I periodically scan this thread, sigh, and move on, but it's more than a little frustrating. For example ...
Perhaps by some, but it's deceit or sloppiness to suggest that there is anything like a consensus on this. For example ...
Habiru or Hapiru was the name given by various Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Ugaritic sources (dated, roughly, from before 2000 BC to around 1200 BC) to a group of people living in the areas of Northeastern Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent from the borders of Egypt in Canaan to Iran. Depending on the source and epoch, these Habiru are variously described as nomadic or semi-nomadic, rebellious, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, servants or slaves, migrant laborers, etc..
The names Habiru and Hapiru are used in Akkadian cuneiform texts. The corresponding name in the consonant-only Egyptian script appears to be `PR.W, conventionally pronounced Apiru (W being the Egyptian plural suffix); {An example of how to see this word in Egy. is: prU = pr, pr, pr // Both are examples of the plural. pr is also pictured with the "walking feet", and with "pr" for house, and "r" combined}. In Mesopotamian records they are also identified by the Sumerian logogram SA.GAZ, of unknown pronunciation.
When the first records of the Habiru were found (in Canaanite letters to an Egyptian pharaoh), scholars eagerly equated those people with the biblical`BRY {from עבר}, or "Hebrew", and thought that those records provided independent confirmation of the invasion of Canaan by the Hebrews under Joshua. However, in spite of much new evidence and analysis, that hypothesis is still the object of much dispute.
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Habiru as a loose ethnic group
The Habiru name list on the Tikunani Prism (from Mesopotamia, about 1550 BC) indicates they were originally nothing more than a wandering tribe of Hurrians, but some argue for the disappearance of this ethnic distinction at a very early stage making them a non-exclusive ethnic group. Like the 17th century Cossack bands of Eastern European Steppes, scholars since Moshe Greenberg have envisioned the Hapiru as being formed out of outlaws and drop-outs from neighbouring agricultural societies. The numbers of the Habiru of the 2nd millennium BC grew from the peasants who had fled the increasingly oppressive economic conditions of the Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms. The career of King Idrimi of Alalakh (ca 1500 1450) may provide a parallel on a grander social level: forced into exile, King Idrimi first fled to Emar on the Euphrates, and then to Canaan where he joined other Syrian refugees to live with the wandering Hapiru. His brief biography would not have appeared in inscriptions at all, if he had not been able to return and make a successful new bid for power in the city of Alalakh.
Some scholars have seen the Habiru legacy preserved in the place-names of Iranian Kabira, the Khabur River valley of the Northern Euphrates and perhaps also the Hebron valley.
Habiru and the Hebrew
When the Tell el-Amarna archives were translated, some scholars eagerly equated these Apiru with the Biblical Hebrews (`BRY in the consonant-only Hebrew script). Besides the similarity in the ethnicons, the description of the Apiru as nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes attacking cities in Canaan seemed to fit the Biblical account of the conquest of that land by Hebrews under Joshua or even by names with David's Hebrew rally against Saul, except that the Habiru core was originally Hurrian not Hebrew.
Scholarly opinion remains divided on this issue. Many scholars still think that the Hapiru were a component of the later peoples who inhabited the kingdoms ruled by Saul, David, Solomon and their successors in Judah and Israel. If the Habiru were the proto-Hebrews, a Hurrian origin would corroborate what some scholars see as Hurrian cultural themes in the Bible. Some Biblical proper names can be related to Anatolian or North Syrian (Hurrian) onomastics suggesting that these names may have entered Hebrew directly from Hurrian. For example, some of David's wandering Hebrews possess Hurrian Habiru names (e.g. Nihiri)[citation needed].
There have also been theories relating the Habiru to the Biblical personages of Eber and Abraham. While most scholars agree that the genealogies traced from Abraham are based on cultural beliefs and are without historical foundation, there are some who feel that perhaps Eber represents an etymological link to the Habiru.
Habiru as a general term
As more texts were uncovered througout the Near East, however, it became clear that these Apiru were found throughout most of the Fertile Crescent. The scholars who wrote the Oxford History of the Biblical World concluded that the "Habiru" had no common ethnic affiliations, that they spoke no common language, and that they normally led a marginal and sometimes lawless existence on the fringes of settled society. Those scholars characterized the various Habiru/Apiru as a loosely defined, inferior social class composed of shifting population elements without secure ties to settled communities, who were frequently encountered in texts as outlaws, mercenaries, and slaves. In that vein, some modern scholars consider Habiru and related words to be more of a political designation than an ethnic or tribal one.
- see
Wikipedia
Attempts have been made to find the origin of "Hebrew" in the phenomenon of the
Hab/piru or
'Apiru documented over a long period of time and in a wide variety of texts deriving from all over the ancient Near East stretching from Egypt through Canaan into Syria and the Hittite sphere and down into Mesopotamia. For about a thousand years covering the entire second millennium B>C>E>, these people, wherever and whenever they appear, constitute an alien, inassimilable element in the population. They share in common an inferior social status. They may be mercenaries, slaves, marauding bands; only occasionally do they hold important positions. Certainly, the term
Hab/piru or
'Apiru has no ethnic coloration, and the names they bear betray widely varying linguistic and cultural connections -- Akkadian, Hurrian, West Semetic, and others. The term is overwhelmingly derogatory, and in cuneiform texts it is often written as SA.GAZ, which syllables are associated with murder, robbery, and razzia. From all this it is clear that there is no connection between the biblical "Hebrews," who constitute a distinct ethnic group, and the
Hab/piru or
'Apiru, unless the term simply indicates social elements marginal to a society.
A widely held view of the origin of the biblical term "Hebrew" is to derive it from
'eber, "beyond, across," and to connect it with the phrase
'eber ha-nahar, "Beyond the River (Euphrates)," whence the ancestors of Israel came. This is how the Greek translation of the Bible known as the Septuagint seems to have understood "Hebrew," for it renders it "the one from beyond," "the wanderer." Still a third explanation traces it to Eber, ancestor of Abraham. Both of these attempts have the disadvantage of not being able to account for the biblical restriction of "Hebrew" to Israel, to the exclusion of the other ethnic groups that descended from Abraham or from Eber. Abraham's family in Aramnaharaim are "Arameans," while the other descendents of Eber are simply
b'nei 'eber, literally, "sons of Eber." Until further evidence is at hand, the origin and significabce of the term "Hebrew" must remain a mystery.
- see
Exploring Exodus: The Origins of Biblical Israel, by Nahum M. Sarna
None of this is of any great import. I mention it only because the assertion that
is characteristic of much of the 'scholarship' in this thread ...