis 14:13), the biblical word "Hebrew" can be interpreted as 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 other episodes in Genesis, in which Abram is never a warrior. This associates with the Apiru too. In the earliest Mesopotamian texts mentioning the Apiru they appear as military contingents, auxiliaries, or bands of raiders. Babylonian and Mari tablets mention them particularly as military auxiliaries. Elsewhere in 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 the interpretations suggested for Apiru. In the 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 Akkadian pseudo-ideogram šaggāšum or "murderer". The Epic of Gilgamesh (1:4:7) uses šaggāšum for Enkidu, describing him as a military leader and nomad native of the wild steppe. In the Old Babylonian tradition, Šaggāšu is a ghost-murderer of the steppe.

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 consensus remains that Apiru and Hebrews were not identical groups, but scholars became divided whether the two groups were related. Some scholars, such as Rainey, remained unmoved and deny any relation. Rainey stated that those relating Apiru and Hebrews were mistaken and 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 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, 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.

S. Douglas Waterhouse said that the political situation during Joshua's conquests was similar to the political situation in Canaan during the Amarna period, with the largest exception being that the role of the Egyptians in Canaan during the Amarna period was not mentioned in the Bible. Kline stated that the Ḫabiru of the Amarna period and the biblical Hebrews had a different relationship with the Canaanites, different goals and used different tactics.

The ethnic connotation of 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 the original meaning of the word has been changed." Loretz assigns all mentions of Hebrews in the Bible to the 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 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.