Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Trevor Peterson" <06peterson AT cua.edu>]

Peter wrote:

> What about elah (Aramaic) and allah, ilah (Arabic)?

Arguably, both of these could be derived from the Hebrew form.

> What 
> about cuneiform 
> -(i)lu(h)a and -ila(h)i?

"Cuneiform" is a little vague. Could you clarify where these forms
appear? (And what does HALOT mean by =Heb afterward? Is the point that
this is a cuneiform writing of Hebrew? If it is, this doesn't provide
any independent evidence outside of Hebrew.) BTW, it might be misleading
to write the forms as you did. H-rocker in cuneiform transcription
indicates IPA x, which in Hebrew would show up as chet.

> What about Ugaritic plural 'ilhm, fem 'ilht? 

The feminine form could very well be (and is ordinarily treated as) an
augmented plural form from ilt. Ugaritic exhibits sporadic plurals with
h added.

> What about old south Arabic 'LH, fem 'LHT?

Do you have any info. on where these forms appear? What do you know
about OSA (Old South Arabian, BTW, since the reference is geographical),
so we can establish the significance of these forms? (I'm asking,
because I don't know OSA myself.)

> All of these have 
> a clearly 
> pronounced h as a root letter, as h is not used as a silent 
> letter/mater 
> in these languages. See HALOT for most of this evidence.

A distinction should be made between whether h is pronounced and whether
it is a root letter.
> 
> >...  Does anyone have a citation or (better
> >yet) a proof one way or the other?
> >
> >Is 'elohim the plural (a) of 'eloah, or (b) of 'el?
> >  
> >
> 
> (a). This is clearly true by the regular rules of making a plural. In 
> principle (b) could also be true (one plural can have several 
> singulars 
> e.g. "axes" in English). But a plural ending with a he in it would be 
> unique in Hebrew.

True. But in the same way that the vav in the tetragrammaton could be
held over from an archaic form that corresponds more to Aramaic than to
Hebrew, I don't think it's out of the question that the h here could be
an archaic vestige from something like the augmented plural in Ugaritic.
(I'm not trying to say that it is--only to point out that it's
possible.)

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics