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'''This entry is not finished'''
'''Etymology'''
 
The name '''A<small>LMA</small>''', as [[Hugh W. Nibley|Hugh Nibley]] pointed out some years ago,<ref>[[Hugh W. Nibley|Nibley, Hugh W.]] Book Review of ''Bar-Kochba'' by Yigal Yadin in ''[[Brigham Young University|BYU]] Studies'' [https://byustudies.byu.edu/showTitle.aspx?title=8174 14 (Autumn 1973): 121].</ref> is now attested in an undeniably [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]]/Semitic context, namely, the letters of Bar Kokhba from the Second Jewish Revolt in Palestine around the year A.D. 132. Therein, the name, '''A<small>LMA</small>''' ben Yehudah, appears in a business document.<ref>At the end of the fourth line from the top it is spelled ''ʾlmʾ'', and at the beginning of the fourth line from the bottom ''ʾlmh''.</ref>
 
In [[LEHI|L<small>EHI</small>]]'s day the name would have been spelled with an initial ''ʿayin'', ''ʿlm'', not the ''aleph'' of the Bar Kokhba period.<ref>The orthography of [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]] in the first centuries B.C. and A.D., especially Samaritan and Hasmonean [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]], 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|H<small>EBREW</small>]] 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.</ref> The [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]] common noun ''ʿlm'', meaning "youth" or "lad," occurs twice in the Old Testament, [http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/1-sam/17.56?lang=eng#55 1 Samuel 17:56] and [http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/1-sam/20.22?lang=eng#21 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 [http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/isa/7.14?lang=eng#13 Isaiah 7:14].
 
The form of '''A<small>LMA</small>''' in the Book of Mormon reflects the [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]] segholate noun form, ''ʿelem'', as in [http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/1-sam/20.22?lang=eng#21 1 Samuel 20:22], but with the addition of the hypocoristic ending —''a''.<ref>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 ([http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/1-kgs/4.6?lang=eng#5 1 Kings 4:6] passim) shows up in its plene form in [http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/1-chr/9.16?lang=eng#15 1 Chronicles 9:16] as Obadiah. The same is true of the biblical personal name Shebna ([http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/isa/22.15?lang=eng#14 Isaiah 22:15]), which is most likely "a short form, probably from" Shebnayah(u) (''[[Koehler, Ludwig, and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. 5 vols. revised by W. Baumgartner and Johann J. Stamm. Leiden: Brill, 1994. trans. of 5-volume 3rd German edition.|HALOT]]''). There is also an Ammonite analog to '''A<small>LMA</small>''' ''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.</ref> When an ending is added, the accent shifts and the original /a/ vowel of the segholate ''qatl'' form returns.<ref>The Arabic cognate, ''ģulām'', which carries the same meanings as the [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]], is not a ''qatl'' form.</ref> (The pausal form, because of the shift in accent, also reveals the original /a/ vowel, e.g., as in the pausal form in [http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/1-sam/17.56?lang=eng#55 1 Samuel 17:56].)
 
Given the usage of ''ģlm'' in Ugaritic literature<ref>Ugarit was a small city-state that flourished between about 1500 and 1200 BC just north of present-day Latakia on the [[SYRIANS|S<small>YRIAN</small>]] coast. The language spoken there is related to [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]] and shares with it many precise poetic structures and vocabulary words.</ref> (''ģlm'' is the spelling of the name before ''ʿ'' (''ʿayin'') and ''ģ'' (''ģayin'') fell together in [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]] orthography) as an epithet, the significance of '''A<small>LMA</small>''' 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" (''[[Keilschriftliche Texte aus Ugarit. M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín, eds. vol. 1. AOAT 24. Kevelaer and Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1976.|KTU]]'' 1.14.II.8-9).<ref>As mentioned previously, the two proto-Semitic consonants, ''ʿayin'' and ''ģayin'' [represented in Ugaritic by ''ʿ'' and ''ģ'' respectively], fall together in [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]] orthography.</ref> If the Book of Mormon person name is analogous to this epithet, then '''A<small>LMA</small>''' 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 '''A<small>LMA</small>''', when first introduced, is called a "young man" ([http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/17.2?lang=eng#1 Mosiah 17:2], first noted by [[Robert F.Smith|RFS]]).<ref>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 .</ref> In this sense, '''A<small>LMA</small>''' would be analogous to the [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]] ''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|H<small>EBREW</small>]] Exodus from [[EGYPT|E<small>GYPT</small>]] by about a thousand years.<ref>Ebla texts come from the latter half of the Early Bronze Age, around a thousand years before [[MOSES|M<small>OSES</small>]], and are written in a Semitic language related to [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]].</ref> There the name is written ''al<sub>6</sub>-ma'', as would be expected in cuneiform.<ref>See [[Terrance L. Szink]], "The Personal Name 'ALMA' at Ebla," ''The Religious Educator'' 1/1 (2000): 53-56.</ref>


