Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 5/20/06, Peter Kirk wrote:

> How about Greek KANNA and KANWN (W = omega; cf English "cane" and
> "canon") from Hebrew QANEH, or at least from its Semitic cognates? This
> is of course semantically and lexically very close to the hypothesised
> KANNABIS loan. In fact KANNABIS, if not Scythian or Thracian, could well
> be a Greek compound of KANNA and something else, although probably the
> latter element is not Hebrew BSM.

The word qaneh and its cognates has only one /n/ in the word.  Dr Joshua Fox,
in "Isolated Nouns in the Semitic Languages" (ZAH 1998, 1-31) identifies the
PS word as qanay "reed" and gives the following cognates: Akk qanu, Arab qana,
qana:t "spear", Geez qanot "goad", Heb qane, Meh kene:t, Syr qanya, Ug qn.
Similar words nearby that may be compared are naway "steppe" (Akk nawu,
Heb nawe, Sab nw); &anay "thornbush" Akk sinu, Arab sana, Heb sne, Syr
sanya; +alay "kid, goat", Arab +ala:, Geez +ali, Heb +tale, Sab +tlyn,
Syr +alya.
A word whose "root" may be q-n-n is qinn "nest", for whom the cognates are
Akk. qinnum "nest, family", Heb qen, (w. suffix) qinno, Syr qenna.  If there 
was
ever a connection between "reed" and "nest" it's probably way back when it is
impossible to identify it.  "Isolated Nouns", for Dr. Fox, are words
which do not
share a root with another word in the language, and are thus free of
one obstacle
to phonetic reconstruction that plagues many other words -- the ease with 
which
Semitic languages rearrange words according to patterns and roots.  As can
be seen from these examples, in none of the languages does "reed" have a
double -n-.  This leaves us with the fact that qneh bo&em is far from a match
to cannabis: cannabis has an extra n, qneh bo&em has an extra m.  There is
also a probably change from o in bo&em to i in bis.  The differences are 
further
highlighted when compared to another word in the same verse quoted in the
wikipedia article referenced here earlier (Exodus 30:23): qinn:mFn and
cinnamon.  The vowels match almost perfectly, including the qamats which
probably had the "Ashkenazi pronounciation."  The one difference - the mobile
schwa after the doubled n -- could easily have been a drop of the original a, 
as
a schwa was in many cases (and we had a discussion on this issue a month
or two ago).

Besides this, the idea is to identify cannabis here as the drug, rather than 
the
rope because it is used in the annointing oil and is identified with the word
bo&em -- ie, fragrant, spice.  To do this, one must show, firstly, that 
cannabis
was used for this purpose in early times.  As Ed Cook shows in his blog:

http://ralphriver.blogspot.com/2006/03/pot-in-bible.html

(which Peter referenced, but sort of as a "last see-also link" -- I would
identify this as the main link and I don't know if there is need to quote
anything else), and as Jack noted in reference to Herodotus (although one
must look at the Greek and remember that all our manuscripts of Herodotus
are late so one must be especially careful when taking evidence from the use
of an odd word or detail here and there), the use of cannabis in ancient times
is restricted almost completely to its use for rope.

In addition, the use of qaneh in said etymology is to compare it with a plant.
But qaneh is not just a plant, it's a reed.  Projectile, Spear, Goad,
Hollow Tube,
are all meanings whose relationship to "reed" is clear.  But rope/plant is 
only
vaguely similar.  In fact, as the various meanings in the cognate
languages show,
it is hard to identify qaneh with something that does not resemble a firm
inflexible stick and "rope" or "plant" does not.

Yitzhak Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com