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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Trevor Peterson <06peterson AT cua.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-Hebrew] Elohim
  • Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 15:20:01 -0800

On 28/01/2004 14:33, Trevor Peterson wrote:

Peter wrote:


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


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


Well, is there any evidence from early non-Jewish Aramaic, I wonder? King Darius uses 'elaha in his letter in Ezra 6:3 and would hardly have been influenced by Hebrew, but some would argue of course that that letter as we have it was composed or redacted by Jews. What word for "god" would the real Darius have used in his letters? Is there any evidence from Imperial Aramaic?

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.) ...


These forms appear in HALOT. I don't have any further information. I took "=Heb" as implying support for the Hebrew reading; I have never heard of cuneiform writing of Hebrew.

...

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.)


On this one, BDB further specifies "Sab." = Sabean, and refers to D.H. Müller. This is confirmed by the Sabean gloss for "god" on p.134 of "Comparative Semitic Linguistics" by Patrick R. Bennett. But I don't claim to 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.


In each of these cases it seems to be both pronounced and functioning as 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.



I forgot to point out that 'el has a perfectly good regularly formed plural of its own, 'elim, used more than ten times mostly of pagan gods but see e.g. Ps 29:1.

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, it is possible that 'eloah/'elohim is etymologically derived from a Ugaritic plural form of which a new singular was back-formed. That is speculative and essentially without significance. What matters is how the words are used in biblical Hebrew. We have two clearly attested singular words for god/God, 'el and 'eloah, and each of them has a regularly formed plural, 'elim and 'elohim. 'elohim is disproportionately more common than 'eloah mostly because this plural form is commonly substituted for the singular, for unknown reasons. But that doesn't make 'elohim the plural of 'el.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics





--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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