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50-424: The Hebrew word שָׁמַיִם šāmayīm "heavens" is pluralized from Proto-Semitic *šamāy- . This renders שָׁמַיִם šāmayīm a plurale tantum , simultaneously singular and plural. Therefore, "heaven" and "heavens" may both be legitimate translations as determined by context. Exodus 24, Ezekiel 1, Isaiah 6, 2 Chronicles 18 and 1 Kings 22 describe God seated on a throne, with angels surrounding him. Exodus 24:10 describes

100-465: A daughter proto-language or in Proto-Semitic itself. Some thus suggest that weakened *š̠ may have been a separate phoneme in Proto-Semitic. Proto-Semitic is reconstructed as having non-phonemic stress on the third mora counted from the end of the word, i.e. on the second syllable from the end, if it has the structure CVC or CVː (where C is any consonant and V is any vowel), or on

150-400: A garden of eight hundred roses and myrtles that is watered by many rivers. In the garden is one's canopy, its beauty according to one's merit, but each canopy has four rivers – milk, honey, wine, and balsam – flowing out from it, and has a golden vine and thirty shining pearls hanging from it. Under each canopy is a table of gems and pearls attended to by sixty angels. The light of Paradise

200-568: A language has such sounds, it nearly always has [sʼ] so if *ṣ was actually affricate [tsʼ] , it would be extremely unusual if *θ̣ ṣ́ was fricative [θʼ ɬʼ] rather than affricate [t͡θʼ t͡ɬʼ] . According to Rodinson (1981) and Weninger (1998), the Greek placename Mátlia , with tl used to render Ge'ez ḍ (Proto-Semitic *ṣ́ ), is "clear proof" that this sound was affricated in Ge'ez and quite possibly in Proto-Semitic as well. The evidence for

250-572: A merger of the two to [s] occurs in various other languages such as Arabic and Ethiopian Semitic. On the other hand, Kogan has suggested that the initial merged s in Arabic was actually a "hissing-hushing sibilant", presumably something like [ɕ] (or a "retracted sibilant"), which did not become [s] until later. That would suggest a value closer to [ɕ] (or a "retracted sibilant") or [ʃ] for Proto-Semitic *š since [t͡s] and [s] would almost certainly merge directly to [s]. Furthermore, there

300-656: A non-Semitic population. That is suggested by non-Semitic toponyms preserved in Akkadian and Eblaite. A Bayesian analysis performed in 2009 suggests an origin for all known Semitic languages in the Levant around 3750 BC, with a later single introduction from South Arabia into the Horn of Africa around 800 BC. This statistical analysis could not, however, estimate when or where the ancestor of all Semitic languages diverged from Afroasiatic. It thus neither contradicts nor confirms

350-490: A pavement made of sapphire or lapis lazuli . Ezekiel 1 describes a throne room made of angels and God's throne being seated on a flying angel. Isaiah 6 describes an altar standing before God's throne. 2 Chronicles 18 and 1 Kings 22 describe angels to the right and the left of God, like prosecutors and defendants to the right and left of a judge in a bet din . Judaism interprets the visions symbolically, rather than as literal descriptions of heaven. The Biblical author pictured

400-508: A relatively close object and those showing a more distant one. Nonetheless, it is very difficult to reconstruct Proto-Semitic forms on the basis of the demonstratives of the individual Semitic languages. A series of interrogative pronouns are reconstructed for Proto-Semitic: *man ‘who’, *mā ‘what’ and *’ayyu ‘of what kind’ (derived from *’ay ‘where’). Reconstruction of the cardinal numerals from one to ten (masculine): All nouns from one to ten were declined as singular nouns with

450-482: A set of seven concentric heavens, one for each visible planet plus the sun and moon, with the realm of God in an eighth and highest heaven, but although several Jewish works from this period have multiple heavens, as do some New Testament works, none has exactly the formal Greek system. In the course of the 1st millennium CE, Jewish scholars developed an elaborate system of seven heavens , named: Medieval Jewish Merkavah and Heikhaloth literature focused on discussing

