Thursday, January 17, 2019

Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten on Greek loanwords in the Hebrew Bible



There are only a few Greek loanwords in Biblical Hebrew, and a few in biblical Aramaic. Two words for coins in Hebrew appear to be Greek loanwords, mediated by Greek traders and/or Aramaic:

אֲדַרְכֹּן (“daric,” a gold coin, Ezra 8:27; 1 Chr 9:27) <Greek δαρεικων < OP *daru(i)yaka, *zaruyaka, “gold”

דּרְכְּמוֹן (“drachma,” a silver coin, Ezra 2:69; Neh 7:69-71) < Greek δραχμη

The silver tetradrachm was the most widely circulated coin during the Persian period; the earliest examples from the province of Yehud date to the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. Persian imperial coinage including the gold daric, was introduced by Darius I around 500 BCE. The mention of these coins is indicative of the time when these texts were written. The Chronicler’s enumeration of David’s temple fund in darics is a vivid anachronism, which illuminates the Chronicler’s historical context. (Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten, How Old is the Hebrew Bible? A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018], 26-27)