Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ According to Jeffery1938 and others, Ar tawrāẗ is a borrowing from Hbr The etymology of the latter is not clear, though. BDB1906, Leslau2008 (CDG), and also EtymOnline (see section WEST), regard Hbr tōrāʰ as a vn. of the Hi (*Š-stem) of Hbr yārāʰ ‘to throw, shoot’ (√YRY), nHbr ‘to shoot’, (Hi) ‘to teach’,¹ but this view has been contested. Instead of deriving tōrāʰ from ‘to throw, shoot’, the authors of DRS, for instance, hold that the word most likely belongs to a semantic complex *‘to show, teach’ (reflexes of which may be the dial. Ar ↗²warrà, ʔawrà ‘to show, indicate’, which others, however, would see as deriving from raʔà ‘to see’). See below, section DISC, for more details.
▪ If the Hbr etymon tōrāʰ is from (Hi) hōrē ‘to indicate, point to (with a finger), teach, instruct’, could there then be a connection to Hbr ʔōr ‘light; to be clear’, ʔūr ‘fire’, Ar ʔirraẗ ‘fire’, ↗ʔuwār ‘heat, blaze’ (all < protSem *ʔR ‘fire, light’)? Such a connection is discussed nowhere so far although semantics (‘teaching = enlightening’) would be easily conceivable.
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1. From protSem *√WRW ‘to lead, guide, cast, throw’ – Huehnergard2011.

hist

▪ eC7 Q iii, 2, 43, 44, 58, 87; v, 47-50, 70, 72, 110; vii, 156; ix, 112; xlviii, 29; lxi, 6; lxii, 5 – Jeffery1938.
▪ eC7 (generic name for the Law or Scripture revealed to Moses comprising the Pentateuch, as distinct from al- ↗ʔinǧīl, the ‘Evangel, Gospel, New Testament’) Q 3:65 yā-ʔahla ’l-kitābi li-mā tuḥāǧǧūna fī ʔibrāhīma wa-mā ʔunzilat-i ’l-tawrāẗu wa’l-ʔinǧīlu ʔillā min baʕdi-hī ʔa-fa-lā taʕqilūna ‘O People of the Scripture! Why will ye argue about Abraham, when the Torah and the Gospel were not revealed till after him? Have ye then no sense?’
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cogn

▪ NB: The cognates indicated by BDB1906 and Leslau2008 blend the notions of ‘throwing, shooting’ and ‘showing, teaching’ that DRS treats as distinct. Below, only the ‘showing, teaching’ group suggested by DRS is mentioned. For ‘throwing, shooting’, see root entry.
▪ According to BDB1906, Leslau2008 (CDG), and others, Hbr tōrāʰ should be seen in the context of: Ug yrw (Tropper2008: yry), Hbr yārāʰ ‘to throw, shoot’ (√YRY), nHbr ‘to shoot’, (Hi) ‘to teach’, Aram (Af) ʔôrî ‘to teach’, Gz warawa ‘to throw, throw away, cast off, cast down, cast forth’, Te wärwära, Tña wärwärä, Amh wäräwwärä, Gur wəräwärä ‘to throw’, SAr wrw ‘to attack’, Ar warra (√WRː (WRR)) ‘to throw’.¹ – Cf. also Ar ↗raʔà, ↗rawà?
▪ DRS 7 (1997) #WRY-1 Akk (w)arū(m), oAkk oAss warāʔum ‘conduire’² – ?2 Hbr (Hi) hōrē ‘montrer (avec le doigt), instruire’; – ? tōrāʰ ‘direction, instruction, loi’; mōräʰ ‘enseignant, maître’; JudPalAram ʔōrī ‘enseigner, instruire’; Ar [dial.] warrà, ʔawrà ‘montrer, désigner’, MġrAr warra (i) ‘montrer, faire voir, enseigner’, OranAr wāri ‘évident’, ? YemAr *warā ‘violer l’honneur d’une femme’; Sab hwry ‘annoncer, publier’, Soq ʔere ‘marque (?)’, Gz waraya ‘dire les nouvelles, raconter’, Te wära ‘annoncer’, Tña wäre ‘nouvelle, avis, renommée’, ʔawräyä, Amh ʔawärra ‘donner des nouvelles’, Amh Arg Gur wäre, Har war ‘nouvelle’; Tña wäräyä ‘être utile, servir, aider, assister, être fécond’. -3 Gur wäriya, wērä, wäyä, Gaf wäyä ‘nouveau’. -4-6 [...].
▪ (given here only for the sake of completeness, as earlier research would often see Hbr tōrāʰ as akin to ‘to throw, cast’ ; DRS itself groups tōrāʰ under #WRY-2, see preceding paragraph) : DRS 7 (1997) #WRW~WRR-1 Ug *yrw ‘tirer (une flèche)’, Hbr yārā ‘jeter, lancer, tirer (flèche, etc.)’, ? Syr ʔeštawrī ‘arriver par hasard, venir à la rencontre, percer; oser’; EAr warra ‘jeter, rejeter’, warwar ‘jeter, lancer’; Gz warawa, warrawa ‘jeter, lancer, rejeter’, Te Tña wärwärä, Amh Arg wäräwwärä, Gur wəräwwarä ‘jeter, lancer’.³ ^/ ⁴ ^/ ⁵ ^/ ⁶ -2 [...].
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1. Leslau2008: Delitzsch 41 compares Akk arû ‘to vomit’. The connection with Akk warû ‘to lead, guide’, suggested by von Soden 1473 is unlikely. 2. Le verbe est doublé en Akk par une forme secondaire tarū(m), de valeur analogue, qui connaît une dérivation propre [...]; AHW 1473 rapproche l’Akk des formes sém. qui signifient ‘jeter’, v.s. WRW~WRY. Elle peut sembler dans un rapport sémantique plus vraisemblable, sans être certain, avec la notion de ‘montrer, instruire’ sous 2. 3. La racine est présente à Ebla : /tiwriyum/, /tīriyum/ ‘jeter’. – Pour une discussion générale, Nöldeke ZDMG 36:42, 40:726. – Huehnergard2011 reconstructs protSem *√WRW ‘to lead, guide, cast, throw’. 4. Hbr: Gesenius TR. 366 ne sépare pas de mōräʰ ‘maître, enseignant’, interprété comme signifiant ‘lancer la main > désigner, montrer’, v. ici s. ↗WRY; peut-être faut-il invoquer l’usage de l’Ar dans l’expression négative (mā) wuriʔa, wurriʔa ‘(ne pas) savoir’ ?, mais v. s. ↗WRY. 5. Voir aussi s. ↗WRʔ, ↗WRW~WRY, ↗WRY. 6. For poss. cognates outside Sem see complete citation of DRS entry sub ↗*WR‑.

