 Welcome to the Endless Knot. We just recently passed the Jewish holiday Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, so today we're going to look at the word Sabbath and see how it may connect to that festival. The origins of both the word Sabbath and the Jewish custom of a weekly day of rest itself are much debated and uncertain, with no real consensus after over a hundred years of modern scholarship, not to mention speculation and assertions from the ancient world. Most of the major etymological sources connect Sabbath, or Shabbat in Hebrew, with the Hebrew word Shabbat meaning he rested, from the Proto-Semitic triconsonental root meaning to cease, rest, with the Charon, or Hashic, diacritic, looking like an upside down hat or circumflex over the ass, indicating that it makes the shh, or shh sound. That's the way Semitic etymology works, with most words traceable back to consonental roots, usually with three consonants. Simply put, you then add whatever vowels and non-root consonants are appropriate to the particular form of the word in the particular Semitic language. In any case, the specific etymology would connect the Sabbath with the notion of God resting on the seventh day after creation, as described in the Book of Genesis, or Bereshit in Hebrew. Though this derivation seems to be phonologically plausible, some scholars have suggested that this is a later folk etymology, both on the grounds of how the derivation would have worked, noun from verb or verb from noun, and because the idea of a day of rest wouldn't make sense for a nomadic herding people, but would for an agrarian people, which the Hebrews didn't become until they settled in Canaan. Another early suggestion for the derivation is that it is related to the number seven in Hebrew, Shabbat in the feminine form, an idea that has been around at least since lactantious in the third to fourth century, and theophilus of Antioch in the second century. But this derivation is phonologically problematic, since the word for seven comes from a consonental root with a final pharyngeal as the third consonant, whereas Shabbat clearly has a T sound in that final position. This seven root, however, is the source of the word Shobua, meaning weak, a fact we'll come back to. So, since both of these Hebrew etymologies are problematic, some scholars have turned to the option of Sabbath being a lone word from a Semitic language, Akkadian, specifically the Babylonian dialect. And here's where we have to get into the history of calendar systems, because the Jewish calendar was influenced, indeed largely based on, the Babylonian calendar. Both of these calendars are Luni solar, that is to say they are organized around both the lunar and solar cycles, unlike the modern Gregorian calendar, which is a strictly solar calendar, such that, for instance, winter and summer solstices occur on the same days every year. That's why Jewish holidays appear to move around so much with respect to the Gregorian calendar. A purely lunar calendar, like the Islamic calendar, is based entirely on cycles of the moon, so such a calendar and the holidays it tracks will not be in sync with the seasons. In a Luni solar calendar, the months follow the phases of the moon, with additional intercalary months or days being added to keep the calendar more or less in sync with the solar year. In the Babylonian calendar in particular, itself, based on the earlier Sumerian calendar, each month begins with the new moon, with a holy or evil day unsuitable for certain activities every seven days. The Babylonians kept these strictly lunar months in sync with the solar year, while alternating between seven 13 month years and 12 12 month years. This makes for a 19 year cycle, now called the Metonic cycle, after the 5th century BCE Greek astronomer Meton, even though this cycle was discovered by not only the Babylonians, but also the Chinese, long before Meton's time. You see, 235 lunar months coincides almost exactly with 19 solar years. And the reason the Jewish calendar is based on the Babylonian calendar is the Babylonian captivity, in which the people of the kingdom of Judah were taken as captives into Babylon during the reign of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, sometime around the beginning of the 6th century BCE, until they were allowed to return home to Judah by Cyrus the Great, the Persian emperor who conquered Babylon in 539 BCE. The calendar is not the only thing the people of Judah brought home with them. Not only is the story of the captivity recounted in the Hebrew Bible, but we can see evidence of it in the textual history of the Torah. Biblical scholars have identified the work of at least four different authors in the Torah. For instance, Genesis is a compilation of two distinct texts, the priestly source, so-called because it is believed to be the work of a priest around 