Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ first attested 426 CE in a verse attributed to al-Ḥāriṯ b. Kaʕb al-Maḏḥiǧī – HDAL (1Jun2020)
▪ Jeffrey1938: »It is used [in the Q] always of the Christian revelation, is particularly associated with Jesus, and occurs only in Madinan passages.¹ «

1. vii:156 is perhaps an exception, but though the Sūra is given as late Meccan, this verse seems to be Madinan.

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▪ Jeffery1938: »Some of the early authorities tried to find an Arabic origin for it, making it a form ʔifʕīl from √NǦL, but this theory is rejected with some contempt by the commentators Zam. and Bayḍ. both on general grounds, and because of al-Ḥasan’s reading ʔanǧīl, which clearly is not an Arabic form. So also the Lexicons LA, xiv, 171; TA, viii, 128; and al-Jawālīqī, 17 (al-Khafāǧī, 11), give it as a foreign word derived from either Hbr or Syr (cf. Ibn al-Athīr, Nihāya, iv, 136). / Obviously it is the Grk ἐυαγγέλιον euangélion, and both Marracci¹ and Fraenkel² have thought that it came directly into Ar from the Grk. The probabilities, however, are that it came into Ar through one of the other Sem tongues. The Hbr origin suggested by some is too remote. […] The suggestion of a Syr source is much more hopeful. It is true that ʔwnglywn is only a transliteration of the Grk εὐαγγέλιον, but it was as commonly used as the pure Syr sbartā [‘good tidings, gospel’] and may be assumed to have been in common use among the Christians with whom Muḥammad may have been in contact. Nöldeke has pointed out, however, that the Manichaean forms ʔnglywn of Persian origin,³ and anglion of Turkish origin,⁴ still have the Grk ‑ion ending, and had the Arabic, like these, been derived from the Syr we might have expected it also to preserve the final n. The shortened form, he points out (Neue Beiträge, 47), is to be found in the Eth [Gz] wangēl, where the long vowel is almost conclusive evidence of the Ar word having come from Abyssinia.⁵ Grimme, ZA, xxvi, 164, suggests that it may have entered Ar from the Sab, but we have no inscriptional evidence to support this. It is possible that the word was current in this form in pre-Islamic days, though as Horovitz, KU, 71, points out, there is some doubt of the authenticity of the verses in which it is found.⁶ «

1. Prodromus, i, 5, “corrupta Graeca voce.” 2. Vocab., 24. 3. Vullers, Lex, i, 136; Salemann, Manichaeische Studien, i, 50; BQ, 88, which latter knows that it is the name of the book of Jesus and the book of Mani […]. It is curious that Bagh. on iii, 2, gives ʔnqlyqn as an attempt to represent the Syr original. 4. In the phrase uluγ anglion bilig, cf. Le Coq, SBAW, Berlin, 1909, p. 1204. 5. Cf. Fischer, Islamica, i, 372, n. 5. 6. Cf. Cheikho, Naṣrāniyya, 185.

west

▪ Not from Ar ʔinǧīl, but ultimately from the same source is Engl evangel (mC14) ‘the gospel’, from oFr evangile, from Church Lat evangelium, from Grk ἐυαγγέλιον euangélion – EtymOnline. – Cf. also the derivatives: evangel|ical, ‑ist(ic), ‑ism, ‑ize, ‑ization, Evangeline (n.pr.), and similar words in other Eur langs.

deriv

► (LevAr) šilš il‑ʔinǧīl, n., couch-grass: dialectal (Christian) re-interpretation of ↗naǧīl?

► ʔinǧīlī, adj., evangelical; n., evangelist: nisba formation.
► ʔinǧīliyyaẗ, n.f., evangelical creed: abstract formation in ‑iyyaẗ.
► mangaliyyaẗ (EgAr), n.f., church lectern: n.loc. prefix ma‑, nisba f. (for instruments, tools, etc.).

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