Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

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/