▪ Jeffery1938: »A late word found only in a late Madinan verse, where the reference is to a table which Jesus brought down for His disciples. – The Muslim authorities take it to be a form
FāʕiLaẗ from ↗
māda (cf.
LA, iv, 420), though the improbability of their explanations is obvious. It has been demonstrated several times that the passage Q 5:112-15 is a confusion of the Gospel story of the feeding of the multitude with that of the Lord’s Supper.
1
Fraenkel,
Vocab, 24,
2
pointed out that in all probability the word is the Eth [Gz]
māʔədd, which among the Abyssinian Christians is used almost technically for the Lord’s Table, e.g.
māʔədd ʔəgzīʔabḥēr, while Nöldeke’s examination of the word in
Neue Beiträge, 54, has practically put the matter beyond doubt.
3
– Addai Sher, 148, however, has argued in favour of its being taken as a Pers word. Relying on the fact that
māʔidaẗ is said by the Lexicons to mean ‘food’ as well as ‘table’, he wishes to derive it from Pers
mīdeh, meaning ‘farina triticea’.
4
Praetorius also, who in
ZDMG, lxi, 622 ff., endeavours to prove that Eth [Gz]
māʔədd and the Amh
mād are taken from Ar, takes
māʔidaẗ back to Pers
mez,
mīz 5
(earlier pronounced
māz), through forms
MYḎ,
MYD, and
maydah. Now there is a Phlv word
myazd,
6
meaning a sacred repast of the Parsis, of which the people partake at certain festivals after the recitation of prayers and benedictions for the consecration of the bread, fruit, and wine used therein. It seems, however, very difficult to derive
māʔidaẗ from this, and still more difficult from the forms proposed by Praetorius. Nöldeke rightly objects that the forms
mīz and
māz which Praetorius quotes from the Mehrī and ʕUmānī dialects in favour of his theory, are hardly to the point, for these dialects are full of Pers elements of late importation. Praetorius has given no real explanation of the change of
z to
d, whereas on the other side may be quoted the Bilin
mīd and the Beja
mēs which are correct formations from a stem giving
māʔədd in Eth [Gz], and thus argue for its originality in that stock.«
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