Saturday, September 3, 2022

Proposed Etymologies for "Rabbanah" and "Rameumptom"

In the Book of Mormon, two unique words are also interpreted, “Rabbanah” and “Rameumptom”:

 

And one of the king's servants said unto him, Rabbanah, which is, being interpreted, powerful or great king, considering their kings to be powerful; and thus he said unto him: Rabbanah, the king desireth thee to stay. (Alma 18:13)

 

Now the place was called by them Rameumptom, which, being interpreted, is the holy stand. (Alma 31:21)

 

In the recent publication, Dictionary of Proper Names and Foreign Words in the Book of Mormon, we find the following proposed etymologies of these words:

 

RABBANAH derives from the Semitic verb root √rbb, meaning “to be great, mighty, powerful.” High Nibley, basing his observation on a comment by Marcus Jastrow in Jastrow’s dictionary of the Talmud, Midrash, and Targumim, notes that the word is Aramaic (Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, 2:387, citing Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, 1444). The presence of the second a in RABBANAH, rather than an o would have been the case if the word had been Hebrew and had undergone the so-called “Canaanite shift” (cf. the Hebrew rabbônî, interpreted as “which is to say, master” in John 20:16) (Rabbônî and RABBANAH are from the same Semitic root, but rabbôn means “my master” and RABBANAH has an emphatic ending that could allow for it to be vocative, “O Great One”), suggests an Aramaicizing tendency at least in the name-giving patterns, or an Aramaic borrowing, in the Nephite-Lamanite dialects. The ah at the end of RABBANAH may be a terminal ‘aleph making the word an emphatic form that could also be used as an Aramaic-Aramaicizing vocative in forms of address.

 

In addition to the Aramaic and Hebrew origins of RABBANAH, East Semitic, and particularly Babylonian, also contains examples of the root rbb in analogical constructions. The word rab-banûtu, “position of rab banî,” is the abstract form of rab banî, “meaning an administrator of temple property,” and its less frequently attested variant rabbānû, means “mayor, headman.” (“Rabbanah,” in Dictionary of Proper Names and Foreign Words in the Book of Mormon, ed. Stephen D. Ricks, Paul Y. Hoskisson, Robert F. Smith, and John Gee [Orem, Utah: Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2022], 279-80)

 

Alternatively, if the word is Hebrew in derivation, one may note the common Semitic ending -ān used as an abstract marker, and compare Hebrew words such as šulḥān, “table,” and, with the Canaanite shift, pittārôn, “interpretation (of a dream).” Again, if the word is Hebrew in origin, the final ah of RABBANAH may be from the Semitic feminine ending used as an abstract. Kautzsch and Cowley, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, 393, §122q. (Ibid., 280 n. 5)

 

The Book of Mormon noun RAMEUMPTOM is most likely related to the Hebrew verb rām, “to be high, to be exalted” and rāmāh, “eminence, high place,” the same root that appears in the biblical geographic name Ramah, “hill” (cf. the Book of Mormon place-name Ramah). RAMEUMPTOM could be a noun chain with ramê as a masculine construct plural, meaning “the heights, elevations of.” The element -UMPTOM would then be the second element in the construct, possibly from the Hebrew noun ‘ōmed, “place, position, location,” most likely with a pronominal suffix, analogous to the third person m.pl. pronominal suffix -ām, having the meaning “their.” The latter ending s probably to be preferred because of the parallel form in Arabic, ‘umdān, “standing.” Giving these two Hebrew words, rām and ‘ōmed, thus rāme ‘omdām/’umdān (The original sound of the Hebrew ‘ōmed, based on a proto-Sinaitic qutl form, with the third m.pl. would likely have been ‘umdām; see Lipiński, Semitic Languages, 210-15, cf. 294-95), the meaning of RAMEUPTOM would then be “the heights/elevations of (their) position, place of standing,” a definition that accords well with the interpretation that the Book of Mormon writers provides.

 

A question arises concerning the consonant cluster mpt, which would likely not have occurred in the Semitic languages but may be explained as an inner-English development. The m sound followed by the d sound frequently results in the devoicing of the d to the t sound; thus, -umdam becomes -umtam. Further, the m sound followed by a consonant with no intervening vowel (in this case, mt) will frequently generated a p sound—in this case, umt would become umpt (by way of comparison, the English noun “redemption” comes from the noun elements “redeem-“ and “-tion,” thus “redemption,” with a p sound generated between the mt cluster). (“Rameumptom,” in Dictionary of Proper Names and Foreign Words in the Book of Mormon, ed. Stephen D. Ricks, Paul Y. Hoskisson, Robert F. Smith, and John Gee [Orem, Utah: Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2022], 284-85)

 

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