'''Etymology'''
Of course, other etymologies are possible, though less likely. The Arabic root ''ʿalama'' / ''ʿalima'', "knowing, erudite; distinguished; chief, chieftain," etc. ([[Robert F. Smith|RFS]] and [[John A. Tvedtnes|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|H<small>EBREW</small>]], and could possibly mean, with hypocoristic ''aleph'' ending, "He (God) is bound." However, this root is attested in [[HEBREW|H<small>EBREW</small>]] only in two oblique niphal and piel verbal forms, neither of which would allow the spelling as it appears in the Book of Mormon.


'''ALMA''', as Hugh Nibley pointed out some years ago (BYU Studies 14 [Autumn 1973]: 121), is now attested in an undeniably ancient Semitic context, the letters of Bar Kokhba, from the Second Jewish Revolt in Palestine around the year 130 AD. The name, Alma ben Yehudah, appears in a business document at the end of the fourth line from the top, ''ʾlmʾ'' and at the beginning of the fourth line from the bottom ''ʾlmh''.


Though the initial consonant of A<small>LMA</small> in the Bar Kokhba letter is an aleph, the name probably should be derived from the root with an initial ''ǵayin, ǵlm'', but ''ʿlm'' in Hebrew, where the two proto-Semitic consonants ''ǵ'' and ''ʿ'' have fallen together as ''ʿ'' in Hebrew. The orthography of Hebrew in the first centuries BC and AD, especially Samaritan and Hasmonean Hebrew, also began to reflect the coalescence of the consonants aleph and ayin in the spoken language. The same interchange occurs in Phoenician, e.g., both ''ʾlm'' and ''ʿlm'' mean “eternity” (see DNWSI, II, 859).
'''Variants'''


''ʿlm'' occurs twice in the Old Testament, [http://scriptures.lds.org/en/1_sam/17/56#56 1 Samuel 17:56] and [http://scriptures.lds.org/en/1_sam/20/22#22 20:22], with the meaning “youth” or “lad.” Both occurrences contain a common vowel pattern for nouns in Semitic languages (the segholate form). The first occurrence, because of its position in the sentence, supplies the original vowel, the ''a'' of the qatl form. Thus, ''ʿlm'' would have been pronounced ''ʿalmu'' in proto-Semitic, exactly what would be required for the Book of Mormon form. (The final -''u'' is the nominative singular masculine case ending. Long before the vowel markings were added to the Hebrew consonantal script of the Old Testament such vowels had all but disappeared from spoken Hebrew. Even in the earliest Hebrew documents, when case endings theoretically might still have existed in spoken Hebrew, such vowels would not have appeared because the consonantal script normally does not represent vowels in the writing, except in a few instances of the representation of long vowels.)  
'''[[Deseret Alphabet]]:''' 𐐈𐐢𐐣𐐈 (ælmæ)


The final -''a'' of A<small>LMA</small> probably represents a hypocoristic ending, that is, the name was shortened in antiquity as a form of endearment. Such hypocoristic endings commonly represented the name of a deity in a sharply contracted form, most often by a single final consonant, usually aleph (ℵ) but also with final he (ה), such as in the Bar Kokhba letter. If the biblical PN Baasha, ''bʿšʾ'', is an example of such a hypocoristic ending, then perhaps this name is a morphological parallel to A<small>LMA</small>.
'''Notes'''
----
<references/>


