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I always found the Peshitta's "Eil, Eil" during the cry of dereliction instead of "Eli, Eli" very peculiar. Could the Peshitta be saying "El"? I know Mark renders it both as "Eil" and "Alahi" to make it more familiar to the Assyrian/Aramean audience. The Curetonian Gospels and the Sinaitic Palimpsest say "Alahi, Alahi" instead (more evidence of the Old Syriac Gospels being revisions of the Peshitta?). I know that the letters Lamed and Yod could be mistaken for each other if you draw one or the other of them to small or too large. Could this be a scribal error? Is "Eil" (if "El" is not intended) attested to as an Aramaic word outside of the Peshitta?
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Another interesting thing to note is that Syriac is (as far as I am aware) the only dialect of Aramaic to spell this word plene in this particular manner. The "normal" form /)l/ as a generic name for "God" (as opposed to El, the deity) doesn't really show up in Aramaic until the post-Exillic period in Jewish texts. To me that says that it's what's translational (in multiple senses, be it from Hebrew or otherwise).
Perhaps later I'll do a bit of lexical digging and see if I missed any examples.
Peace,
-Steve
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Thanks, Brother Steve. I appreciate your work and your replies! So "Eil" is just an unusual form of "El"?
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I thought real briefly about that possibility. It definitely makes sense!
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Akhi Paul,
I'd argue that it's a bit more than a mere phonetic transcription for emphasis, though, because the plene /)yl/ is also used in terminal theophoric names:
Peshitta/Syriac vs. Other Dialects
/)ysr)yl/ vs /)ysr)l/ or /)y&r)l/ = Israel
/yw)yl/ vs /yw)l/ = Joel
/dny)yl/ vs /dny)l/ = Daniel
/(mnw)yl/ vs /(mnw)l/ = Immanuel
/gbry)yl/ vs /gbry)l/ = Gabriel
/gmly)yl/ vs /gmly)/l/ = Gamaliel
/pnw)yl/ vs /pnw)l/ = Phanuel
/myk)yl/ vs /myk)l/ = Michael
etc. etc. etc.
And yet if the theophoric is initial, it's written defective:
Peshitta Spelling
/)ly)/ = Elijah (a double-theophoric)
/)ly$(/ = Elisha
/)ly(zr/ = Eleazar or Eliezer
/)ly$b(/ = Elizabeth
/)lyqym/ = Eliakim
Given the consistency, this looks more like a dialect feature than mere emphasis.
Peace,
-Steve