550 BCE, because it focuses on matters of priestly concern such as rituals and holy days, and uses the word Elohim to refer to God. And the Je source, itself a compilation made in 721 BCE, from the Jehovah's source produced around 950 BCE, which uses the word Yahweh to refer to God, and the Elohist source produced around 750 BCE, which uses the word Elohim to refer to God. What is clear then is that the Je version was produced well before the captivity, whereas the priestly version was produced either during the exile or perhaps shortly thereafter. And all of this is why there are essentially two accounts of the creation of Genesis. In the priestly version, Genesis 1-1-2-4, humans are created last, and both male and female at the same time, after which God rests on the seventh day. Whereas in the Je version, Genesis 2-4-3-24, man is created first on the first day, then everything else is created for his use, after which women is created. Furthermore, while the setting of the Je version is a dry desert landscape, like that of Palestine, in which we see the planting of a garden important in a desert, the priestly version seems to describe a wetter landscape, more in keeping with Mesopotamia at the time, and thus a clue that it was written during the captivity in Babylon. And the priestly account also seems to be specifically emphasizing monotheism and refuting polytheism, which the people of Judah would have encountered in Babylon. And what's particularly important for our purposes is that this priestly account establishes the Sabbath as a day of rest, thus showing the influence of Babylonian culture in the Babylonian calendar. Now all of this is relevant to the word Sabbath because of those evil days in the Babylonian calendar. Technically speaking, these special named days in the Babylonian calendar aren't a regularly repeating cycle of seven days, like a week, but instead correspond to the phases of the moon. The first day of the month corresponding with the first sighting of the crescent moon was called Arhu, meaning literally moon. The seventh day corresponding to the first quarter moon was called Sabutu, derived from the word for the number seven, Sebe in the feminine form and Sebet in the masculine, from that same protosemitic root we saw before. You'll note here that the final pharyngeal in the triconsonental root disappears, a regular sound change in Babylonian, and also that the sh or sh sound became a s or s sound. The fifteenth day corresponding to the full moon was called Shapatu or Shabbatu, so at first glance it's tempting to derive Hebrew Shabbat from the Babylonian Sabutu, though one would then, I suppose, have to account for the difference in the first consonant. But an even better phonological fit here is the fifteenth day, Shabbatu, or more specifically the variant form Shabbatu, the only problem being why that fifteenth day for a repeating seven day cycle, and that there is no clear etymology for the word Shabbatu. One suggestion is that it comes from the dual form of the word for seven, so two sevens. We don't have dual forms in English anymore, but they did exist, at least for some of the pronouns in Old English. So singular itch, I, dual wit, we too, and plural we, we. And singular thu, old fashioned thou, or modern singular you. Dual git, you too, and plural ye, old fashioned ye, or modern you, or y'all. Another suggestion, figuring that the Sabbath was originally a full moon festival appropriate to an ematic herding people who traveled by night before becoming a weekly cycle more appropriate to an agrarian people, as we saw earlier, connects it to the moon in some way, such as pointing out that the Babylonian Shabbatu was equated in glossaries with the word Gamaru to complete fulfill, or taking it in the sense of cycle, or deriving it from the word Shaptu, lip, from the idea that the full moon occurs when the sun and moon are in opposition. So the moon rises when the sun sets and vice versa, so it's on the lip or edge of the day, or it can be seen as a day of atonement or lament, and so taken in the sense of purification, or connected with the word Siptu, sighing. The reality is, it may be a convergence of a number of the proposed etymologies. Shaptu, for one reason or another associated with the full moon, might have been confused with Cebutu, the seventh day, and borrowed into Hebrew, which also has a similar sounding word for seven and weak, to refer to the seventh day, and later, perhaps when the connection with the moon was downplayed so as not to evoke the idea of moon worship, the sense of rest replaced the original meaning through folk etymology. Now, one thing that might come to mind upon hearing the word Sabbath is the band Black Sabbath, fronted by singer Ozzy Osbourne. Well, apparently they got the name from a 1963 low-budget Italian produced horror film starring Boris Karloff