Now, in Hebrew there are a number of words that can mean generic "God." One of the first and oldest on record is אל ("El"), which scholars believe has its roots in the Canaanite pantheon (El, Ba`al, and Asherah). Hebrew being a descendant of the Canaanite language, it was borrowed freely for various deity names (specifically place names) and sometimes applied to the God of Israel as a descriptor (much how the word "god" in English works). El also appears in early Phoenician and early Aramaic and is related to Ilu, which appears in Old South Arabian and Ethiopic.
From there we also find two more words אלוה ("Eloah") and אלוהים ("Elohim" sometimes spelled אלהים) whose origins are a bit cloudy, but most scholars believe that they descend from the same root as El. Eloah is singular where Elohim is grammatically plural, but in many cases is used as a singular noun (the plural, scholars believe is a plural of majesty, i.e. "We are not amused" or simply plural as a convention, like other Hebrew words such as "life" or "virginity," both of which also don the "-im" plural ending ).
The Ugaritic cognate that is found often is "'lhm" (in Hebrew letters this would be אלהם, spelled the same as Elohim, but Ugaritic plural does not need an "i"). In Ugaritic, however, it refers to the Canaanite pantheon.... so only God knows how that is intertwined...
In either case, El, Eloah, and Elohim are generally used as general words for "god" much like the word is used in English, and that's how they're pronounced.
Anyways on to Aramaic:
In Aramaic the root for God is "אלה" (Elah), but in the Emphatic state (which originally served the function of the definite article, but later subsumed most other cases) it is אלהא (Alaha). Depending on dialect, the vowels could pretty much be anything (Elaha, Eloho, Aloho, Alaha, etc. etc.) as vowel shifts in Aramaic happen so often that many linguists have simply given up on tracking them.
Western dialects, such as Ma`loula and the dialect that Jesus of Nazereth would have spoken, the Emphatic distinction was somewhat preserved, so one would hear an occasional "Elah" in a sentence here and there, but only in a situation where it was grammatically necessary. For example the "Eloi eloi" in Mark is the Aramaic word "Elah-i" or "My God" (the "h" was dropped in transliteration as Greek cannot have an "h" sound in the middle of a word), and in Ma`loula we see it mainly in expressions like "w'khay il'alôh" ("I swear to God!") or "b'alôh ti'khalkil shmô" ("By God who created the heavens!")
So in short, yes and no. Yes in some cases the words sound similar to Aloh/Alah, but in most cases it's a stretch to say so.
Peace,
--
Steve Caruso
Translator & Artisan, Aramaic Designs
Author, The Aramaic Blog
From there we also find two more words אלוה ("Eloah") and אלוהים ("Elohim" sometimes spelled אלהים) whose origins are a bit cloudy, but most scholars believe that they descend from the same root as El. Eloah is singular where Elohim is grammatically plural, but in many cases is used as a singular noun (the plural, scholars believe is a plural of majesty, i.e. "We are not amused" or simply plural as a convention, like other Hebrew words such as "life" or "virginity," both of which also don the "-im" plural ending ).
The Ugaritic cognate that is found often is "'lhm" (in Hebrew letters this would be אלהם, spelled the same as Elohim, but Ugaritic plural does not need an "i"). In Ugaritic, however, it refers to the Canaanite pantheon.... so only God knows how that is intertwined...
In either case, El, Eloah, and Elohim are generally used as general words for "god" much like the word is used in English, and that's how they're pronounced.
Anyways on to Aramaic:
In Aramaic the root for God is "אלה" (Elah), but in the Emphatic state (which originally served the function of the definite article, but later subsumed most other cases) it is אלהא (Alaha). Depending on dialect, the vowels could pretty much be anything (Elaha, Eloho, Aloho, Alaha, etc. etc.) as vowel shifts in Aramaic happen so often that many linguists have simply given up on tracking them.
Western dialects, such as Ma`loula and the dialect that Jesus of Nazereth would have spoken, the Emphatic distinction was somewhat preserved, so one would hear an occasional "Elah" in a sentence here and there, but only in a situation where it was grammatically necessary. For example the "Eloi eloi" in Mark is the Aramaic word "Elah-i" or "My God" (the "h" was dropped in transliteration as Greek cannot have an "h" sound in the middle of a word), and in Ma`loula we see it mainly in expressions like "w'khay il'alôh" ("I swear to God!") or "b'alôh ti'khalkil shmô" ("By God who created the heavens!")
So in short, yes and no. Yes in some cases the words sound similar to Aloh/Alah, but in most cases it's a stretch to say so.
Peace,
--
Steve Caruso
Translator & Artisan, Aramaic Designs
Author, The Aramaic Blog
Source(s):
http://www.AramaicDesigns.com - A professional Aramaic translation service.
http://aramaicdesigns.blogspot.com - The Aramaic Blog, dedicated to keeping track of the Aramaic language within the media and scholarship at large.
http://aramaicdesigns.blogspot.com - The Aramaic Blog, dedicated to keeping track of the Aramaic language within the media and scholarship at large.
Rev. Rick E. Carder '87 (B.S.) '03 (M.A.)
Director of Alumni Relations - CAS
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