Egyptian etymology assessment


The Rabbis of the Middle Ages, be it Redak, Maimonides, Saadia Gaon, Ibn Ezra, they all resorted to Arabic when they are in a corner and do not know what to do with a rare word in the book of Job.

Now that we can study Middle Egyptian, the language Moses learned when he entered the court of Egypt at the age of 12, those rare words in Job, the Pentateuch and Psalm 90 make more sense.

When a rare word is found in Sumerian, or Akkadian then one can be sure that it existed in the days of  Moses in that form and the likelihood is that the meaning will be similar.

However, if a word is not in Aramaic, not in Akkadian, not in Sumerian but in Arabic, then it is best to disregard Arabic meanings to delve into the rare word of Moses since Arabic dates post 650 CE nearly 2000 years after Moses.

A better option is to look at Egyptian meanings.

In Job 40:17 is the word 'rz which is related to the Middle Egyptian word `š = ceder.

In Job 39:20 is the word 'ymh which is better rendered with Middle Egyptian as imtu "terror or horror".

In Job 38:40 is the word ‘rb which is better rendered with the Middle Egyptian word `rf meaning "to enclose, to encompass or to contain".

Moses used the word 'nwš for "man" or "mankind" a lot in his vocabulary. Interestingly, the Late Egyptian word for man is s.3.n.s.

In Job 36:27 the word l'dw can probably be better understood by 3쇼 or i3dt "a lack or a need".

Ugartic that Dahood tried to find in the book of Job has its place. Moses predated the Ugaritic corpus, by nearly 200 years since the Myth corpus of the Baal cycle and the Anath myth dates to 1250 BCE and even a little later. That is the time when the two temples where they were found, Dagan and Baal, were functional. Support for this can be found with Chicago Ugaritic expert Dennis Pardee.

It is thus, fruitful to study Middle Egyptian, since it opens up to our understanding the rare words in the book of Job. Suddenly we know, they are not misreadings, misspellings, Arabisms, but they are Middle Egyptian loanwords through the hand of Moses himself in 1460 BCE in Midian, hiding from Thutmosis III, the Napoleon of Egypt of his times.

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