and released in English under the title Black Sabbath. Before that, terms like Black Sabbath, Witches Sabbath, and Black Mass, were used to refer to gatherings of people supposedly engaged in witchcraft or satanic ritual, though there's not much evidence of these terms before the 19th century, so there is likely some degree of a romanticized imagination about them, though no doubt the use of the word Sabbath in this context reflects the prevalent anti-Semitism from the Middle Ages onward. Another thing that might come to mind is the sabbatical. Now we think of a sabbatical as an extended rest or break from work, usually in the world of academia, in which some professors are given a one-year often paid leave from teaching responsibilities in which they can devote themselves to research and publishing every seven years. Well, this too comes ultimately from a Jewish practice known as Shemitah, literally release, as described in Leviticus 25, in which the Jews in the land of Israel have to take a year-long break from working the fields every seven years. This makes good sense because it would protect the soil from becoming depleted, important in a region in which the land wasn't being refreshed every year from the flooding of a river, such as the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia and the Nile in Egypt, though of course it would present a certain kind of hardship for that one year and seven, and so it was also seen as a test of religious faith. So another word that is at least partly related to all of this discussion about the Sabbath is Shavuot, which is a Jewish wheat harvest festival and also commemorates God giving the Torah to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. It falls on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan, which is seven weeks, in other words a week of weeks, and one day after the first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and is therefore called the Feast of Weeks, as Shavuot is the plural form of Shavuot, which as we've already seen comes from the number seven, Shabbat. By the way, this Protosemitic seven root also appears in a number of biblical names, though in the rather different sense of oath, possibly from the idea of to bind oneself with sevens in swearing oaths, since seven was thought of as an important mystical number. Thus Bathsheba means daughter of an oath, in combination with the word bat meaning daughter, also in bat mitzvah, and Elizabeth means my God is an oath, also from the same root that lies behind Elohim. Now since seven weeks in a day is a total of 50 days, when the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek for the benefit of Jews who could no longer read Hebrew, Shavuot was translated as Pentecost, a Greek word that comes from the Proto-Indo-European roots for five and ten. This translation was called the Septuagint, from the later Latin title Septuaginta, itself from the Greek title Hebdomekonta, both words descending from the Proto-Indo-European words for the numbers seven and ten, in reference to the 70 scholars who produced the translation at the request of the pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the third century BCE. You see the root Septum becomes Septem in Latin, Seovan in Old English, with the P typically becoming F in Germanic languages according to the Grimm's law sound change, and Hapta in Greek as S typically becomes H in Greek, except when it comes at the end of a word or next to a stop consonant. Proto-Indo-European Penkwa V becomes Old English Thief, with that P sound becoming S again, Pente in Greek, and through the assimilated form Kwenkwa becomes Latin Kwenkwa. The sense of ten in Pentecost and Septuagint comes from the root Decum, ten. Now it may occur to you that the English number seven and the root it comes from, Septum, kind of look a bit like Hebrew Sheba and its Proto-Semitic root, and that may in fact not be a coincidence. The etymologies of number words are often complex, and it's not uncommon for them to be borrowed from one language to another, and so one theory is that the Proto- Indo-European root for seven might have been borrowed from the Afro-Asianic language family of which Semitic is a branch. Numbers in fact are a late development, linguistically speaking, and some languages don't even have numbers, just words for few and many. The development of number words may like the development of writing systems and indeed calendar systems be linked to the urban revolutions when small groups of people began to settle in complex cities, which demanded more complex systems of organization, like numbers. Also, abstract numbers are sometimes etymologically connected to more concrete words, so five and its root penqua are related to the word finger, since we use our five fingers for counting and fist, a group of five fingers. Now getting back to Pentecost, later on