Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Will:

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 2:53 PM, Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu> wrote:

 

>
> Do you have any evidence that hoplite isn’t a loan word into Greek, that by
> the fifth century had been in the language so long that its foreign roots
> were forgotten? Just like “pork” and “beef” have been in English so long
> that we don’t consider them as loan words brought into English by foreign
> invaders?

One does have to deal with the fact that οπλιτης/hoplite is pretty
clearly derived from οπλον/hoplon, which seems originally to have been
a fairly fluid term for a variety of tools before its later becoming
specialized in the sense of a type of shield, and then armour in
general.  That means that even if _hoplon_ were a loan into Greek,
_hoplites_ would not be, and one has to allow for the development of
meaning in the primary word and the subsequent creation of the derived
word before the latter was imported into Hebrew.  (_Hoplon_ itself may
be a loanword into Greek for all I know - at least I'm not aware of an
IE etymology.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s my understanding that only a little of Greek literature from before Homer survives, and even in Homer the picture is of citizen soldiers, not a professional or even semi-professional class of elite soldiers as existing then. Therefore any argument that the term οπλιτης/hoplite didn’t exist before about 500 BC is an argument from silence, not evidence.

We know that the Greeks got more than just the alphabet from the Phoenicians, including some vocabulary. But there’s no way today to tell how much.

> I don’t deny that it possibly was originally Greek, or it could have been
> another Indo-European language, all I say is that it appears to be a loan
> word into Hebrew to refer to an elite fighting force, possibly came into
> Hebrew through the Philistines. Further, almost an identically formed word
> appears in another ANE language to refer to an elite soldier. It’s possible
> that that’s just a coincidence. Or it could be an example of linguistic
> borrowing. Too little evidence remains to answer these questions.

For curiosity, what's the other word?

In this discussion, the two ancient languages being referenced are Biblical Hebrew and Greek. In Hebrew it appears to be a loan word. In Greek, we have no evidence other than relatively late use. Both refer to an elite fighting force, most likely professionals. Both are almost identical in form. I don’t think David got the term directly from the Greeks, through that’s possible. Any definitive statement as to the history of the term is an argument from silence.

--
Will Parsons

Karl W. Randolph.