205-the aryan words in the old testament. iv

8/3/2019 205-The Aryan Words in the Old Testament. IV

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Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania

The ryan Words in the Old Testament. IVAuthor(s): W. St. Clair TisdallSource: The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jul., 1913), pp. 97-105Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1450969 .

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THE ARYAN WORDS IN THE OLD TESTAMENTBY W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, Bedford, Beds., England.

IV.WE now come to Persian words in the Hebrew-Aramaic

text which have-or seem at first sight to have-as theirfirst element the prefixes fra and ham. Having dealt withthese we shall be able to go on to consider certain othersupposed Persian vocables which in reality are not such.I. Infra (Avestic and Achaemenian = Greek 7rpo-,Lat.pro, German vor, Eng. fore) there seems to occur only theword 1l)n.].~in Dan. I. 3, 6; Esther . 3; 6. 9. The B. D. B.Lexicon rightly regards this as the plural of the wordwhich in Avestic isfratema, 'foremost', superlative of fra.As a noun it means 'chief', 'leader'. In Achaemenian theword is fratama, 'first': fratamna mnartiyd,' leading men'.Dahvyundm fratemo-dhdto in Yasht X, x8 = 'prae-positus(prae-fectus) provinciarum '. The certainty of this derivationhas recently been proved by the occurrence of the com-parative of the same word fra in the Elephantine papyri.Fratama (fratema, Skt. pralama) is the superlative of fra,and its comparative in Avestic is fratara. In Sachau'sDrei aramdische Papyrus- Urkunden, I, 5 occurs lnn'm,which would befratara-ka in either dialect of Old Persian.The -ka is an adjectival termination (compare prathama-ka,' foremost', in Sanskrit), not here a diminutive, and the wordis rendered 'prefect'.VOL. IV. 97 HI


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98 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEWII. In ham (Avestic hcm, &c.: Skt. sam, Gk. ;evv, rv'v,Lat. cum, 'together with') we find three words, 7n?, ...wn,and Knlrn.i. The first of these, WDn,occurs in the plural (Aram.)of Dan. 2. 5; 3. 29, and is rightly explained in B. D. B. asfrom the Persian word which in Mediaeval times was

handam and is now andam. It now means 'the body', butit formerly meant also 'a limb'. But we can trace theword farther back. In the Avesta it is handdma, 'a limb'.It does not occur in the Achaemenian inscriptions as yetfound. The word comes from ham, 'together', and da,'to put, make' (Skt. sam+ dha). It was taken into Syriac,as well as into Aramaic, and is there hadddma, 'limb',haddem, 'to dismember'. In Arabic it comes to mean'symmetry', 'stature' (handam). The assimilation of the nto the d in Syr. and Aram. is common enough in otherwords. In Modern Persian andam zadan or anddm anddmkardan (in Armenian andam hos/hel)means 'to dismember',just as the equivalent phrase in Daniel does.

2. The wordI.^=, Dan. 5. 7, x6, 29, is variously read.The received text has

zi=?nand :?ir,7: Ginsburg givesalso the Ketib form K~.Tr~. Andreas reads t?,sn. The

Syriac word is hamn[kd, and the Targ. has :1D. Inthe Talmud the forms q?.,nt, p,:I, and P;. occur. Thelatter word is borrowed from the Greek form MAavatdKrY,sedin Dan. by the LXX and Theodotion. MavLa'Krss usedby Polybius to denote the Celts' torques, 'armlet', 'necklet '.The meaning of the word in Dan. is evidently 'necklace',as has long been known: but what is its etymology? TheB. D. B. Lexicon suggests that the word in its simple andindefinite form should be read hamydnak, and that it isa diminutive of the 'Persian hamydn'. But hamydn is


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THE ARYAN WORDS IN OLD TESTAMENT-TISDALL 99

merely the modern Persian pronunciation of the modernArabic himynn, which is a genuine Arabic derivative of theArabic verb hama', 'to fall', &c., and means (i) 'a loin-cloth', (2) 'a girdle', (3) 'a purse hanging from the girdle'.Arabic words taken into modern Persian do (very occasion-ally) take the Persian diminutive -ak. But we lack proofthat Arabic vocables had won an entrance into Old Persianand there undergone such a change.The derivation of T:nn, however, is really quite clear.In Avestic we have a word maini (=Skt. mant), 'anornament', and specially 'a necklace'. In the Avestaa vulture' with a golden collar' (zarenu-maini) is mentioned.Combining this with the prefix ham, ' together', we shouldhave in Avestic hammaini (which in Achaemenian wouldbe ha(m)mani). The -ka termination is usual enough, notalways having a diminutive sense (see above). Hence theAchaemenian form of the word used in Daniel would beham(m)anika, 'a collection of necklets', a 'neck-chain':probably therefore :p?.,n or T:'a.n n the Masoretic text isright.