Christianity adopted the originally Jewish festival as commemorating the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles and other followers of Jesus when they were celebrating Shavuot in Jerusalem, as described in the Acts of the Apostles. Now the Septuagint also uses the word Pentecost to refer to the year of Jubilee, which occurs every 50 years. Jubilee is the year at the end of seven cycles of Shemitah, those sabbatical years when you weren't supposed to work the fields. According to Leviticus, in the Jubilee year you're supposed to sound the trumpet, and slaves and prisoners would be freed and debts forgiven, and everyone was to return to their property. Traditionally, the word Jubilee was thought to come from the Hebrew word Yavl, meaning ram or the trumpet made from a ram's horn. However, it's also been suggested that it might instead come from an Indo-European source borrowed into Hebrew, from the root U, a shout for joy, also found in English Yavl and Latin yubilare, to shout with joy, or that at least Latin yubilare influenced the word Jubilee later on. The word Jubilee is now used in English to refer to a 50th anniversary, or sometimes other big anniversaries, such as a silver jubilee for 25 years, and diamond jubilee for 60 years. As for the word anniversary, it comes from the Latin word for year, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root at to go, thus indicating the idea of a period time gone through, and the word vertebra to turn. The English word year comes from old English yar, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root year, meaning year or season, which also came into Greek as hora season, which eventually found its way into English in the words horoscope and hour, indicating a very different unit of time. Now during Shavua, there are a number of traditional foods eaten, in particular dairy foods, in reference to several biblical passages and rabbinical arguments, such as Solomon comparing the Torah to milk. Like honey and milk, it lies under your tongue, and in Psalm 68, Mount Sinai is referred to as Har Gabnunim, Mountain of Peaks, with that word Har meaning mountain. The word Gabnon, Peek, Rounded Summit, is etymologically similar to the word Gavina, Cheese, since they would both go back to a triconsonental root G-B-N. The weather G-B-N, meaning hunched, rounded peak, and G-B-N cheese, coagulated milk, are the same or uncertain, though the appearance of a rounded fermented cheese does look a lot like a rounded peak. The Septuagint translates this as aurus tetrominon, basically mountain made into cheese, or cheeseified mountain, related to Turan cheese, part of Butiran, literally cow cheese, or in other words butter, giving us the word butter. The Greek is then translated into Latin in the Vulgate as Mons coagulatus, coagulated mountain, or again cheesefied mountain. So the metaphor goes back a long way, and so cheese dishes, like cheese creplatch, a type of dumpling, or cheese blintzes, a kind of pancake or crepe, are traditional items during Shavuot. The word blintz, a diminutive of blin, comes into Yiddish from old Russian blinu, the plural of which is blini, so you'll often hear of blintzes referred to as blini. The word might ultimately come from the Proto-Indo-European root mella, to crush or grind, also the source of words such as mill, meal as in cornmeal, and molar. Another use of the word blintz is in the world of origami, the blintz as used in the Yoshizawa Randlitz system of diagramming origami, because of the way blintzes are folded when they are stuffed with say cheese, though the method of folding a blintz differs from region to region, but the fold in question here is folding the four corners of a square into the middle. The blintz is one of the basic and traditional bases from which many things can be made, along with others like the bird base, also known as the crane base, since it's used to make one of the most famous and classic origami. There's even a legend that if you fold a thousand cranes, you will be granted a wish, and cranes are often given to people who are seriously ill. There is the famous story of Sadako Sasaki, who was exposed to radiation at the bombing of Hiroshima when she was two years old. Later she developed leukemia and set about making a thousand cranes, but as the story goes, seeing other children around her in the hospital dying and realizing that she too would die, she changed her wish from preserving her life to instead wishing for world peace and an end to suffering. Though paper folding has existed for a long time in Japan, origami as we know it today was influenced by German paper folding in the 19th century. Actually, the story goes right back to the second century when Kai Lun, a Chinese court official during the Han Dynasty, was said to have invented, though perhaps more accurately devised an improved technique