Yes, and a harem, from the same Arabic root (via Turkish to English), is a place of separation for women. But there are some important distinctions between the Hebrew and Arabic concepts of HRM, I remember seeing a paper about this a few years ago. Arabic HRM can actually seem to be rather the opposite of holy, e.g. haram is used of food etc which should be kept separate from i.e. not to be eaten and considered disgusting, the opposite of halal which is equivalent to kosher (except for a few small differences re camels etc).Michael Millier <deborahmillier AT yahoo.com> wrote:
... do you not think that KHEREM has an underlying
idea of human sacrifice (to YHWH?!?!)? From the
word's various contexts, I think I'm inclined to
believe so.
The original connotation of the root is "holy", similar to qd$.
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is today called in Arabic al-haram esh-$arif
(in earlier sources it is called bayt el-maqdas = beit ha-miqda$).
Sincerely,
Jonathan D. Safren, Editor
Mo'ed - Annual for Jewish Studies
Center for Jewish Culture
Beit Berl College
Beit Berl Post Office
44905 Israel
Tel. 972-9-7476396
e-mail: moed AT beitberl.ac.il
Tel. 972-9-7476396
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