▪ Jeffery1938, 250: »In its various forms it is of common use in the Qurʔān, and the root is undoubtedly Ar, but as a technical religious term it has been influenced by outside usage. – The primitive sense of
kafara ‘to cover or conceal’, corresponds with the Aram כפר; Syr
kfr, and a derivative from this primitive sense occurs in the Qurʔān, 57:20, in the word
kuffār ‘husbandmen’, i.e. ‘they who cover the seed’. The form
kaffara, however, corresponds with the Hbr
kippēr, Aram
kappēr, and means ‘to cover’ in the sense of ‘atone’.
1
In this sense it is used with
ʕan, and al-Suyūṭī,
Itq, 324;
Mutaw, 56, tells us that some early authorities noted this
kafara ʕan as derived from Hebr or Nabataean. The commoner use, however, is with
bi‑, in the sense of ‘to deny the existence or goodness of God’, and this use with
bi‑ is characteristic of Syriac. The form
kāfir, an ‘unbeliever’, and
kufr ‘unbelief’, may indeed be independent borrowings from the [Talm]Hbr
kōp̄ā̈r, Syr
kāp̄ōrā and
kāp̄ōrūṯā (Ahrens,
Christliches, 41), though a
kpr as a proper name seems to occur in the Thamudic inscriptions (Ryckmans,
Nom propres, i, 115). The form [Ar]
kaffāraẗ may, however, be a direct borrowing from the Jews, cf. Horovitz,
JPN, 220. – Hirschfeld,
Beiträge, 90; Horovitz,
KU, 59, and Torrey,
Foundation, 48, 144, would have the dominant influence on the Ar in this connection from the Jewish community, and Pautz,
Offenbarung, 159, n.; Mingana,
Syriac Influence, 86, stand for a Christian source. Again it is really impossible to decide (cf. Ahrens,
Christliches, 21).«
▪ Pennacchio2014: 138 follows Jeffery in assigning vb. II,
kaffara to Hbr Aram
kippär ‘to expiate’, while she thinks that
kaffāraẗ ‘expiation’ is not a borrowing from late [Talm] Hbr
kappārā ‘expiation’, but must be earlier (from where? – Ahrens1930: 22 excluded BiblHbr
kappōräṯ ‘propitiatory’, a late technical term from ‘to cover over sin’…).
▪ In contrast to all other references, Huehnergard2011 connects the meaning ‘to be infidel’ to ↗
kafr ‘village’ (‘infidel’ < *‘villager’). For further discussion, see ↗
kāfir.