[Mesorah] kikar / kikar

[Mandel, Seth via Mesorah]

As is my wont, I come to add a ha'penny to R. David. And I thank him for mentioning Adam haRishon, which provides me with an opening for what I wanted to say Isince in the time of Adam haRishon, all the languages had not yet separated):

In the a language's store of tricky, slippery words, some of the most slippery are loan words.  This word is treated as a loan word in Aramaic: in the Targum, the Teimanim pronounce it as kakra, i.e. the second kaf d'gusha, but not doubled.  The Targum has many words that do not follow the Hebrew rules of dagesh kal and chazaq: the most common ex. is pithghama, with both the p and g soft, since that is the way it is in Persian, and also the way it is in Biblical Aramaic  Since it is neither kakk'ra nor kakhra, the Targum is treating it as a loan word. The word is also attested in the Elephantine papyri, where it is knkr; that would probably indicate that it had a doubled k, since ReichsAramäisch regularly dissimilates doubling as in the future of y-d-‘ being yinda‘.

Indeed, its form makes it almost impossible for it to be a Semitic word, with the same consonant in both the first and second place in the root. (I do not know what BDB does with the word; I cannot find it where it should be; other sources struggle with it.)

With a loan word, the transition from qomatz to patach in s'mikhut would not necessarily hold true.

As for what is "correct," that all depends of what you mean by "correct" (I will appeal for help again to Dr  Dumpty for that discussion).

For what it is worth, the Teimani Taj has a qomatz in both places, going back to the earliest Tijan we have.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel

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From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of David and Esther Bannett via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2017 3:49 AM
To: Raphael Davidovich; Richard Wolpoe
Cc: Moshe Bloom Isr; mesorah at aishdas.org; Tuvya Gross; Pickholtz, Ritchie; Shanoon, Elihu; Levmore david
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] kikar / kikar

To add to the post of R' Raphael Davidovitch, I agree that there is no need to argue about reasons for the patach because both the Bar Ilan Keter and R' Mordekhai Breuer, have  kamatzim in both pesukim.  This means that all,or almost all,of the accurate manuscripts agree.  I checked that this is so in the Leningrad codex, the only one to which I have easy access.

BTW, if both kikars are s'mikhut, the question is why the word has a tevir, a ta'am mafsik that separates it from the following word and causes the kamatz, and prefers to join zahav to tahor with a ta'am m'chaber. Why not join kikar (with patach) to zahav and separate from tahor, or all three words in one phrase.  This thought leads to the question of which came first. Was the kamatz because of the tevir, or was the tevir because of the kamatz?
This is not the only time this question arises. Some time ago I sent a post entitled  "Does anyone else find this interesting" There I mentioned three pesukim in Tehillim where different sources have dagesh or rafeh because of the t'amim or have the ta'am mechaber or mafsik because of the t'amim. If rafeh, the ta'am is m'chaber and, if dagesh, the ta'am is mafsik. All sources are consistent in themselves.  This brings us to the famous question, which came first, the chicken or the egg, and did Adam have a belly button.

David

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