The significance of the name A<small>LMA</small> becomes clear from its use as an epithet in one of the Ugaritic mythological texts of the Late Bronze Age Levant. Ugarit was a small city-state that flourished between about 1500 and 1200 BC just north of present-day Latakia on the [[SYRIANS|S<small>YRIAN</small>]] coast. The language spoken there was closely related to Hebrew and shares with it many precise poetic structures and vocabulary words. In one of the more famous epics from Ugaritic, the hero, named KRT, is called ''ǵlm ʾl'', “lad of [the god] El” (KTU 1.14.II.8–9). If the Book of Mormon name can be derived from this epithet, then A<small>LMA</small> 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, and who is called "a young man" ([http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/17.2?lang=eng#1 Mosiah 17:2]), and "a man of God" ([http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/2.30?lang=eng#29 Alma 2:30]). Of course, other etymologies are possible, though less likely. The Arabic root ''ʿalama / ʿalima'', “knowing, erudite; distinguished; chief, chieftain,” etc. (suggested by both [[Robert F. Smith|RFS]] and [[John A. Tvedtnes|JAT]]), yields plausible meanings. 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 verbal forms, niphal ([http://scriptures.lds.org/en/isa/53/7#7 Isaiah 53:7]) and piel, neither of which would allow the spelling as it appears in the Book of Mormon.  
'''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.


Also less likely is a meaning based on the Hebrew ''ʿlm'', “eternity, world.” Nibley mentions that A<small>LMA</small> is a popular Arab name meaning “young man, a coat of mail, a mountain, or a sign” (ABM 59).
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.


Notice the ESA PN ''ʿlm'', appearing on no less than seven monuments found in Arabia, four of them Safaitic; the Greek transliterations give the forms ''ʾolaimou, ʾallam'' and ''ʾallum'' (HWN in ABM 239 and especially fn. 28 to Chap. 22).  
Cyrus H. Gordon, ''The Ancient Near East'' (Norton: New York, 1965), 93-100.


I thank [[John W. Welch]] of BYU Studies for pointing out to me the second occurrence of A<small>LMA</small> in the Bar Kokhba letter, in the fourth line from the bottom. For the original publication in English of the Bar Kokhba letter see Yigael Yadin, ''Bar Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Second Jewish Revolt Against Rome'' (New York: Random House, 1971), 176–7.  
K.A. Matthews, "The Paleo-Hebrew leviticus Scroll from Qumran," ''[[Biblical Archaeologist|BA]]'' 50:1 (March 1987): 50-51.


For the latest transcription of the Ugaritic text consult 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. More about Ugarit and the Old Testament can be found in the chapter “Ugarit” in Cyrus H. Gordon, The Ancient Near East (Norton: New York, 1965), 93–100.  
S. Moscati, et al., ''An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages'' (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1969), §8.51-58.  


For additional information about the interchange of aleph and ayin around the 1st c. AD, see the succinct comments by K. A. Mathews, “The Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll from Qumran,” BA 50:1 (March 1987): 50–51; for the Semitic languages in general, see 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.


For a listing of examples of -''a'' as a hypocoristic suffix in [[ISRAELITES|I<small>SRAELITE</small>]] personal names see Martin Noth, ''Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung'' (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966 [photomechanical copy of the Stuttgart 1928 edition]), 38. For a general discussion of hypocoristica with specific reference to West Semitic Amorite names see Herbert B. Huffmon, ''Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1965), 130–1; for Ammonite personal names roughly contemporary with Lehi confer 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, particularly the lists at the end of the article; for hypocoristic West Semitic names from first millennium Mesopotamia see 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, with a note on p. 150 about hypocoristic aleph (ℵ) and he (ה).
Herbert B. Huffmon, ''Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts'' (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1965), 130-1.


'''Variants'''
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.


'''Deseret Alphabet:'''
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.


