Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au>]

Henry Churchyard wrote:

> 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...)

In addition to Solomon's comments, I've read somewhere that the name "Allah" 
is in fact derived
from a title for the pre-Islamic high god of Arabia, al-Llah, who had three 
daughter deities, the
"banat al-Llah". By the generation of Muhammad, al-Llah had come to be 
identified with the God of
Judaism and Christianity. His title eventually became his name, very similar 
in this respect to the
god, El.

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GEORGE ATHAS
 Dept of Semitic Studies,
 University of Sydney
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