Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On 7/17/06, Dave Washburn wrote:

> On 16 Jul 2006 at 21:42, Revdpickrel AT wmconnect.com wrote:
>
> > I agree 100 percent that Leviathan illustration is a metaphor, no question
> > about that.  He certainly is not a great sea monster.  Leviathan means "one 
> who
> > dwell among the sea of humanity," not the seas where monsters live.
>
> What's your source for this definition?  Rochelle has said several times that 
> it's
> not a Hebrew word and nobody has challenged that, so I assume she's correct,
> plus it doesn't look like a Hebrew word.  Do we know what language it is?
> Seems to me we'd need to know that in order to nail down such a specific
> definition.

How do you define a Hebrew word?  Are $or "ox", qeren "horn", or yayin "wine"
Hebrew words?  For all of these, linguists seem to believe that the words were
borrowed at an earlier stage of Semitic, perhaps from an Indo-European
language, although the evidence is probably not sufficient for a definite
conclusion.  Other examples from other languages could be suggested,
including Sumerian and Akkadian.  The word "peten" which I mentioned in the
context of this thread appears to be a borrowing from Aramaic
("pattana"), since
that would explain the middle consonant "t" where other apparent cognates have
a "th" (thus, suggesting Hebrew should have had a "$").  Does any of this mean
that these words are not Hebrew?  The word "Leviathan" has its cognate in
Ugaritic "ltn" ("lotan"?).  The difference in the two consonants of the words
would seem to suggest that neither borrowed from the other, as there is no
way to explain the loss of these consonants.  It would seem most logical to
reconstruct them both to a word in a parent language ("Northwest Semitic"?)
and that word may have been borrowed.  Does that make it any less a Hebrew
word than "yayin" which may have been borrowed at the Northwest Semitic
stage?  Possible etymological definitions include basing the word on the root
l-w-y ("to surround") and also as comparable or a borrowing from Assyrian
lawuta:nu "servant".  The first would definitely seem to correspond with the
imagery of Leviathan as a "coiling" snake.

Yitzhak Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com