'''Notes'''
----
[[Category:Names]][[Category:Lehite PN]][[Category:Lehite GN]]
[[Category:Names]][[Category:Lehite PN]][[Category:Lehite GN]]
<div style="text-align: center;"> [[AKISH|<<]] Alma [[ALPHA|>>]] </div>
==[[Name Index]]==
<big>
{|border="0" cellpadding="1" width="100%pt"
|-
|[[A]]
|[[B]]
|[[C]]
|[[D]]
|[[E]]
|<font color="lightgray">F</font>
|[[G]]
|[[H]]
|[[I]]
|[[J]]
|[[K]]
|[[L]]
|[[M]]
|[[N]]
|[[O]]
|[[P]]
|<font color="lightgray">Q</font>
|[[R]]
|[[S]]
|[[T]]
|[[U]]
|<font color="lightgray">V</font>
|<font color="lightgray">W</font>
|<font color="lightgray">X</font>
|<font color="lightgray">Y</font>
|[[Z]]
|}

Revision as of 18:09, 17 August 2020

Lehite PN 1. High priest, ca. 148 BC (Mosiah 17:2, 3; 18:1, 5, 7, 12, 14 (x2), 15, 18, 27, 33, 34; 21:30, 34; 23:Preface, 1, 6, 15, 16, 26, 27, 29, 35, 36, 37 (x2); 24:8, 9, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23; 25:6, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18 (x2), 19, 21; 26:7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 33, 34, 37, 38; 27:1 (x2); 27:14; 28:20; 29:47; Alma 1:Preface; 4:4; 5:3, 11 (x2))
2. Son of No. 1, high priest and chief judge, ca. 100 BC (Mosiah 27:8 (x2), 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 32 (x2); 28:20; 29:42, 43, 44; Alma 1:Preface (x2), 2, 10, 11, 12, 23; 2:16, 20, 21, 29, 30, 31, 32 (x2), 33; 3:22; 4:4, 7 (x2), 11, 15, 18, 20; 5:Preface, 1, 3, 61; 6:1, 7, 8; 7:Preface; 8:1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22, 23, 27, 29, 30; 9:Preface (x2), 1, 31; 10:10, 31; 11:20; 12:1, 2, 7 (x2), 8, 9, 19, 22; 13:21, 31; 14:2 (x2), 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28 (x2), 29 (x3); 15:1 (x2), 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18; 16:5, 6 (x2), 13, 15; 17:Preface, 1, 2 (x2); 27:16, 19, 20, 25 (x2); 30:29, 30, 31, 32, 37, 39, 43, 44, 46, 49, 50 (x2), 51, 54, 55; 31:1, 2, 5, 11, 12, 19, 24, 36, 38; 32:4, 5, 6; 33:1, 2, 12; 34:1; 35:6, 7, 14 (x2), 15; 36:Preface; 38:Preface; 39:Preface; 43:1 (x2), 23, 24 (x2); 44:24; 45:2, 4, 6, 8, 15, 17, 18, 19; 48:18; 50:38 (x3), 41; 63:1, 12, 17; Helaman 4:21; 5:41; 6:25; 3 Nephi 1:Preface (x2); 5:12; Ether 12:13)
Lehite GN 3. Valley named from No. 1, ca. 148 BC (Mosiah 24:20, 21)

Etymology

The name ALMA, as Hugh Nibley pointed out some years ago,[1] is now attested in an undeniably HEBREW/Semitic context, namely, the letters of Bar Kokhba from the Second Jewish Revolt in Palestine around the year A.D. 132. Therein, the name, ALMA ben Yehudah, appears in a business document.[2]

In LEHI's day the name would have been spelled with an initial ʿayin, ʿlm, not the aleph of the Bar Kokhba period.[3] 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.[4] When an ending is added, the accent shifts and the original /a/ vowel of the segholate qatl form returns.[5] (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[6] (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).[7] 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).[8] 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.[9] There the name is written al6-ma, as would be expected in cuneiform.[10]

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


  1. Nibley, Hugh W. Book Review of Bar-Kochba by Yigal Yadin in BYU Studies 14 (Autumn 1973): 121.
  2. At the end of the fourth line from the top it is spelled ʾlmʾ, and at the beginning of the fourth line from the bottom ʾlmh.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. The Arabic cognate, ģulām, which carries the same meanings as the HEBREW, is not a qatl form.
  6. 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.
  7. As mentioned previously, the two proto-Semitic consonants, ʿayin and ģayin [represented in Ugaritic by ʿ and ģ respectively], fall together in HEBREW orthography.
  8. 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 .
  9. 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.
  10. 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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