The Targ. form :1~.3is derived from the same wordmani (maini), with the -ka but without the prefix. InArmenian the word maneak, 'a necklace', occurs, this beingthe natural form of the vocable in that tongue. From thiscame the Greek loan-word /AavLrK/is (also tzaviaKov). Theother forms in Greek, Ldvvos, dAvoS, lo'vos, are possiblyloan-words from Persian, or possibly original, like the Latinmonile. In any case they are from the same root as mani.In Avestic the forms mina and minu,' necklace', also occur:hence the derivative verb manel, 'to twist, spin, weave', inArmenian.

3. The third word, snn?s, is the proper name of a city,H2


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but none the less the same prefix ham enters into itscomposition. It has a prosthetic N, the n is an early errorfor n, and a final t is lost. All this is clear from comparingthe different forms in which the name is found. ThePeshitta has Ahmdtan, the LXX 'AuaOda;Tiglath Pileserabout 1100 B.C. writes it Amaddna, and the Talmud hast?pi. This is, of course, the city of Hamadan in Persia.Dr. Driver and some others write it with the hard Arabic h,equivalent to the Heb. n. But I have never met it sowritten in Persian. (Hamdan with the h is the name of anArabian tribe, the Ban .Hamdan, having no connexion with

3nr). Darius (Besitun Inscription, II, 76-8) writes thename Ha(n)gmatdna. It comes from ham, 'together', theroot gam, 'to go', and a termination denoting the placewhere anything is done: hence it means 'the place ofholding a hangama (modern anjuman) or assembly'. Theformn Ay3adravaused by Herodotus is more correct thanthe more common Greek 'EK37rava.

III. This is perhaps the best place to deal with twoproper names of men, Haman and Hammedatha, thoughthey have no connexion with the root ham.

i. Haman, trn, Esther 3. I, &c. &c. The B. D. B. Lexiconsays that the etymology is dubious, but on Jensen's authoritysuggests that the word is the name of the Elamite godIHumbanor Humman. Surely we should not accept sucha most unlikely derivation until we are quite certain thatno simple Persian source can be found from which thename can come. In this case, however, the explanationand derivation are quite evident. Haman is the Avesticword human' (nom. sing.), from hu (=Skt. su, Gk. ev),'well', and man, 'to think' (Achaemenian, Sanskrit, andAvestic alike), whence Lat. mens, Gk. ,.vos, Skt. Zmaas, &c.


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THE ARYAN WORDS IN OLD TESTAMENT-TISDALL IOIHence zhmanE means 'well-disposed' (=Skt. sumaznas,Gk. EvuEvrj). As an appellation in its Greek form the wordis fairly well known. In the Masoretic text only the vowelsneed be changed.2. Haman's father's name was Hammedatha, ,nlnlEsther 3. i, &c. The B. D. B. Lexicon suggests that this isfrom maha, 'a month' and ddta, 'given ', i.e.' Moon-given ',and compares the forms Masbdrnj, Mabaras,MasbrnT. Butit would be difficult to account for the first syllable in thisway,-in fact impossible. The name is doubtless Homa-data(which in Avestic would be Haoma-ddta, Skt. Soma-datta),' created by Haoma'. Haoma was the yazata of the haoma-plant, which corresponds in the form of its name to theSanskrit Sorma-plant. Soma-datta is a name which notunfrequently occurs in Sanskrit. With Haoma-ddta compareMithra-dcta (MLOpaBaTdr),created by Mithra'. The ao inAvestic presupposes an au or o in Achaemenian Persian,hence, doubtless, Homa-data is the name we need: in thenom. Homa-ddto would be a common form. That thehaoma or its Genius should be thus honoured will not seemstrange to students of the Avesta (compare the worship ofthe Soma in Vedic times). Tradition says that Zoroaster(Zarathustra) was born to reward his father Pourushaspafor making copious libations of haoma.IV. We come now to deal with some words which arenot really Persian, though they have been thought to belongto that language. Perhaps we should here remind ourreaders that loan-words in the Hebrew-Aramaic text of theBible, if derived from Persian, cannot have come fromthe shortened and corrupted forms in use in the modernlanguage, for these were not yet in existence at the timewhen the Biblical books were written. They must have


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been derived from either Avestic or Achaemenian Persian.Hence it is unscientific to compare modern Persian wordswith them, unless we are sure that these have not beenaltered since ancient days. The modern word Shah,'a king', was in Achaemenian times Khshyaiythiya: henceto suggest that any Biblical word comes from the formShah would be absurd, just as it would be to say that theItalian selvatico is taken from the French sauvage, or theArabic kamns from the French chemise, instead of fromthe Latin silva and camisia respectively.

i. Bearing this in mind, let us examine the proposedetymology of the word ;1n , found in the plural (n5l) inNahum 2. 4, Heb. It is now usually rendered 'steel'. TheB. D. B. says its origin is dubious, but doubtfully givesLagarde's suggestion that it comes from the Persian pzladwith that meaning. But this derivation is impossible forthe simple reason that pulad is a corruption of an older andlonger form, and did not exist in its present shape whenNahum wrote. In Armenian, 'steel' is poghopat,poghovat.Now gh in Armenian represents an antique 1; so we getthe old forms polopat and polovat. From either of these,especially the latter, the Modern Persian pilad is derived,-unless both languages take the word from an ancient Persianword. In the latter case, as Old Persian had no I (another rea-son against Lagarde's proposed etymology), the word wouldprobably be pouru-pat or pouru-vat, the a being short orlong. Pouru in Avestic isparu in Achaemenian (Greek 7roAi,Skt.puru, Germ. voll, ourfull): pat may be from the sameroot as the Sanskrit patu, 'sharp', or from the root pat,found in Avestic and Sanskrit with such meanings as'to fall', 'to fly', &c. (cf. 7reT-avvvtz,et-ere). Vat may bethe Avestic root vad, vadh (Skt. vadh), 'to wound', 'to