500-776: Is based on triads of related voiceless , voiced and " emphatic " consonants. Five such triads are reconstructed in Proto-Semitic: The probable phonetic realization of most consonants is straightforward and is indicated in the table with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Two subsets of consonants, however, deserve further comment. The sounds notated here as " emphatic consonants " occur in nearly all Semitic languages as well as in most other Afroasiatic languages, and they are generally reconstructed as glottalization in Proto-Semitic. Thus, *ṭ, for example, represents [tʼ] . See below for

550-526: Is certain although few modern languages preserve the sounds. The pronunciation of *ś ṣ́ as [ɬ ɬʼ] is still maintained in the Modern South Arabian languages (such as Mehri ), and evidence of a former lateral pronunciation is evident in a number of other languages. For example, Biblical Hebrew baśam was borrowed into Ancient Greek as balsamon (hence English "balsam"), and the 8th-century Arab grammarian Sibawayh explicitly described

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600-467: Is debated: The precise sound of the Proto-Semitic fricatives, notably of *š , *ś , *s and *ṣ , remains a perplexing problem, and there are various systems of notation to describe them. The notation given here is traditional and is based on their pronunciation in Hebrew, which has traditionally been extrapolated to Proto-Semitic. The notation *s₁ , *s₂ , *s₃ is found primarily in

650-492: Is enthroned and explains the Torah to its inhabitants. The higher Gan Eden contains three hundred ten worlds and is divided into seven compartments. The compartments are not described, though it is implied that each compartment is greater than the previous one and is joined based on one's merit. The first compartment is for Jewish martyrs, the second for those who drowned, the third for "Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai and his disciples,"

700-437: Is extremely conservative, and which preserves as contrastive 28 out of the evident 29 consonantal phonemes. Thus, the phonemic inventory of reconstructed Proto-Semitic is very similar to that of Arabic, with only one phoneme fewer in Arabic than in reconstructed Proto-Semitic, with *s and *š merging into Arabic / s / ⟨ س ⟩ and *ś becoming Arabic / ʃ / ⟨ ش ⟩ . As such, Proto-Semitic

750-510: Is generally reconstructed as having the following phonemes (as usually transcribed in Semitology): *ʼ , ˀ [ ʔ ] The reconstructed phonemes *s *z *ṣ *ś *ṣ́ *ṯ̣, which are shown to be phonetically affricates in the table above, may also be interpreted as fricatives ( /s z sʼ ɬ ɬʼ θʼ/ ), as discussed below. This was the traditional reconstruction and is reflected in the choice of signs. The Proto-Semitic consonant system

800-417: Is guarded by 600,000 shining angels. Seven clouds of glory overshadow Paradise, and under them, in the center of Paradise, stands the tree of life . The tree of life overshadows Paradise too, and it has fifteen thousand different tastes and aromas that winds blow all across Paradise. Under the tree of life are many pairs of canopies, one of stars and the other of sun and moon, while a cloud of glory separates

850-406: Is more naturally interpreted as deaffrication. Evidence for *š as /s/ also exists but is somewhat less clear. It has been suggested that it is cross-linguistically rare for languages with a single sibilant fricative to have [ʃ] as the sound and that [s] is more likely. Similarly, the use of Phoenician 𐤔 *š , as the source of Greek Σ s , seems easiest to explain if the phoneme had

900-533: Is the light of the righteous people therein. Each day in Paradise, one wakes up a child and goes to bed an elder to enjoy the pleasures of childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age. In each corner of Paradise is a forest of 800,000 trees, the least among the trees greater than the best herbs and spices, attended to by 800,000 sweetly singing angels. Paradise is divided into seven paradises, each one 120,000 miles long and wide. Depending on one's merit, one joins one of

950-585: Is various evidence to suggest that the sound [ʃ] for *š existed while *s was still [ts] . Examples are the Southern Old Babylonian form of Akkadian, which evidently had [ʃ] along with [t͡s] as well as Egyptian transcriptions of early Canaanite words in which *š s are rendered as š ṯ . ( ṯ is an affricate [t͡ʃ] and the consensus interpretation of š is [ʃ] , as in Modern Coptic. ) Diem (1974) suggested that

