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  • From: Rochelle Altman <willaa AT netvision.net.il>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Leviathan
  • Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 08:23:30 +0200

Thank you, Yitzhak,

You have saved me the nuisance of digging out notebooks from the late 1950's-early 1960's and demonstrated that the word is a loan word, but not Hebrew in origin. And that is the point, not that it became a word in Hebrew.

Loan words do not fit the basic patterns of word formation in a given language. Further, accounting for lost consonants (and vowels) cannot always be traced to a linguistic "law." With borrowed words, a great deal depends upon where and when the borrowed word was heard and recorded in the symbol set of the recipient language. (For pertinent examples of how words are recorded as they are heard, see John DeFrancis, Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. Honolulu: Hawaii UP, 1989)

Thanks again,

Rochelle

> 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





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