Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Jeffrey1938: »It was very commonly recognized as a foreign name,¹ the usual theory being that it was from an original form Mūšā, which some say means ‘water’ and ‘trees’ in Hbr,² and others in Copt,³ this name being given to Moses because of the place from which he was taken. / It is possible that the name came direct from the Hbr Mōšäʰ, or as Derenbourg in REJ, xviii: 127, suggests, through a form Mwsy used among the Arabian Jews. It is much more likely, however, that it came to the Arabs through the Syr Mōšē⁴ or the Eth [Gz] Muse, especially that it was from the Syr that the Pazend Mushāē, Phlv [?] and Arm Mowšē were borrowed. / There appears to be no well-attested example of the use of the word earlier than the Qurʔān,⁵ so that it may have been an importation of Muḥammad himself, though doubtless well enough known to his audience from their contacts with Jews and Christians.«

1. al-Ǧawālīqī, Muʕarrab, 135; al-Ḫafāǧī, 182; Bagh. on ii: 48, and even Rāġib, Mufradāt, 484. 2. Rāġib gives the form as [Ar] Mšwḥʔ. 3. So Ṭab. on ii, 48; al-Ṯaʕlabī, Qiṣaṣ, 118, who tell us that in Coptic mu means ‘water’ and ša means ‘trees’. This obviously rests on the Jewish theory given in Josephus, Antiq, ii, ix, 6 : [Grk] tò gàr ʰúdōr mô ʰoí Aigúptioi kaloûsin, ʰusês dè toùs ʰúdatos sōθéntas, which fairly well represents the Copt mōou ‘water’ and ouje ‘rescued’. 4. Cf. the form Mwsʔ on a Christian incantation bowl from Nippur (Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts, p. 231). 5. So Horovitz, KU, 143; JPN, 156.

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