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October 24, 2008
Friday Loanword: pūru
On the one hand, Akkadian pūru means "portion," "parcel," "plot." In this usage, it often refers to property, even real estate. On the other hand, it can mean "lot" or "lottery" as a means allocating property/inheritance or turn in office.
This Akkadian word appears as a foreign word or a loanword only in Esther. As Monkowski, 126, indicates, there is reason to think that the Esther treated it as a foreign word, never fully assimilated into Hebrew.
Esther 3:7
In the first month, meaning the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, they cast פּוּר, meaning the lot (Hebrew הַגּוֹרָ֜ל), before Haman for the day and for the month, and the lot fell on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, meaning the month of Adar.
The author of Esther felt the need to explain an uncommon, foreign, word (פּוּר) here and in Esther 9:24, with its more common near equivalent, גּוֹרָ֜ל. But in Esther 9:26, פּוּר stands without further explanation. Perhaps the proximity to Esther 9:24 provides sufficient explanation.
Mankowski, 127, takes up the difficult issue of פּוּרִים and פֻּרִים in Esther 9.
The connection between פּוּר and פֻּרִים/פּוּרִים is also uncertain, as the historical roots of the festival are not known in detail. Carey Moore suggests that a Persian origin is "probable but not provable," and that "the name Purim is secondary, 'lots' being a folk etymology supplied by Babylonian Jews." Some indirect evidence that the name of the festival occasioned hesitation may be found in the alternation between the simplex and the plene spellings in the same passage (was פּוּרִים with šŭreq employed to make the derivation from פּוּר more convincing?) and by the Greek name φρουραι with two rhos found in the LXX and in Josephus. On the other hand, if what we find in the Esther passage is the explanation of a difficult foreign word by means of a folk etymology, it is curious that this etymology should make use of yet another foreign word so arcane as to require a gloss. It would seem rather that we are given a learned etymology, even if it be a mistaken one. [Internal reference to Moore omitted from quotation but provided below]
The origin of Akkadian pūru is itself a mystery. I do agree with Mankowski, 127, that it is unlikely that it comes from Sumerian bur, bowl, but this is not completely out of the question.
References:
Moore, Carey A., Esther: Introduction, Translation and Notes, Anchor Bible, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971, xlix
Posted by Duane Smith at October 24, 2008 8:31 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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