Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ishinan" <ishinan AT comcast.net>]



John Leake wrote: The same misleading potential is true of cognates: the likelihood is that choosing a meaning of an Arabic cognate from a list of meanings in a lexicon without seeing where the word is used in context in the language is fraught with danger. If, for example, we didn!t know the word מדינה in Hebrew, would Arabic /madīna/ be helpful? Historically in Arabic it doesn't really mean 'city', which would be our natural - and misleading - choice, but without an etymological dictionary (and none exists that I know of) it's hard to unravel the meaning of such a word in terms of its meaning in a given period. It's worth reading Janes Barr's _Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament_, where he examines the pros and cons in some detail.

 

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Ishinan:  Dear John, you said: Historically in Arabic  (Arabic /madīna) it doesn't really mean 'city'.

 

I hope you are not insinuating that Arabic 'madiynah' is from the trilateral root dyn. Are you?

 

Actually, Arabic 'madiynah' is from a quite different trilateral root which is 'mdn'  meaning to dwell/to settle (*see definition below). The cardinal mistake often made, is to confuse it with B. Hebrew  'mdiynah', root of dyn' (as in Ezr 2:1) which is a cognate with Arabic 'dyn'.

 

 

Ishinan Ishibashi

 

 

 

*See Lisan al-Arab

مدن (لسان العرب)
مَدَنَ بالمكان: أَقام به، فِعْلٌ مُمات، ومنه المَدِينة، وهي فَعِيلة

 

 

Versus

 

والدَّيَّانُ: القَهَّارُ، والقاضي، والحاكِمُ