Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ As against the opinion that nabiyy should be connected with the notion of ‘to be high’ (↗nabaʔa), EtymArab follows Huehnergard and others who regard it as a borrowing (from Hbr or Aram) with the original meaning of ‘the called/appointed one’. Thus, nabiyy belongs, though only indirectly, to the complex of Sem *NBʔ ‘to name, proclaim’, treated s.v. ↗nabaʔ , which probably developed as an extension in ‑ʔ from a biconsonantal nucleus *NB ‘to call, cry’ (the latter perhaps from AfrAs *nab‑ ‘to call by name’, which in turn may have dissimilated from Nostr *‘nimʔ˅‑ ‘name’).
▪ The fact that a number of Ar and Sem roots show *NM rather than *NB (or both) with similar meanings (Ar namma, naʔama ‘to whisper’, naʕama ‘to say yes’, Hbr nᵊʔūm ‘utterance’, √NʔM ‘to make a speech; to utter a prophecy’, √NWM ‘to speak’, cf. also Eg nmj ‘to scream, yell, roar’) and that the idea of ‘uttering a low, faint voice, groaning, mumbling, murmuring’ often is paralleled, like in ClassAr ^†nabaʔa, with that of addressing s.o. with a message, may also let one think of a prophet as a ‘person who utters faint sounds, murmurs’ (under the impression of a divine voice calling him, or speaking through him). This direction has not yet been explored in research so far.

hist

▪▪ …
▪ eC7 Q 19:41 wa-’ḏkur fī ’l-kitābi ʔibrāhīma ʔinnahū kāna ṣiddīqan nabiyyan ‘and in the Qurʔān, mention Abraham—he was a man of truth, a prophet’¹

1. Or, read as quasi-PP: ‘he was a man of truth, called/appointed by God’.

cogn

▪ Jeffery1938: Hbr nāḇî(ʔ) ‘prophet’, Aram nəḇiyyā, Syr nᵊḇīyā, Gz nabīy.
▪ Zammit2002: Ø [!].
▪ Huehnergard1999: Akk nabû (< *nabiʔu) (adj.) ‘called’, Hbr nāḇîʔ ‘prophet’. For the vb. from which the forms are derived (Sem *NBʔ ‘to name, proclaim’), see s.v. ↗nabaʔ.
▪ …

disc

▪ Gabal2012 does not think nabiyy ‘prophet’ is from √NBW; but he does not assume a foreign origin either. For the author, the word is from *nabīʔ (cf. the dual nabīʔayn, where the hamz is still preserved), meaning that the Prophet (Muḥammad) is both ‘called/informed’ (munbaʔ) by God and ‘informing’ (munbiʔ) about Him. A derivation, put forward by others, from the notion of ‘to be high, haughty, elevated’ (cf. nabwaẗ ‘elevated place, hill’) is, he says, to be rejected (on theological grounds, though).
▪ Jeffery1938, 276: »Usually the word is taken to be from √NBʔ ‘to bring news’ (as-Sijistānī, 312), though some thought it was from a meaning of that root ‘to be high’.¹ – Fraenkel, Vocab, 20, pointed out that the pl. nabiyyūn, beside the more usual ʔanbiyāʔ, would suggest that the word was a foreign borrowing and that it was taken from the older religions has been generally accepted by modern scholarship.² Sprenger, Leben, ii, 251, would derive it from the Hbr nāḇī(ʔ), and this view has commended itself to many scholars.³ There are serious objections to it, however, on the ground of form, and as Wright has pointed out,⁴ it is the Aram nəḇiyyā, which by the dropping of the sign for emphatic state, gives us the form we need. Thus there can be little doubt that nabiyy, like Eth [Gz] nabīy (Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge, 34), is from the Aram,⁵ and probably from JudAram rather than from Syr nᵊḇīyā. It was seemingly known to the Arabs long before Muḥammad’s day,⁶ and occurs, probably of Mani himself, in the Manichaean fragments (Salemann, Manichaeische Studien, i, 97).«
▪ Schall 1982: from Hbr nāḇī(ʔ) ‘prophet’.
▪ Huehnergard2011: Hbr nāḇî(ʔ) ‘prophet’ (originally, ‘one named, summoned by a god’).⁷ Hbr (and, in general, Sem) *qatīl nouns are stative, resultative, or passive in meaning.
▪ Huehnergard1999: uncomplicated reconstruction of Sem *NBʔ ‘to name, proclaim’ (similar meaning also in NWSem and > Hbr). »Since […] *qatīl agent nouns of transitive roots are uniformly passive in Hbr, Hbr morphology and semantics lead us inevitably to conclude that nābîʔ too is passive rather […] and means ‘the one called/named’ by a god, just as we find in parallel Akk expressions such as (literary) oBab nabiʔu DN ‘the one named/called by DN’.⁸ «
▪ Dolgopolsky2012 – The author thinks that BiblAram nᵊḇîʔ-ā, JudAram nᵊḇiyy-ā, Syr nᵊḇiy-ā, and Ar nabīy ‘prophet’ all are from BiblHbr nāḇî(ʔ) ‘prophet’ (originally a PP signifying ‘named one, appointed one’) and that Gz nabiyy ‘id.’ is from Ar. In contrast, he seems to see the Sem vb.s in direct dependence from Sem *NBʔ.
▪ Pennacchio2014:162 follows Blachère in regarding nabiyy as a loan from Hbr nāḇî(ʔ) ‘prophet’, more precisely from the Jews of the Ḥiǧāz. However, she gives the meaning of the underlying root NBʔ as ‘to be high, elevated’, which most others reject.
▪ Cf. also roots ↗√NBʔ in general and ↗√NBW, as well as ↗nubuwwaẗ.

1. Ibn Durayd, Ishtiqāq, 273; and see Fraenkel, Fremdw, 232, n. 2. Margoliouth, Schweich Lectures, 22, however, thinks that the Hbr is to be explained from the Ar, and Casanova, Mohammed et la Fin du Monde, 39, n., argues that nabiyy is a proper derivation from nbʔ, which is absurd, though Fischer, Glossar, 131, thinks that this root had an influence on the word. So Ahrens, Muhammad, 128. 3. Von Kremer, Ideen, 224; Hirschfeld, Beiträge, 42; Rudolph, Abhängigkeit, 45; Grimme, Mohammed, ii, 75, n. 2; Sacco, Credenze, 116. 4. Comparative Grammar, 46. 5. So Guidi, Della Sede, 599; Horovitz, KU, 47; JPN, 223, seems doubtful whether Hbr or Aram. 6. Hirschfeld, Beiträge, 42. 7. John Huehnergard, “On the etymology and meaning of Hebrew nābîʔ ”, Eretz-Israel 26 (1999): 88-93. 8. E.g., ḫa-am-mu-ra-pí na-bi-ù AN-nim ‘Ḫammurapi, the one named/called by Anum’.

west

–

deriv

► tanabbaʔa, vb. V, to predict, foretell, forecast, prognosticate, presage, prophesy (bi‑ s.th.); tanabbà, to claim to be a prophet, pose as a prophet: denom.

► ^BP#4823nubuwwaẗ, n.f., prophethood, prophecy: denom. (?).
► ^BP#3290nabawī, adj., prophetic, of or pertaining to a prophet or specifically to the Prophet Mohammed: nisba formation.
► tanabbuʔ, pl. ‑āt, n., prediction, forecast, prognostication; prophecy; prognosis: vn. V, denom.
► tanabbuʔī, adj., prognostic, predictive: nisba formation from denom. vn. V.

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