Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ According to Jeffrey1938 ultimately from Hbr Gaḇrīʔēl, »name of one of the high angels and the agent of Revelation, just as he is in the Qurʔān«, prob. via (ChrPal Syr) Aram Gaḇrīlā.
▪ The underlying Hbr words – Hbr geḇer ‘strong one, man’, and Hbr ʔēl ‘god’ – are of course etymologically related to Ar ↗¹ǧabr and Ar ăḷḷāh (↗ʔLH).
▪ …

▪ eC7 Q ii, 91, 92; lxvi, 4.
▪ …

▪ ↗¹ǧabr
▪ …

▪ Jeffery1938: »Always as the Angel of Revelation, and by name only in Madinan passages. (There is possibly a reference to his name [Hbr] Gaḇrîʔēl ‘mighty one of God’, in liii, 5, ‘one mighty in power’.) / There was considerable uncertainty among the early authorities as to the spelling of the name, for we find Ǧibrīlᵘ, Ǧabraʔīlᵘ, Ǧabrāʔilᵘ, Ǧabrayīlᵘ, Ǧabrāʔīlᵘ, Ǧabraʔillᵘ, Ǧabrīlᵘ, Ǧabrāllᵘ, and even Ǧabrīnᵘ and Ǧibrīnᵘ.¹ as-Suyūṭī, Muzhir, i, 140, notes that these variants point to its non-Arabic origin,² and this was admitted by some of the philologers, cf. Ṭab. on ii, 91; al-Ǧawālīqī, 144, and al-Khafājī, 60. / The ultimate origin, of course, is the Hbr Gaḇrīʔēl, and in Dan. viii, 16; ix, 21, Gabriel is one of the high angels and the agent of Revelation, just as he is in the Qurʔān. There is, however, the possibility that the Gabriel of the Qurʔān is of Christian rather than Jewish origin, and the form Gbrylʔ which is found in the Christian Palestinian dialect,³ gives us the closest approximation to the usual Arabic form. / There is some question how well the name was known in Arabia before Muḥammad’s time. Gabriel was known and honoured among the Mandaeans,⁴ and this may have been a pre-Islamic element in their faith. The name occurs also in verses of poets contemporary with Islam, but seems there to have been influenced by Qurʔānic usage. Cheikho, Naṣrāniyya, 235, gives an instance of a personal name containing the word, but Horovitz, KU, 107, rightly insists on the incorrectness of this.⁵ Muḥammad seems to have been able to assume in his Madinan audience some familiarity with the name, and the probabilities are that it came to him in its Syr form.«
▪ …

1. Vide al-Ǧawālīqī, Muʕarrab, 50, and Bayḍ. and Zam. on ii, 91. 2. See also Ibn Qutaybaẗ, ʔAdab al-Kātib, 78. 3. Schulthess, Lex, 34. 4. Brandt, Mandäer, 17, 25; Jidzharski, Johannesbuch, xxvi. It is interesting to note that Gabrāīl occurs in a Pers Manichaean fragment from Turfan; cf. F. Müller, SBAW, Berlin, 1904, 351, Salemann, Manichaeische Studien, i, 33. 5. Ṭulayḥa, one of Muḥammad’s rival Prophets, claimed support from Gabriel (Ṭab, Annales, i, 1890, Beladhorī, 96), but this may have been in imitation of Muḥammad, though the weight of evidence seems to point to his having come forward quite independently as a preacher of higher religion.

▪ Not from Ar ↗ǧabr, though ultimately from the same source is Engl Gabriel, from Hbr gaḇrîʔēl ‘my strong one (is) God’, from Hbr gabrî ‘my strong one’, from gabr‑, presuffixal form of geber ‘strong one, man’, from gābar ‘to be strong’ (for Hbr ʔēl ‘god’, cf. Ar ↗allāh, ʔLH) – Huehnergard2011.

For other values attached to the root, cf. ↗ǧabr, ↗ǧabbār, ↗ǧabara, ↗ǧābara, and ↗ǧibriyāʔᵘ, as well as, for the overall picture, root entry ↗√ǦBR.

ǦBL جبل

√ǦBL

“root”

▪ ǦBL_1 ‘to mold, form, shape, fashion, knead, create’ ↗ǧabala
▪ ǦBL_2 ‘mountain’ ↗ǧabal
▪ ǦBL_ ‘…’ ↗…

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘mountain; to form, to shape, to create with a firm natural disposition; intrinsic nature, idiosyncrasy; population, crowd, multitude’

▪ ǦBL_1 : from protWSem *gbl ‘to be massive, solid’ – Kogan2015: 426 n.1223.
▪ ǦBL_2 : prob. related to ǦBL_1, though dealt with as distinct value in DRS.
▪ According to Ehret1995#262, the value ‘numerous’ (as in ǧabl ‘numerous’) is the result of an extension in an “adjective suffix” *-l from a 2-cons. “pre-Proto-Semitic” root *GB ‘great’, from AfrAs *gâb- ‘great (esp. in size and number)’. Other 3-cons. extensions from the same pre-protSem root include ↗ǦBǦ (vn. ǧabǧ) ‘to recover and regain strength’ and ↗√ǦBR (adj. ↗ǧabbār) ‘strong, powerful’.
▪ …

–

▪ DRS 2 (1994) #GBL-1 nHbr gābal ‘pétrir, délayer’; ChrPal gbl, Talm Syr gᵊbal ‘coaguler; former, façonner, créer’; Talm gublā, gᵊbīlā ‘pâte’; Syr gᵊbīlāttā ‘masse; image; création’; Mnd gbal ‘prendre forme, être formé’; nSyr gāwil ‘former, façonner; mélanger’; (Aysor) gʸävil ‘mélanger’, gʸämbil ‘tournoyer’; Ar ǧabala ‘former, créer; mêler de la terre avec de l’eau, de la chaux, du sable’. – Palm gbl ‘collectivité, peuple’; nSyr ǧablā ‘troupe, troupeau’; Ar ǧabl ‘foule, multitude (d’hommes)’, ǧibl ‘nombreux’; Liḥ gbl ‘rassemblement (de gens)’; Te gäbbälä ‘rassembler du butin’, təgäbbälä ‘être rassemblé, entassé; être noble, honoré’, gäbil(ät) ‘tribu (étrangère); population’; ? Amh gubl ‘enfant’. -2 Soq gibʔéleh ‘flaque d’eau, creux empli d’eau’; Gz gablā, gəblā ‘abreuvoir, bassin’, Te gäbla ‘abreuvoir’. -3 Ar ǧabal ‘montagne’, ǧubulaẗ ‘bosse’; SAr gblt ‘région montagneuse’; nSyr ǧabāl ‘montagne; forêt naturelle; lit de roseaux’. -?4 Hbr gᵊbūl, gᵊbūlā ‘frontière’, gōbel ‘lisière de champ’; Phoen gbl, Pun gubulim (?); oYaAram gbl ‘frontière’, ‘territoire’. -?5 Te gobal ‘côte’. -6 Har (ta)gēbälä ‘s’asseoir, rester’. -7 Amh gäbälo: espèce de lézard; Tña gäbäl ‘serpent’.

▪ ǦBL_1 : Hbr gābal, Aram gᵊbal ‘to knead’, Syr gᵊbal ‘to form, mould; to mix, make up (medicine); gᵊbīltā ‘that which is formed or moulded, formation, creation; a mass (of dough or clay)’, SAr gbl ‘tribus’ (?), Ar ǧibill(aẗ) ‘a crowd, multitude’ (Zammit2002)
▪ ǦBL_2 : Akk gablu ‘Hügel’, Ug gbl ‘Berg, Fels’, Hbr gᵊbūl ‘border, boundary, territory’, Phoen gbl ‘boundary; territory with boundary’, Aram gbwl ‘territory, border, district’, SAr gblt ‘(hill) country; territory, district; cultivated land (surrounding village or dwelling)’, Ar ǧabal ‘mountain’ (Zammit2002)
▪ ǦBL_2 : Ar ǧabala ‘formen, bilden, schaffen | mix water with clay’, Kǝndērīb ǧǝbbālǝt ṭīn ‘Lehmmörtel’ (O. Jastrow 2005: 29), AlepAr ǧabal ‘délayer avec de l’eau (du plâtre, du mortier); pétrir’ (Barthélemy 1935–69: 102), ʕAqra yǝǧbǝl ‘anrühren’ (O. Jastrow 1990: 331), PalAr ǧabal ‘Mörtel anmachen, bereiten’; ǧabbāl ‘Mörtelzurichter’; maǧbal ‘Mörtelplatz’ (Bauer 1957: 210; Dalman VII 45). | Outside Sem, the author compares Eg (MK) dbn (<*dbl < *ǧbl) ‘builder’s mortar | etwas das Maurer und Töpfer gebrauchen’ (Faulkner 1962: 311; Wb V 438); dbn n jqdw ‘Ton des Töpfers; Dung des Maurers (zum Bau des Hauses)’ (Hannig 1995: 975) -- Borg2021 #86 ǧ-b-l.
▪ …

▪ ǦBL_1/2 : Kogan2015 426 n.1223 : The value ‘territory, border’ (oAram Hbr Phoen) has no obvious cognates outside Can, except perh. for Sab gblt ‘cultivated land surrounding village or dwelling’. Comparison with Ar ǧabal ‘mountain’, widely accepted in Semitological literature, must remain hypothetical because of the semantic difference (cf. DRS where ‘mountain’ and ‘border’ are carefully separated). If it is nevertheless accepted, one cannot exclude an eventual connection with protWSem *gbl ‘to be massive, solid’
▪ ad ǦBL_2 : Ug gbl ‘summit, mount’ is a hapax legomenon; translation as ‘mountain’ possible, but hardly compelling (alternatively, Renfroe1992 suggested ‘Byblos’; tentatively accepted in Parker1997) – Kogan2015: 325 #7. – oAram gbl ‘territory, border’: identical with Hbr gəbūl, Phoen gbl; in later Aram dialects replaced by təḥūmā, presumably borrowed from Akk taḫūmu; JudPalAram gbwl is almost certainly a Hebraism – Kogan2015: 426 #4.

▪ …

▪ (Huehnergard2011:) Engl javelina ↗ǧabal.

Permanent link

http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=ctext&uid=d7dd9129-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages

Choose display