Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Stephen:
I at this moment remain unconvinced, but admit it is possible.

>From what I read, the Mycenaean civilization was largely a derivative one
from Semitic traders, if not ruled by Semites. This was pre-Phoenician. The
earliest adoption of some of the mystery religions appears to have been at
this time. So it is possible that worshippers of the sun as a god could have
so influenced the Greek language.

But this is a bit off topic.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 5:02 AM, <berlant AT advanced-studies.org> wrote:

> 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
>
>