The above data, combined with the other data surfaced by my study, reveal some interesting patterns in the Hebrew Bible’s distribution of loanwords. These patterns include the following:
- The two most common donor languages are Egyptian and Old Iranian, but words from these languages are concentrated in certain places. Egyptian terminology particularly appears in the Joseph Cycle (Genesis 37–50) and the book of Exodus. The vast majority of Old Iranian loanwords appear in the books of Esther, Daniel, and Ezra.
- In general, the Hebrew Bible’s source-critical divisions do not possess a distinctive loanword vocabulary. Thus, whereas vocabulary has played a significant role historically in the practice of source criticism, non-Semitic loanwords can offer little help in this regard.
- The distribution of non-Semitic loanwords roughly corresponds to the date of the individual books’ composition. On the one hand, the number of Egyptian, Hittite and Luvian, and Hurrian loans is greater in texts traditionally attributed to earlier periods. On the other hand, the number of Greek, Old Indic, and Old Iranian loanwords is greater in texts traditionally attributed to later periods.
- Almost all the foreign loanwords (approximately 96%) in the Hebrew Bible are nouns. This pattern reflects the cross-linguistic tendency for nouns to be borrowed more frequently than other parts of speech. It also indicates that the Hebrew Bible’s non-Semitic loanwords are primarily cultural (rather than core) terms.
* Benjamin Noonan, "Non-Semitic Loanwords in the Hebrew Bible: A Lexicon of Language Contact," ASOR, June 2020, Vol. VIII, No. 6.
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