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THE ARYAN WORDS IN OLD TESTAMENT-TISDALL 103hurt', whence Avestic vadare, 'weapon', 'blow'. 'Verysharp' or 'much smiting' might describe steel not amiss.However this may be, the fact that steel in Nahum's timewas not called pulad in Persian, but pJourupat, uruvat (or,in Achaemenian, if we may similarly reconstruct the word,parupat, paruvat), shows that Nahum's n15Z cannot comefrom pulad, whatever its etymology may be.

But is there any need for such a search? Is it notsimpler to suppose that n'13 is for either nin.B (agreeingwith tWK)or ninb, referring to :.n'? In either case thisamounts merely to the suggestion that Nahum substitutes 5for I in a well-known Hebrew verb. (He indulges in severaldepartures from the usual practice in vv. 4 and 5 in anycase.) If with Wellhausen and Nowack we read eNOforW:3, we may render n.??nS;W32 'like fire flash thechariots', as the Russian version does. Or, reading nflb,we have, 'like flashing fire are the chariots'. In Assyrianthe root N'nt means 'to be bright', while paradu means'to be impetuous, to hasten'. This seems better than toinvent a word to mean 'steel', for which no properetymology can be found.The puzzle afforded by n2S? is an ancient one. TheLXX guessed that it meant 'reins' (fjviat),and the Vulgatefollows suit. The Peshitta conjectured that the wordshould be n?.m 'torches', but this occurs just below. TheMesidot Da~vd takes the same view. Rashi mentions thisidea, but admits he does not know what rnif means. TheTargum has l'M lln~nn *5mnNnftf&, which seems to mean,'with fire are the elephants of their war-chariots prepared',-truly a remarkable idea!

It may be noted that, though 5.1 is usually masc. sing.,yet Nahum makes the collective noun plural feminine by


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104 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEWhis use of thefern. plur. pronominal suffix in ver. 5 (?nap),' teir appearance'. This justifies our suggestion that nM5Tshould be punctuated nhSi as a fer. plur. present Participle.It may be noticed that Luther's version completely agreeswith this view, rendering 'Seine Wagen leuchten wie Feuer'.There is really no necessity, however, to change theMasoretic w.. into t?3, for the former suits the sense quiteas well.

z. In Deut. 33. 2 occurs the strange word which in theMasoretic text is read n'IM-, and which used to be rendered'a fire of law', 'a fiery law'. This rendering took n1 forthe Old Persian data, which occurs in later books, but wouldhardly be expected in Deut. The B. D. B. Lexicon admitsthat this is erroneous, and gives various suggested correc-tions of the text, which we need not discuss. Accordingto Ginsburg the Ket7b has n'. . We need not try totrace an Aryan etymology for the word, but it may notbe out of place to investigate its meaning and derivation.There seem to be two possible derivations, each of whichappears to give a not unsuitable sense. (i) AncientEgyptian has the word 'ist, 'seat, throne, place', whichcomes from a Semitic root w1, whence in Arabic we haveisadah, asadah, ' cushion'; wisadah, wasadah, 'cushion,pillow, couch, throne', and in the Targum in i Kings o1. I9,nT~w 'stays', 'arms' (of a throne) is used for the Heb.

n1iF. If derived from this root, nrw in Deut. wouldmean ' seat, throne', and we should render, 'At His righthand there is a seat for them': cf. the Heb. l.t 'founda-tion', in Assyrian isdu. (2) The other possible derivationis the root which in Aramaic is '1e 'to pour out'. Itoccurs in Syriac, too, where e?dd dma means 'effusion ofblood'. In Assyrian from this root comes ?adietu [Muss-


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THE ARYAN WORDS IN OLD TESTAMENT-TISDALL IO5Arnolt, p. IoI7], 'grace',' favour'. If we accept this viewwe should render the text,' At His right hand there is gracefor them'.

In either case there seems to be no need of deemingthe text corrupt and adopting conjectural emendations.The ancient versions and commentators render no realhelp. The Targum has 'The book of His right hand gaveus instruction from the midst of the fire'. The LXX haveCKbetLv avrov ayyeXoLt r'E avrov. The Peshitta renders,

'And with Him from myriads of His saints at His righthand. He gave to them'. The Vulgate has 'a fiery law',and even Ibn Ezra and Rashi accept this now explodedrendering. The difficulty which many have thus found inthe passage may perhaps excuse my venturing to deal withit here.

205-the aryan words in the old testament. iv

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