Avraham's mother, Shimshon's sister and the "Immaculate Conception"

Parshablog has an interesting post on the post-talmudic designation of Lot's wifes name as Idith. There is an interesting wiki on the subject of post-biblical designations for biblical characters here (hebrew) and here (english - they bring the source for Lot's wife back to the Sefer HaYashar).

On this subject, R' Reinman (One People Two Worlds) argues for the strength of Rabbinic tradition - because even a minor detail like the fact that Avrohoms mother's name was Amatlai bas Karnebo (see end of Ch. 5 of Bava Basra) has been verified by the discovery of a similar name in ancient Sumerian records.

I innocently mentioned this "source" on Wikipedia at one point, to which I got the following response:

"You mentioned that this was the name of Abraham's mother and that it had been found to be a name in Sumerian times. I am interested in following up on this as I can find no Sumerian called Amatlei Bas Karnebo (linguistically it looks very un-Sumerian too). Do you have a reference? "

Does a more scholarly source exist for this claim?

In the same sugya, we have the following cryptic tidbit:

The mother of Sampson, Z'llpunith, and his sister N'shiin. To what purpose was this said? For an answer to the Epicuristen (censored - should be minim - based on the shoddy and overly apologetic - Rodkinson ).

One might understand the need for the names of the mothers as per Rashi but what is the importance of the nameof Shimshon's sister?

R' Yaakov Kamenetsky has the following brilliant interpretation (B'Mechitzos Rabbenu pg. 212 - and this is a foreshadowing of what we can expect from EY on Nach which I am eagerly awaiting):

Minim generally refer to the Christians [Rashi, for instance, seems to learn that it is an acronym for M'Talmidei Yeshu HaNotzri - see the Rashis removed by censor. See the second part of R. Kimelmans diss. for a more comprehensive discussion]. In Judges 13 - it first states

verse 2 - הנה נא את עקרה ולא ילדת והרית וילדת בן

verse 4 - כי הנך הרה וילדת בן

In the first verse we are told that she is going to conceive a child - in the future. The second verse seems to say that she has already conceived - in the past tense. Chazal (Bamidbar Rabbah 10) explain that the seed that was already there "gathered" so as to form a child. But the Christian explain (although I see no nore of this distinction in the AKJV), that we have here mutatis mutandis a beautiful proof for the doctrine of the Virgin Birth - since we see that the word of an angel can cause conception. Therefore, by citing the sister of Shimshon -whose birth was preumably natural - we can prove that Tzlilpones's conception was of the normal kind.