And since the New Testament is tangential to Classics, everyone everywhere should study Sumerian.

Just thought I’d make that extra connection for ya.

Chris

Very nice.

brilliant

Right! And don’t forget to add Hittite, Luwian, Punic, Akkadian, Elamite, etc… to the list! Of course, proto-semitic should also be learned conversationally, after all we publish a textbook on it : )

James

I should make this point to the M.Div. students in my New Testament Interpretation class on Monday. I’d really like to hear their responses.

Yep! Very nice.

Another thought: I wonder if we are dealing with a Mediterranean cultural word of Sumerian and Akkadian origin rather than a true loan into NW Semitic languages and Greek. It is in Ugaritic and fairly early Greek texts, the Odyssey for example, with a meaning in the range of “tunic.” There is, however, a lot of gray area between a loanword and a culture word. In any case, I’m sure as a result of this post many Christian New Testament scholars will enroll is the next available Sumerian class!

and is there some relation between “kitum” and the English “cotton”? The Arabic “kettan” is used for both “cotton” as “flax”

English “cotton” is a loan word from Old French ca. 13th-ish century — so there may be a connection, albeit at three or four removes. The Old French appears to have been borrowed from Old Spanish (or perhaps Catalan??) that appears to have been borrowed from Arabic…

Sorry to rain on the parade, but I think Erica Reiner beat you to the punch on proving the usefulness of Sumerian to the NT. See her “Thirty Pieces of Silver,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 88 (1968): 186-190.

Darn, scooped. Thanks for the reference, I wasn’t aware of this but I’ll have to check it out.

I put together data on this word in several languages some time ago and tend to agree with Duane that it is probably a culture word. To the various forms mentioned above I would add Linear B ki-to, as well as the fact that the Doric form of the word is spelled with kappa, not chi. The Latin tunica is probably the same word too (with metathesis). It should be noted also that the Old Assyrian form of the word is kutanu, the second vowel of which brings us close (with Canaanite shift) to the Heb form, and others mentioned; someone wrote a short note on this last point, but I don’t recall the reference offhand. Aren’t words fun!

The example KID is interesting, as KÖD-mön in Hungarian means the same as Greek “kiton”, that is also “kötény” in Hungarian very similar to Akkadian “kitum”…

I just recognized that accentuated letters caused problems. The previously mentioned Hungarian words are “kodmon” and “koteny”