Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0020141, Sat, 29 May 2010 14:42:48 -0700

Subject
Shadei/Shaddai not homonymous
Date
Body
Dear Frances,

The two words are not pronounced similarly at all (shade-ee-ai vs shad-
dai). So they are not homonyms.
Carolyn


On May 28, 2010, at 5:36 PM, frances assa wrote:


"JM: True enough, the poet's father (Samuel Shade) distinguishes the
Cedar waxwing from another named after himself: the Bombycilla Shadei.
(Kinbote warns us that the waxwing's correct scientific name "should
be 'shadei,' of course," in his commentary to line 71."
Re the homonym Shaddai please note the following Wikipedia article:
El Shaddai

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


El Shaddai (Hebrew: אל שדי‎) is one of the Judaic names of God.
El Shaddai is translated as God Almighty.The term may mean "God of the
mountains," referring to the Mesopotamian divine mountain.[1] The term
was one of the patriarchal names for the tribal god of the
Mesopotamians[1] In Exodus 6:3, El Shaddai is identified with Yahweh.
[1]The term appears chiefly in the Torah. This could also refer to the
Israelite camp's stay at Mount Sinai where God gave Moses the Ten
Commandments.
Shaddai was a late Bronze Age Amorite city on the banks of the
Euphrates river, in northern Syria. The site of its ruin-mound is
called Tel eth-Thadyen: "Thadyen" being the modern Arabic rendering of
the original West Semitic "Shaddai". It has been conjectured that El
Shaddai was therefore the "god of Shaddai" and associated in tradition
withAbraham, and the inclusion of the Abrahamic stories into the
Hebrew Bible may have brought the northern name with them (see
Documentary hypothesis).
Balaam's vision described in the Book of Numbers 24:4 and 16, is
explained as coming from Shaddai along with El. In the fragmentary
inscriptions at Deir Alla, though Shaddai is not, or not fully,
present,[6] shaddayin, lesser representations of Shaddai.[7] These
have been tentatively identified with the ŝedim of Deuteronomy 34:17
andPsalm 106:37-38,[8], which are Canaanite deities.
According to Exodus 6:2, 3, Shaddai (Hebrew: שַׁדַּי) is the
name by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, andJacob. The name
Shaddai is again used as a name of God later in the Book of Job.
The root word "shadad" (שדד) means "to overpower" or "to destroy".
This would give Shaddai the meaning of "destroyer", representing one
of the aspects of God, and in this context it is essentially an epithet.
Another theory is that Shaddai is a derivation of a Semitic stem that
appears in the Akkadian shadû ("mountain") and shaddā`û or shaddû`a
("mountain-dweller"), one of the names of Amurru. This theory was
popularized by W. F. Albright[citation needed] but was somewhat
weakened when it was noticed[by whom?] that the doubling of the medial
d is first documented only in the Neo-Assyrian period. However, the
doubling in Hebrew might possibly be secondary. According to this
theory, God is seen as inhabiting a mythical holy mountain, a concept
not unknown in ancient West Asian mythology (see El), and also evident
in the Syriac Christian writings of Ephrem the Syrian, who places Eden
on an inaccessible mountaintop.
The Septuagint and other early translations usually translate El
Shaddai as "God Almighty". However in the Greek of the Septuagint
translation of Psalm 91.1, Shaddai is translated as "the God of
heaven"[2].
'God Almighty' is the translation followed by most modern English
translations of the Hebrew scriptures, including the popular New
International Version[3] and Good News Bible.
The translation team behind the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) however
maintain that the meaning is uncertain, and that translating El
Shaddai as 'Almighty God' is inaccurate. The NJB leaves it
untranslated as Shaddai, and makes footnote suggestions that it should
perhaps be understood as 'God of the Mountain' from the Accadian
shadu, or 'God of the open wastes' from the Hebrew sadeh and the
secondary meaning of the Accadian word.[2]
Harriet Lutzky has presented evidence that Shaddai was an attribute of
a Semitic goddess, linking the epithet Shaddai with the Hebrew šad
meaning "breast", giving the meaning "the one of the Breast", as
Asherah at Ugarit is "the one of the Womb".[9] A similar theory
proposed by Albright is that the name Shaddai is connected to
shadayim, the Hebrew word for "breasts". It may thus be connected to
the notion of God’s gifts of fertility to human race. In several
instances in the Torah the name is connected with fruitfulness: "May
God Almighty [El Shaddai] bless you and make you fruitful and increase
your numbers…" (Gen. 28:3). "I am God Almighty [El Shaddai]: be
fruitful and increase in number" (Gen. 35:11). "By the Almighty [El
Shaddai] who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings
of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts [shadayim] and
of the womb [racham]" (Gen. 49:25).

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