Biblical Hebrew Forum

[berlant AT advanced-studies.org]

Greetings,

I happened to come across this thread while I was researching a 
related topic, and I was just wondering what people here thought of 
the possibility that El could have come into Gk as Helios or 
de-personified as helios, as all these words referred to the sun, 
light, and day', considering especially the following factors:

(1) The presence of unaspirated variants of Helios, aelios and 
eelios, in Doric, Aolic, Arcadian and Epic Greek
(3) The practice of referring to El as "The" God using Heb. "Ha," 
which could easily have led to Ha-el, and the subsequent loss of one 
of the vowels
(4) ) The ability of this etymology to explain the presence of an 
a-grade variant of Helios, Halios
(5) The virtually universal tendency to strengthen words beginning 
with vowels by aspirating them, especially in the formation of vocatives
(6) The presence of a number of monosyllabic Greek articles beginning 
with "*h", which could have led to *Hel or *Hal- through vowel loss 
and/or confusion with Heb. Ha-El
(7) The evidence that a number of groups (including the Phoenecians, 
The Philistines and the so-called  Sea People) were traveling between 
the Levant and the Greek islands pre- and proto-historically, as well 
as historically.

Comments and criticisms would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Stephen