OLEA

Pearl of Great Price PN

1.

OLEA “the Moon” (BofAbraham 3:13)

This form of the Afro-Asiatic word for “moon” seems to reflect Berber ōyær (Ghadamsi), Wargla yur (Ayt Seghrouchen), Shilḥa ay:ur, Greek transliteration Ιαρε (Ιεραχ), and Coptic ouwh, ioh, more than Egyptian iˁḥ “moon” (∥inḥ “surround, enclose”), Hebrew yareaḥ, Amorite Iariḫ, Ugaritic yrg, yrḫ (*wrḫ), and Akkadian warḫu.

Val Sederholm says that “Olea suggests a common root for names of both sun and moon. Hebrew Ya-reah, O-lea speaks to reflected solar light, as it were,” and “The name of the sun god, Re, was originally (and variously) pronounced as liaw or lia.”

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