▪ Jeffery1938, 120-21: »On the surface it would seem to be a genuine derivative from
ḫtm ‘to seal’, but as Fraenkel,
Vocab, 17, points out, a form
fāʕal is not regular in Ar, and the vb. itself, as a matter of fact, is denom.
1
The verb occurs in the Qurʔān in vi, 46; xlv, 22, and the derivative
ḫitām, which Jawharī says is the same as
ḫātam, is used in lxxxiii, 26. All these forms are in all probability derived from the Aram as Noeldeke had already noted.
2
– Hirschfeld,
Beiträge, 71, claimed that the word was of Jewish origin, quoting the Hbr
ḥôtām ‘seal’; Syr
ḥatmā. In his
New Researches, 23, he quotes Haggai ii, 23, a verse referring to Zerubbabel, which shows that the idea of a man being a seal was not foreign to Jewish circles, beside which Horovitz,
KU, 53, appositely cites 1 Cor. ix:2, “ye are the seal of my Apostleship” – -σφραγίς μου τῆς ἀποστολῆς
sphragís mou tē̂s apostolē̂s, where the Peshitta reads
ḥatmā. The Targumic
ḥtymh and ChrPal
ḥtīmā,
3
meaning ‘obsignatio, finis, conclusio, clausula,’ give us even closer approximation to the sense of the word as used in the Qurʔān. – In the general sense of ‘seal’ it must have been an early borrowing, for already in Imruʔu ’l-Qays, xxxii, 4 (Ahlwardt,
Divans, 136), we find the pl.
ḫawātim used, and in the SAr inscriptions we have
ḫtm (Rossini,
Glossarium, 158).«
▪ Pennacchio2011, 10-11: »… the noun
ḫātam ‘seal’, appearing only once in the Qur’ān, in the expression ‘seal of the prophets’ (33-40). The Prophet Muhammad is regarded as the ‘seal’ of the prophets, meaning the last one. His book is so clear that it cannot be misunderstood and therefore no other apostle will be needed after him. For Fraenkel,
fāʕal is not a regular form in Ar and the vb.
ḫatama ‘to seal’ is denom. The n.
ḫātam seems to have been borrowed from Aram. For Hirschfeld, the word may well have a Jewish origin since it is found in a passage of the Bible in which a man is compared to a ‘seal’
ḥôtām (Hag 2:23). This biblical image probably served as an inspiration for the Qur’ānic one, but the borrowed word with the sense of ‘to seal’ existed much earlier since it appears in ʔImruʔ al-Qays’ verses and in a SAr inscription. According to Maximilian Ellenbogen, the Hbr
ḥôtām was borrowed from the Eg
ḫtm. This is attested neither in Akk nor in Ug. The initial /ḫ/ in the Ar word suggests that the latter has the same source as the Hbr. Had the word been borrowed from Hbr or Aram, it would probably have started with a /ḥ/.«
▪ Orel&Stolbova1994#2035: The authors reconstruct Sem *
ḫatm‑ ‘ring; seal (on a ring)’, Eg
ḫtm ‘stamp, seal’, WCh *
qatam‑ ‘ring’, all from AfrAs *
qatam‑ ‘ring, seal’.
▪
DRS 10 (2012)#ḪTM-1: From Eg ḫtm ‘sceau, sceller’.