ALMA
Etymology
Book of Mormon ALMA could be from the Hebrew common noun עלם ՙlm, meaning "youth" or "lad," which occurs twice in the Old Testament, 1 Samuel 17:56 and 20:22, plus a hypocoristic ending ā meaning “Lord.” (Its feminine form, עלמה ՙalmâ, appears nine times in the Old Testament, where it means “a young woman,” including the famous passage in Isaiah 7:14) ALMA would then mean “Young man of God.” Alma the first, when initially introduced, is called a “young man” (Mosiah 17:2).
ALMA reflects the Hebrew qatl form of the segholate noun, עלם ՙelem, as for example in 1 Samuel 20:22. Though the anglicized forms ALMA and ՙelem do not appear to be related, a common but simple transformation occurs in Hebrew when an ending is added to a Hebrew segholate noun: the noun reverts generally back to its qatl form.[1] Thus, with the addition of the hypocoristic ending –a,[2] the segholate form ՙelem would become ՙalmā՚.[3] (The pausal form, because of the shift in accent, also reveals the original /a/ vowel, e.g., as in the pausal form in 1 Samuel 17:56. Of interest is the fact that the King James translation of this verse renders ՙelem [in this verse it is written ՙālem with sillûq] as “stripling.”)
The root ՙlm, meaning "youth" or "lad," occurs in other Semitic languages, though not always with the same spelling as in Hebrew. This vocable is pronounced in proto-Semitic with an initial ǵ (ǵayin). But because the proto-Semitic phonemesʿ (ʿayin) and ǵ (ǵayin) fell together in Hebrew orthography, the Hebrew character ע represents both phonemes. However, the Hebrew spoken in Lehi’s day no doubt still made the distinction.[4] Thus, in Ugaritic literature (at least 600 years before Lehi[5]), this vocable is attested in the spelling ǵlm and means “young boy, young man, page, valet,” etc.,[6] similar to Hebrew.
Of significance for the name ALMA is the fact that it appears as an epithet of the hero in one of the more famous epics from Ugaritic, namely, KRT (pronounced either “Kirta” or “Keret”). Therein, the hero is called ǵlm ՚l, "lad of [the god] El" (KTU 1.14.II.8-9).[7] If the Book of Mormon ALMA is analogous to this epithet, then the hypocoristic form ALMA would mean exactly what the Ugaritic epithet meant, "lad of God," a rather appropriate meaning for both Book of Mormon prophets who bear this name, especially since Alma the first, when initially introduced, is called a “young man” (Mosiah 17:2).[8] In this sense, ALMA would be analogous to the Hebrew גבר geber, which means “man, hero,” and appears in names such as Gabriel, “hero/man of God.”
In LEHI's day the name would have been spelled with an initial ʿayin, ʿlm, not the aleph of the Bar Kokhba period.[9] The HEBREW common noun ʿlm, meaning "youth" or "lad," occurs twice in the Old Testament, 1 Samuel 17:56 and 20:22. The King James of 1 Samuel 17:56 translates עֶלֶם as “stripling.” In its feminine form, ʿalmâ appears nine times in the Old Testament, where it means "a young woman (of marriageable age)," including the famous passage in Isaiah 7:14.
The form of ALMA in the Book of Mormon reflects the HEBREW segholate noun form, ʿelem, as in 1 Samuel 20:22, but with the addition of the hypocoristic ending —a.[10] When an ending is added, the accent shifts and the original /a/ vowel of the segholate qatl form returns.[11] (The pausal form, because of the shift in accent, also reveals the original /a/ vowel, e.g., as in the pausal form in 1 Samuel 17:56.)
Given the usage of ģlm in Ugaritic literature[12] (ģlm is the spelling of the name before ʿ (ʿayin) and ģ (ģayin) fell together in HEBREW orthography) as an epithet, the significance of ALMA as a personal name becomes clear. In one of the more famous epics from Ugaritic, the hero, named KRT (pronounced either "Kirta" or "Keret") is called ģlm ʾl, "lad of [the god]El" (KTU 1.14.II.8-9).[13] If the Book of Mormon person name is analogous to this epithet, then ALMA would probably mean exactly what the Ugaritic epithet meant, "lad of God," a rather appropriate meaning for both Book of Mormon prophets who bear this name, especially since ALMA, when first introduced, is called a "young man" (Mosiah 17:2, first noted by RFS).[14] In this sense, ALMA would be analogous to the HEBREW geber, which means "man, hero," and which appears in names such as Gabriel, "hero/man of God."