disc

▪ Jeffery1938: »It is used as a general term for the Jewish Scriptures,¹ but particularly as associated with Moses, and in a few passages (iii, 44, 87; lxi, 6, etc.) it seems to have the definite sense of ʰo nómos. With the possible exception of vii, 156, it occurs only in Madinan passages. / Clearly it represents the Hbr tôrâʰ, and was recognized by some of the early authorities to be a Hbr word, as we learn from al-Zaǧǧāǧ in TA, x, 389; and Bagh. on iii, 2. Some, however, desired to make it an Arabic word derived from ↗WRY, a view which Zam. on iii, 2, scouts, though it is argued at length in LA, xx, 268, and accepted without question by Rāġib, Mufradāt, 542. Western scholars from the time of Marracci, Prodromus, i, 5, have recognized it as a borrowing direct from the Hbr,² and there is no need to discuss the possible Aram origin mentioned by Fraenkel, Vocab, 23.³ . The word was doubtless well known in Arabia before Muḥammad’s time, cf. Ibn Hišām, 659.«
▪ DRS 7 (1997), comment on #WRY-2 : « [...]. – Pour Hbr tōrāʰ, sa place ici, qui semble la mieux justifiée, ne fait pas l’objet d’un accord général; on a proposé en particulier de rattacher la forme à YRY ‘jeter, lancer’, v.s. ↗WRW~WRY, en rapport avec ‘lancer pour tirer au sort’, v. BiblHbr, BDB 435; pour ‘lancer’, Koehler Theologie d. AT; autre hypothèse : emprunt de l’Akk tērtu(m) ‘instruction, directives’ (AHW 1350) [...]; présentation générale de la question dans HAL 1575; le mot est passé en Aram sous la forme ʔōrāytā, en éth [Gz] sous la forme ʔorit. – [...] ; l’histoire de la forme Ar warra, présente dans la plupart des dialectes n’est pas très claire ; on l’a expliquée par une métathèse à partir de ↗raʔà ‘voir’ [...]; Marçais Tanger 494 propose de prendre en compte une valeur *‘être clair’ pour ClassAr warà(y), “négligé par les lexicographes..., mais conservé dans les dialectes”, comp. par exemple wāri ‘évident’ dans les dialectes d’Oranie; EgAr: BadawiHinds 934;⁴ pour la valeur YemAr ‘déshonorer une femme’, d’ap. HAB 92/20, Glos. 96: même rapport sémantique que dans PḎḤ par exemple; SAr: hwry (vb. dual), Müller Wurzeln 112; Dic.Sab., p. 162 renvoie à p. 57 s. HWR (v. ici s. #HWR-5); cependant, sémantiquement, la forme semble appartenir ici; Soq: sens douteux, Leslau LS 72; sur le rapprochement des formes EthSem signifiant ‘nouvelles’, etc., v. Praetorius AMS 242; Barth ES 14: rapport avec ↗RWY (Ar ↗rawà ‘rapporter, raconter d’après qn’)?; Cerulli Harar 435 fait dépendre du Cush: Bil Or Af Sa warē, Som war, Caffa warō. »
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1. Hirschfeld, Beiträge, 65, would go further. He says: ‘Der Begriff Torā ist im Koran bekanntlich möglichst weit zu fassen, so dass auch Mischnah, Talmud, Midrasch und Gebetbuch darunter zu verstehen sind.’ Geiger, 46, on the other hand, would limit the meaning of the word to the Pentateuch. It should be remembered, however, that both in Jewish and Christian circles the ‘Law’ frequently stood for the whole O.T. Cf. [Hbr] twrʰ in Sanh., 91b, and the N.T. use of ʰo nómos in Jno. x, 34; 1 Cor. xiv, 21. Cf. 2 Esdras, xix, 21, and Mekilta, Beshallah, 9 (ed. Friedmann, p. 34b). 2. So de Sacy, JA, 1829: 175; Geiger, 45; von Kremer, Ideen, 226 n.; Pautz, Offenbarung, 120, n.1; Hirschfeld, Beiträge, 65; Horovitz, KU, 71; JPN, 194; Margoliouth, ERE, x: 540. 3. Fischer, Glossar, 18, however, suggests that it may be a mixed form from the Hbr tôrâʰ and Aram ʔwrytā; cf. also Ahrens, ZDMG, lxxxiv, 20, and Torrey, Foundation, 51. 4. BadawiHinds1986 assigns EgAr warrà (II, vn. tawriyyaẗ) ‘to show’ to a root √¹WRY, distinct from √²WRY (with warā̆ ‘behind; after, following’, ^MSAtawriyaẗ ‘allusion’, ^MSAwārà (III, vn. miwāriyyaẗ) ‘to obscure, veil’, ĭtwārà (VI) ‘to hide o.s.’.

west

▪ Engl Torah ‘the Pentateuch’, 1570s, from Hbr tôrāʰ, literally ‘instruction, law’, vn. from hôrāʰ ‘he taught, showed’, Hi of yārāʰ ‘to throw, shoot’ – EtymOnline
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deriv

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