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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
Versus
والدَّيَّانُ:
القَهَّارُ، والقاضي، والحاكِمُ
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