In addition to its post-biblical attestation as a personal name in the Bar Kokhba letter, its use as an epithet in Ugaritic literature, and the biblical usage as a common noun, "youth, young man," the name is also attested in the Ebla cuneiform texts that predate the HEBREW Exodus from EGYPT by about a thousand years.[15] There the name is written al6-ma, as would be expected in cuneiform.[16]
Of course, other etymologies are possible, though less likely. The Arabic root ʿalama / ʿalima, "knowing, erudite; distinguished; chief, chieftain," etc. (RFS and JAT), yields plausible meanings and may even contribute to a (as yet unrecognized) play on words. Also, ʾlm means "to bind" or "to be dumb" in HEBREW, and could possibly mean, with hypocoristic aleph ending, "He (God) is bound." However, this root is attested in HEBREW only in two oblique niphal and piel verbal forms, neither of which would allow the spelling as it appears in the Book of Mormon.
Variants
Deseret Alphabet: 𐐈𐐢𐐣𐐈 (ælmæ)
Notes
- ↑ There are also qitl and qutl forms, in addition to the qatl forms. For a discussion of the qatl/qitl/qutl forms in Hebrew and the forms they can take, see Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, ed., enlarged and revised, E. Kautzsch and A. E. Cowley, 2nd English edition, 1910 (Reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), §84a, commonly called Gesenius.
- ↑ For an explanation of hypocoristic names, see under “Kurznamen,” in Martin Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung (Reprint: Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms, 1966; from the original Stuttgart, Germany: Kohlhammer, 1928), 36-41. In general, hypocoristic endings often represented a theophoric element (the name of a deity in a sharply contracted form), as Noth states, by a single final consonant, often aleph (such as in the first occurrence in the Bar Kokhba letter mentioned below), but also with final heh (such as in the second occurrence in the Bar Kokhba letter), and with yod, among other suffixes. A good example is the personal name חנא from Samaria ostracon 30:3, from the eighth century BC, long before any substantial Aramaic influence could account for the final aleph in a personal name. This name, according to Shmuel Aḥituv (Echoes From the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period, trans. Anson F. Rainey [Jerusalem: Carta, 2008], 481) is vocalized ḥānnāʾ and is a “hypocoristic from חננאל.” (I count 14 names in Aḥituv’s book that have a hypocoristic aleph ending, thus forming a near bracket of Lehi’s day.) The name probably means “Grace of God,” or “God is grace,” analogous to “young man of God” proposed below for ALMA. See also from the Solomonic time period the hypocoristic name Abda, meaning “servant of deity” (1 Kings 4:6 passim). The plene form of the name (not the same individual) appears later as a diminutive in 1 Chronicles 9:16 as Obadiah, meaning “young servant of Yahweh.” (See Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, tr. M.E.J. Richardson, The Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, CD-ROM Edition, [Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill, NV 1994-2000]. Hereafter HALOT.) The same is true of the biblical personal name Shebna (Isaiah 22:15), which is most likely "a short form, probably from" Shebanyah(u) (HALOT). There is also an Ammonite analog to ALMA, ՙbd՚, that would mean "the servant of [the god]." See Robert Deutsch and André Lemaire, Biblical Period Personal Seals in the Shlomo Moussaieff Collection (Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publications, 2000), nos. 150 and 177.
- ↑ The best example of this shift in vowels when a suffix is added is the feminine form ՙalmâ, which comes from the masculine form ՙelem. The Arabic cognate, ǵulām, which carries many of the same meanings as Hebrew ՙelem, is not a qatl form.
- ↑ The fact that some nouns containing an ʿayin were transliterated into Septuagint Greek as if the ʿayin were a /g/ (e.g., Hebrew עַזָּה, became Greek Γάζα), demonstrates that at the time of the production of the Septuagint the difference between ʿ (ʿayin) and ǵ (ǵayin), was still, at least historically, if not in pronunciation, distinct.