1000-790: The Levant , the Sahara , the Horn of Africa , the Arabian Peninsula , or northern Africa. The Semitic language family is considered part of the broader macro-family of Afroasiatic languages . The earliest attestations of any Semitic language are in Akkadian , dating to around the 24th to 23rd centuries BC (see Sargon of Akkad ) and the Eblaite language , but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts from

1050-485: The Arabic descendant of *ṣ́ , now pronounced [dˤ] in the standard pronunciation or [ðˤ] in Bedouin-influenced dialects, as a pharyngealized voiced lateral fricative [ɮˤ] . (Compare Spanish alcalde , from Andalusian Arabic اَلْقَاضِي al-qāḍī "judge".) The primary disagreements concern whether the sounds were actually fricatives in Proto-Semitic or whether some were affricates, and whether

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1100-544: The Canaanite sound change of *θ > *š would be more natural if *š was [s] than if it was [ʃ] . However, Kogan argues that, because *s was [ts] at the time, the change from *θ to *š is the most likely merger, regardless of the exact pronunciation of *š while the shift was underway. Evidence for the affricate nature of the non-sibilants is based mostly on internal considerations. Ejective fricatives are quite rare cross-linguistically, and when

1150-449: The Proto-Semitic language may be considered within the context of the larger Afro-Asiatic family to which it belongs. The previously popular hypothesis of an Arabian Urheimat has been largely abandoned since the region could not have supported massive waves of emigration before the domestication of camels in the 2nd millennium BC. There is also evidence that Mesopotamia and adjoining areas of modern Syria were originally inhabited by

1200-414: The affricate interpretation of Akkadian s z ṣ is generally accepted. There is also a good deal of internal evidence in early Akkadian for affricate realizations of s z ṣ . Examples are that underlying || *t, *d, *ṭ + *š || were realized as ss , which is more natural if the law was phonetically || *t, *d, *ṭ + *s || > [tt͡s] , and that *s *z *ṣ shift to *š before *t , which

1250-516: The conventional transcription and still maintained by some of the authors in the field is that *š was a voiceless postalveolar fricative ( [ʃ] ), *s was a voiceless alveolar sibilant ( [s] ) and *ś was a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative ( [ɬ] ). Accordingly, *ṣ is seen as an emphatic version of *s ( [sʼ] ) *z as a voiced version of it ( [z] ) and *ṣ́ as an emphatic version of *ś ( [ɬʼ] ). The reconstruction of *ś ṣ́ as lateral fricatives (or affricates)

1300-543: The details of these heavens, sometimes in connection with traditions relating to Enoch, such as the Third Book of Enoch . In the 19th century book Legends of the Jews , rabbi Louis Ginzberg compiled Jewish legends found in rabbinic literature . Among the legends are ones about the world to come and the two Gardens of Eden. The world to come is called Paradise, and it is said to have a double gate made of carbuncle that

1350-403: The earth as a globe of earth and water, with the heavens above and the underworld below. The raqiya ( firmament ), a solid inverted bowl above the earth, coloured blue by the cosmic ocean , kept the waters above the earth from flooding the world. From about 300 BCE a newer Greek model largely replaced the idea of a three-tiered cosmos ; the newer view saw the earth as a sphere at the centre of

1400-491: The emergence of its daughters, so some time before the earliest attestation of Akkadian, and sufficiently long so for the changes leading from it to Akkadian to have taken place, which would place it in the fourth millennium BC or earlier. Since all modern Semitic languages can be traced back to a common ancestor, Semiticists have placed importance on locating the Urheimat of the Proto-Semitic language. The Urheimat of

1450-418: The evidence for the "maximal extension" positions that extend affricate interpretations to non-sibilant "fricatives" is largely structural because of both the relative rarity of the interdentals and lateral obstruents among the attested Semitic language and the even greater rarity of such sounds among the various languages in which Semitic words were transcribed. As a result, even when the sounds were transcribed,

