The linguistic history of: From textual corruption to lexical innovation

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Abstract

The paper discusses the linguistic history of the Hebrew word which is a hapax legomenon in the Bible (Isa 14:4), but is also documented several times in the Dead Sea scrolls. Since text-critics commonly hold it to result from a scribal mistake (the original reading being, as witnessed by 1QIsaa), its sense and distribution throughout the Second Temple period have eluded explanation thus far, and the exact relation between the two corpora of Biblical and Qumran Hebrew remains obscure. It is proposed that sound changes peculiar to the Greco-Roman period have facilitated a lexical reanalysis of and that the word was eventually integrated into the lexicon of Second Temple Hebrew by means of associative etymology, which is a recognized mechanism of semantic change.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)91-114
Number of pages24
JournalRevue de Qumran
Volume26
Issue number101
StatePublished - Jun 2013

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Religious studies

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