- ↑ Ugarit was a small city-state that flourished between about 1500 and 1200 BC just north of present-day Latakia on the Syrian coast. The language spoken there is related to Hebrew and shares with it many precise poetic structures and vocabulary.
- ↑ For the Ugaritic see the definitions in Manfried Dietrich and Oswald Loretz, Analytic Ugaritic Bibliography (Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany: Neukirchener Verlag, 1996), 821. See also J. Hoftijzer and K. Jongeling, Dictionary of the North-west Semitic Inscriptions (New York: E. J. Brill, 1995), 862, where the definition “man” is given.
- ↑ Manfried Dietrich, Oswald Loretz, and Joaquin Sanmartin, The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places (Münster, Germany: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995), 37.
- ↑ See Matt Bowen, “‘And He Was a Young Man’: The Literary Preservation of Alma’s Autobiographical Wordplay,” FARMS’ Insights 30/4 (2010).
- ↑ The orthography of HEBREW in the first centuries B.C. and A.D., especially Samaritan and Hasmonean HEBREW, began to reflect the coalescence of the pronunciation in the spoken language of the consonants aleph and ayin/ģayin. The same interchange occurs in Phoenician, e.g., both ʾlm and ʿlm mean "eternity." Because the HEBREW alphabet did not have separate signs for ayin and ģayin, both are represented by the same sign. By the time of the Bar Kokhba letters, the aleph, the ayin, and the ģayin were not distinguished in pronunciation, and therefore were on occasion confused in the orthography.
- ↑ Hypocoristic endings commonly represented a theophoric element (the name of a deity in a sharply contracted form), most often by a single final consonant, usually aleph, but also with final he, such as in the second occurrence in the Bar Kokhba letter. For example the hypocoristic name Abda (1 Kings 4:6 passim) shows up in its plene form in 1 Chronicles 9:16 as Obadiah. The same is true of the biblical personal name Shebna (Isaiah 22:15), which is most likely "a short form, probably from" Shebnayah(u) (HALOT). There is also an Ammonite analog to ALMA ʿbdʾ, that would mean "the servant of [the god]." See Robert Deutsch and André Lemaire, Biblical Period Personal Seals in the Shlomo Moussaieff Collection (Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publications, 2000), nos. 150 and 177.
- ↑ The Arabic cognate, ģulām, which carries the same meanings as the HEBREW, is not a qatl form.
- ↑ Ugarit was a small city-state that flourished between about 1500 and 1200 BC just north of present-day Latakia on the SYRIAN coast. The language spoken there is related to HEBREW and shares with it many precise poetic structures and vocabulary words.
- ↑ As mentioned previously, the two proto-Semitic consonants, ʿayin and ģayin [represented in Ugaritic by ʿ and ģ respectively], fall together in HEBREW orthography.
- ↑ Robert F. Smith “Some ‘Neologisms’ from the Mormon Canon,” 1973 Conference on the Language of the Mormons, May 31, 1973 (Provo: BYU Language Research Center, 1973), 65, online at https://www.scribd.com/document/363522963/SOME-NEOLOGISMS-FROM-THE-MORMON-CANON .
- ↑ Ebla texts come from the latter half of the Early Bronze Age, around a thousand years before MOSES, and are written in a Semitic language related to HEBREW.
- ↑ See Terrance L. Szink, "The Personal Name 'ALMA' at Ebla," The Religious Educator 1/1 (2000): 53-56.
Bibliography
Yigael Yadin, Bar Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Second Jewish Revolt Against Rome (New York: Random House, 1971), 176-7.
M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartin, The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugaritic, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995), 1.14.II.8-9.
Cyrus H. Gordon, The Ancient Near East (Norton: New York, 1965), 93-100.
K.A. Matthews, "The Paleo-Hebrew leviticus Scroll from Qumran," BA 50:1 (March 1987): 50-51.
S. Moscati, et al., An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1969), §8.51-58.
Martin Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966 [photomechanical copy of the Stuttgart 1928 edition]), 38.
Herbert B. Huffmon, Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1965), 130-1.
Kent P. Jackson, "Ammonite Personal Names in the Context of the West Semitic Onomasticon," in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 507-521.
Ran Zadok, On West Semites in Babylonia During the Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods: An Onomastic Study (Jerusalem: Wanaarta and Tel-Aviv University, 1977), 148-150.
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