1500-468: The exception of the numeral ‘two’, which was declined as a dual. Feminine forms of all numbers from one to ten were produced by the suffix *-at . In addition, if the name of the object counted was of the feminine gender, the numbers from 3 to 10 were in the masculine form and vice versa. Cedar wood Cedar is part of the English common name of many trees and other plants, particularly those of

1550-480: The fifth is like the third, except a river flows through it and its bed was woven by Eve and angels, and it is for the Messiah and Elijah ; and the sixth and seventh divisions are not described, except that they are respectively for those who died doing a pious act and for those who died from an illness in expiation for Israel's sins. Beyond Paradise, according to Legends of the Jews, is the higher Gan Eden, where God

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1600-492: The first and third consonants were identical were extremely rare. Three cases are reconstructed: nominative (marked by *-u ), genitive (marked by *-i ), accusative (marked by *-a ). There were two genders: masculine (marked by a zero morpheme) and feminine (marked by *-at / *-t and *-ah / -ā ). The feminine marker was placed after the root, but before the ending, e.g.: *ba‘l- ‘lord, master’ > *ba‘lat- ‘lady, mistress’, *bin- ‘son’ > *bint- ‘daughter’. There

1650-520: The first half of the third millennium BC. One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur , addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ( c.  2485 –2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The earliest text fragments of West Semitic are snake spells in Egyptian pyramid texts, dated around the mid-third millennium BC. Proto-Semitic itself must have been spoken before

1700-590: The fourth for those whom the cloud of glory carried off, the fifth for penitents, the sixth for youths who have never sinned; and the seventh for the poor who lived decently and studied the Torah. Proto-Semitic Proto-Semitic is the reconstructed proto-language common ancestor to the Semitic language family . There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic Urheimat : scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in

1750-453: The fricatives/affricates. In modern Semitic languages, emphatics are variously realized as pharyngealized ( Arabic , Aramaic , Tiberian Hebrew (such as [tˤ] ), glottalized ( Ethiopian Semitic languages , Modern South Arabian languages , such as [tʼ] ), or as tenuis consonants ( Turoyo language of Tur Abdin such as [t˭] ); Ashkenazi Hebrew and Maltese are exceptions and emphatics merge into plain consonants in various ways under

1800-620: The highlands of Yemen after the 20th century BC until those crossed Bab-el-Mandeb to the Horn of Africa between 1500 and 500 BC. Proto-Semitic had a simple vowel system, with three qualities *a, *i, *u, and phonemic vowel length, conventionally indicated by a macron: *ā, *ī, *ū. This system is preserved in Classical Arabic. The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic was originally based primarily on Arabic , whose phonology and morphology (particularly in Classical Arabic )

1850-795: The hypothesis that the divergence of ancestral Semitic from Afroasiatic occurred in Africa. In another variant of the theory, the earliest wave of Semitic speakers entered the Fertile Crescent via the Levant and eventually founded the Akkadian Empire . Their relatives, the Amorites , followed them and settled Syria before 2500 BC. Late Bronze Age collapse in Israel led the South Semites to move southwards where they settled

1900-399: The influence of Indo-European languages ( Sicilian for Maltese, various languages for Hebrew). An emphatic labial *ṗ occurs in some Semitic languages, but it is unclear whether it was a phoneme in Proto-Semitic. The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic has nine fricative sounds that are reflected usually as sibilants in later languages, but whether all were already sibilants in Proto-Semitic

1950-402: The literature on Old South Arabian , but more recently, it has been used by some authors to discuss Proto-Semitic to express a noncommittal view of the pronunciation of the sounds. However, the older transcription remains predominant in most literature, often even among scholars who either disagree with the traditional interpretation or remain noncommittal. The traditional view, as expressed in

2000-403: The most maximal interpretation, with all the interdentals and lateral obstruents being affricates, appears to be mostly structural: the system would be more symmetric if reconstructed that way. The shift of *š to h occurred in most Semitic languages (other than Akkadian, Minaean , Qatabanian ) in grammatical and pronominal morphemes, and it is unclear whether reduction of *š began in

