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orion Re: prothetic `Aleph
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George Athas' proposal is interesting and worth consideration; let's hear
some more suggestions that might actually get us somewhere. My objection to
is interesting idea would be that prothetic 'Aleph wouldn't automatically
cause the assimilation of the Nun, which is presupposed by the Josephus
spelling (and he, incidentally, is the only one of the three witnesses who
probably knew Hebrew). A possibility is nouns of the qattal or qattil form,
i.e., essentially derived from the so-called intensive roots, hence bearing
reduplicated 2nd radicals, but otherwise vocalised with the a-a of some
Hebrew noun themes. The problem here is, most of these seem to describe
occupations (cf. gammal, camel-driver; naggar, carpenter). There is, of
course, qattil, reflecting an infinitive of the intensive stem (PiŽel):
here perhaps tsaddiq is the best known example that parallels the usage in
essaios. However, the vowels in the latter don't correspond well, and in
any case we are in the realm of rabbincal Hebrew, which is only weakly
attested in Qumran in the "Copper Scroll" and the now-famous 4QMMT. We are
in hot water if we have to suggest an etymology for the name of the
organisation that is based on a form of the Hebrew language that is only
attested in 2 of the ca. 850 documents...
best regards,
Fred Cryer