Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew.

• Author: Hurowitz, Victor Avigdor
• Position: Reviews of Books

Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew. By PAUL V. MANKOWSKI. Harvard Semitic Studies, vol. 47. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 2000. Pp. xviii + 232. $29.95.

Since cuneiform was deciphered a century and a half ago, Akkadian has provided bountiful new lexical material offering valuable parallels to numerous words in biblical Hebrew and keys to their meanings. Yet, words appearing in the two languages are not necessarily of one cloth. Some may be designated cognates, common Semitic words, or Kulturworter, while others are foreign words or loanwords. Mankowski's revised Harvard dissertation (1997), strives to determine what constitutes evidence for claiming that a particular lexeme is indeed a true loanword and not something else (p. 4). The author adopts a rather strict definition of "loanword" as a new word in one language created by phonetically imitating an existing word in another language. "Cognate" words in contrast, are words found in both languages but derived from either a third language or Proto-Semitic. Unfortunately, "loanwords" are difficult to detect and distinguish from other possible types of common words unless they stand out in the borrower languag e in such a way as to call attention to themselves. Words appearing in unexpected manners, with Sumerian etymologies, denoting peculiarly Mesopotamian concepts, appearing in Hebrew in several forms, attested only in Hebrew and Akkadian, or displaying frequent and well-developed uses in Akkadian but rare and limited use in Hebrew are among the most likely candidates for loanword status.

The heart of this book (pp. 15-152) is a study of one hundred and two individual words, seventy of which Mankowski determines to be Akkadian loanwords, ten of which are probably loans but questionable, and twenty-two of which are serious contenders but ultimately fail the author's test. Twenty-six loanwords (including month names) entered Hebrew through Aramaic. Discussions emphasize phonological issues that are the acid test of the loan hypothesis, with less attention given to semantic matters. After each lemma, the proposed trajectory of the word's history is schematized, scholarly proposals are surveyed and evaluated, and the word's exact status is pronounced. Versional evidence and exegetical traditions regarding the Hebrew words and dialectal differences within Akkadian are given proper consideration in weighing the loan hypotheses. Toponyms, personal names, and month names that are all obvious borrowings are not included. The third part of the book (pp. 153-65) is a synthetic...