2050-492: The noun: Like most of its daughter languages, Proto-Semitic has one free pronoun set, and case-marked bound sets of enclitic pronouns. Genitive case and accusative case are only distinguished in the first person. For many pronouns, the final vowel is reconstructed with long and short positional variants; this is conventionally indicated by a combined macron and breve on the vowel (e.g. ā̆ ). The Semitic demonstrative pronouns are usually divided into two series: those showing

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2100-472: The paradises: the first is made of glass and cedar and is for converts to Judaism; the second is of silver and cedar and is for penitents; the third is of silver and gold , gems and pearls , and is for the patriarchs, Moses and Aaron , the Israelites that left Egypt and lived in the wilderness, and the kings of Israel; the fourth is of rubies and olive wood and is for the holy and steadfast in faith;

2150-494: The resulting transcriptions may be difficult to interpret clearly. The narrowest affricate view (only *ṣ was an affricate [t͡sʼ] ) is the most accepted one. The affricate pronunciation is directly attested in the modern Ethiopic languages and Modern Hebrew, as mentioned above, but also in ancient transcriptions of numerous Semitic languages in various other languages: The "maximal affricate" view, applied only to sibilants, also has transcriptional evidence. According to Kogan,

2200-477: The sound designated *š was pronounced [ʃ] (or similar) in Proto-Semitic, as the traditional view posits, or had the value of [s] . The issue of the nature of the "emphatic" consonants, discussed above, is partly related (but partly orthogonal) to the issues here as well. With respect to the traditional view, there are two dimensions of "minimal" and "maximal" modifications made: Affricates in Proto-Semitic were proposed early on but met little acceptance until

2250-403: The sound of [s] at the time. The occurrence of [ʃ] for *š in a number of separate modern Semitic languages (such as Neo-Aramaic , Modern South Arabian , most Biblical Hebrew reading traditions) and Old Babylonian Akkadian is then suggested to result from a push-type chain shift , and the change from [t͡s] to [s] "pushes" [s] out of the way to [ʃ] in the languages in question, and

2300-411: The third syllable from the end, if the second one had the structure CV . Proto-Semitic allowed only syllables of the structures CVC , CVː , or CV . It did not permit word-final clusters of two or more consonants, clusters of three or more consonants, hiatus of two or more vowels, or long vowels in closed syllables. Most roots consisted of three consonants. However, it appears that historically

2350-415: The three-consonant roots had developed from two-consonant ones (this is suggested by evidence from internal as well as external reconstruction). To construct a given grammatical form, certain vowels were inserted between the consonants of the root. There were certain restrictions on the structure of the root: it was impossible to have roots where the first and second consonants were identical, and roots where

2400-612: The two. In each pair of canopies sits a rabbinic scholar who explains the Torah to one. When one enters Paradise, then one is proffered by the archangel Michael to God on the altar of the temple of the heavenly Jerusalem, whereupon one is transfigured into an angel (the ugliest person becomes as beautiful and shining as "the grains of a silver pomegranate upon which fall the rays of the sun"). The angels that guard Paradise's gate adorn one in seven clouds of glory, crown one with gems and pearls and gold, place eight myrtles in one's hand, and praise one for being righteous while leading one to

2450-406: The work of Alice Faber (1981), who challenged the older approach. The Semitic languages that have survived often have fricatives for these consonants. However, Ethiopic languages and Modern Hebrew, in many reading traditions, have an affricate for *ṣ . The evidence for the various affricate interpretations of the sibilants is direct evidence from transcriptions and structural evidence. However,

2500-418: Was also a small group of feminine nouns that didn't have formal markers: *’imm- ‘mother’, *laxir- ‘ewe’, *’atān- ‘she-donkey’, *‘ayn- ‘eye’, *birk- ‘knee’ There were three numbers: singular, plural and dual (only in nouns ). There were two ways to mark the plural: The dual was formed by means of the markers *-ā in the nominative and *-āy in the genitive and accusative. The endings of

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