Page:Judaism and Islam, a prize essay - Geiger - 1898.pdf/49

 HEBEEW WORDS IN THE QURAN. 31

even when able to speak Arabic, kept to the Rabbinical Hebrew names for their religious conceptions ; so words which from their derivation are shown to be not Arabic but Hebrew, or better still Rabbinic, must be held to prove the Jewish origin of the conceptions expressed. The passage already quoted about the foreign language spoken by those who were accused of helping Muhammad in writing the Quran seems to point to the use among the Jews of a language other than Arabic. The object of this chapter is to enumerate the words which have passed from Rabbinical Hebrew into the Quran, and so into the Arabic language.

Tablet, ! Ark. The termination fit is a fairly certain evidence that the word is not of Arabic but of Rabbinical Hebrew origin ; 2 for this dialect of Hebrew has adopted in the place of other endings this termination, which is very common also in Ghaldaic and Syriac ; and I venture to assert that no pure Arabic word ends in this way. 3 Our word appears in two different passages with two different meanings : first, where the mother of Moses is told to put her son into an ark, 4 the signification being here purely Hebrew ; but from this it arose that the ark of the covenant 5 was also called by this name. It is used thus especially 6 in the sense of coming before the ark in prayer. In the second Sura 7 we find it mentioned as a sign of the

2 Rabbinical Hebrew

3 Oomp. w*\ and

4 Sura XX. 39. Comp. ^2 rQfl Ex. II. 3.

5 p-1^ in the Bible. 6

^S?b. "HI? Comp. Mishna Berachoth V. 4.

The Arabians sometimes use &i*J\ *-. also in the meaning of "ark of the covenant" (D'Herbelot Bibliotheqne Orientate under " Aschmouil.")