Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Henry Churchyard <churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>]

> Subject: Re: eloi or alah.
> From: Numberup AT worldnet.att.net
> Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 09:24:37 -0400

> Henry Churchyard wrote:

>> If you want to get parallels with Arabic "Allah", then look at
>> Hebrew 'Eloah ('aleph,h.at.eph-s@ghol,lamedh,h.olem,
>> pathah.-g@nubha,he-mappiq) which corresponds to Arabic 'Ilaahu by
>> regular sound correspondence rules.  Arabic "Allah" actually seems
>> to be a kind of contraction of 'Al-'Ilaahu ("the god").  The Old
>> Testament Aramaic cognate to Hebrew 'Eloah and Arabic 'Ilaahu is
>> 'Elah ('aleph,h.at.eph-s@ghol,lamedh,qames., he-mappiq), showing
>> the Aramaic absence of the Canaanite long a to o change which is
>> seen in Hebrew 'Eloah.

> However, orthodox (Sunni) Muslim scholars insist that "Allah" is not
> formed by a contraction of al (the) + ilah (god).  It should not be
> overlooked that Syriac ("Christian Aramaic") pronounces the word as
> "Alaha" (as in the Peshitta), and this is a more probable influence
> upon the Arabic

Ah, but where did the doubled (geminated) _lam_ come from, then?  ;-)
(Especially written with two letters _lam_ side by side; if there were
simply a different Semitic morphological pattern in which the root
consonants 'Alif-Lam-He were embedded, this could cause a geminated
consonant sound written with a single letter to occur; but in general
the only way you can get _two_ consonant letters that represent a
geminate consonant sound is for a vowel to have dropped out between
them, or for some type of consonant assimilation to have occurred...)

--
Henry Churchyard churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu  
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh