Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Jeffery1938: »The passages are all late, and the reference is to Jewish teachers, as was recognized by the Commentators. Most of the Muslim authorities take it as an Arabic word, a derivative from rabb (cf. TA, i, 260; Rāġib, Mufradāt, 183; and Zam. on iii, 73). Some, however, knew that it was a foreign word, though they were doubtful whether its origin was Hbr or Syr.¹ / As it refers to Jewish teachers we naturally look for a Jewish origin, and Geiger, 51, would derive it from the Rabbinic rabbān, a later form of rabbī used as a title of honour for distinguished teachers,² , so that there grew up the saying gdwl m-rby rbn ‘greater than Rabbi is Rabbān’. The difficulty in accepting [Ar] rabbānī as a direct derivative from [Hbr] rabbān, however, is the final yāʔ, which as Horovitz, KU, 63, admits, seems to point to a Christian origin. In Jno xx: 16, Mk x: 51, we find the form [grk] rʰabbouneí (ʰo légetai Didáskale), or rʰabbōneí, which seems to be formed from the Targumic ribbôn,³ and it was this form that came to be commonly used in the Christian communities of the East, viz. Syr rabbōnī, Eth [Gz] rabbuni, Arm ṙabbowni.⁴ . The Syr rabbōnī was very widely used, and as Pautz, Offenbarung, 78, n. 4, notes, rbnā was commonly used for a ‘doctor of learning’, and the dim. rabbōnī was not uncommonly used as a title of reverence for priests and monks, so that we may conclude that the Qurʔānic word, as to its form, is probably of Syr origin.⁵ «

1. Vide al-Ǧawālīqī, Muʕarrab, 72; al-Suyūṭī, Itq, 320; Muzhir, i, 130; al-Ḫafāǧī, 94. 2. Hirschfeld, Beiträge, 51 n., says: ‘Muḥammad ermahnt die Rabbinen (rabbānī) sich nicht zu Herren ihrer Glaubensgenossen zu machen, sondern ihre Würde lediglich auf das Studium der Schrift zu beschränken, vgl. ix, 31.’ Vide also von Kremer, Ideen, 226 n. 3. Dalman, Worte Jesu, 267, and see his Grammatik des jüd. paläst. Aramäisch, p. 176. 4. Hübschmann, Arm. Gramm, i, 376; ZDMG, xlvi, 251. 5. Mingana, Syriac Influence, 85, agrees, but see Horovitz, JPN, 200.

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