February 23, 2022
Bread Versus Meat
By PhilologosThe Arabic word for meat is nearly the same as the Hebrew word for bread. The source of the difference reveals much about geography, culture, and human settlement.
Got a question for Philologos? Ask him yourself at philologos@mosaicmagazine.com.
Frederick P. Wiener has been studying Arabic. “Of course,” he writes, “I have noticed the significant number of cognates with Hebrew words, which almost always mean the same thing or something similar in both languages. One word that has puzzled me, however, is the Hebrew leḥem, ‘bread,’ whose Arabic cognate of laḥm means meat. I would think there must be an interesting explanation behind this difference in meaning, and I would appreciate your take on it.”
My take begins with the fourth chapter of the Bible. There we read: