Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

OK, Jonathan. But looking at how the words for 'eye' developed in languages later than Biblical Hebrew and/or in different language families doesn't really affect our understanding of Hebrew all that much. Those observations you offer are interesting, but don't change things at all.

The yodh in עין becomes a mater lectionis in constructed forms, but the derivation of this word in Hebrew requires the yodh to be there as a consonantal element within a consonantal cluster. It has come from original *ayn. The yodh is not dispensable. The constructed forms are the result of a vocalic shift in Hebrew which all contract nouns underwent.

I haven't done the search on this, but does עין ever occur in a biblical text without the yodh? If so, I'd be interested to know how many times.

GEORGE ATHAS

Dean of Research,

Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)

Sydney, Australia

From: Jonathan Mohler <jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, 16 May 2013 3:03 PM
To: George Athas <george.athas AT moore.edu.au>
Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew Digest, Vol 125, Issue 24

George:

This is not something I would die for of course,  but a study of universal eye words shows the yodh is generally dropped.  The most important consonants are the ayin and nun.  Although the French oeuil, preserves the yodh in pronunciation: uhy.  The L is a shift from the nun, a common shift across languages.  It occurs in words like ocular, ogle, look.  The Swahili 'ogle' word is angalia, look.  Also, the word for vision (dream, not physical) is maono.  Primitive words like these suggest to me that the double nun is simply gemination to intensify the derivitive meaning.  I speak here somewhat blindly, no pun intended, since I have no experience dealing with how BH handles gemination.  In Bantu languages gemination functions much like the piel binyan.  For example, kata, cut and katakata, dice; or palilia, sweep, where the two L's reflect the repetitive nature of sweeping.

Jonathan E. Mohler

Baptist Bible Graduate School

Springfield, MO