for making paper, supposedly by watching paper wasps. This new invention was championed by Empress Deng Sui, and Kai Lun was greatly rewarded by Emperor Hei of Han. Unfortunately, Kai Lun backed the wrong woman, Empress Du, playing a part in the death of her rival, Consort Song, and later on Consort Song's grandson, Emperor An of Han, ordered him to be imprisoned whereupon he committed suicide. Soon thereafter, Chinese paper folding developed and in the sixth century Buddhist monks brought paper with them to Japan, and some would argue Japanese origami was a borrowing from China, except it wasn't called origami. The various decorative paper folding techniques in Japan were called by a variety of different names, such as Ori Sui, Ori Kata, or Ori Mono. The word origami, from Ori Fold and Kami Paper, originally referring to a certificate, document of authentication, consisting of a folded sheet, first attested in the 12th century. The word origami was later reintroduced in the 19th century as a sort of calque or loan translation of the German word Papier Fulton, literally paper folding, and thus became the catchall term for decorative paper folding in Japan. A calque from French calque to trace by rubbing itself from Latin calcare to tread to press down is when a compound word or phrase is translated element by element from one language into another, as opposed to a loan word or borrowing, which is when a whole word is borrowed from one language into another, such as Babylonian Shapatu being borrowed into Hebrew as Shabbat. Ironically, loan word is a calque of German Lanevort, and calque is a loanword from French. The word loan comes from Old Norse Lan, loan, and is related to Old English Lan, loan gift, and Lana to lend, which gives us the modern word lend, all from Proto-Germanic Lechwinez, originally meaning to let have to leave to someone, from Proto-Indo-European Lechwa to leave, and the word borrow comes from Old English Barogun, originally to lend be surety for but shifted from the giving part of the transaction to the taking part of the transaction from the notion of the collateral being given as a surety, coming from Proto-Germanic Burg pledge from Proto-Indo-European Berg to hide, protect, and borrowing is what we've been looking at all along here, either of words or of traditions, like paper folding or calendar systems. Now German paper folding was its own tradition going as far back as the late 18th century at least, and may have developed from napkin folding, which seems to date back as far as the 17th century. In the early 19th century, when German pedagogue Friedrich Friedl, after coming to the conclusion that young children had unique needs and capabilities, invented a play-based model of early childhood education which he called kindergarten, he included paper folding as one of the educational activities. When Japan opened its borders in the 1860s, they imported Friedl's kindergarten concepts, including his system of paper folding, and hence the name origami from German Papierfalten. Now although Friedl's paper folding included the blintz fold, it doesn't seem to have been called the blintz fold until American cultural critic and folklorist Gershen Legman, who was of Hungarian Jewish descent, introduced the term, which was then picked up by Samuel Radlett and Ronald Harbin, who had further adapted the notation system devised by Akira Yoshizawa, considered the grand master of origami, whose work was introduced to Europe by Legman, to produce what is known today as the Yoshizawa Randlett system, the standard method of origami notation. In Japanese, the blintz fold is known as zabuton, the word for a kind of sitting cushion, so the blintz fold is also sometimes referred to as the cushion fold. Now another type of educational play developed by Friedl involved various geometric wooden blocks called trebel gifts, or trebelgaben in German. The idea was that the children were to be given increasingly complex geometric forms to play with, and that, along with play-based activities, helped the children to develop their awareness and appreciation for the world around them. As it turned out, this geometric play had a great impact, inspiring abstract art, the Bauhaus movement, and modernist architecture, in particular architects such as Buckminster Fuller and Frank Lloyd Wright. Indeed, Wright later gave credit to his childhood geometric play, stating, the virtue of all this lay in the awakening of the childmind to rhythmic structures of nature. As an architect, Wright is known for his geometrically innovative designs, most famously including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Fallingwater Residence he designed for Edgar J. Kaufman, Sr., owner of Kaufman's department store. Wright was hired by electrical engineer Edwin Cheney to design a house for him in Oak Park, Illinois, as a result of which, Wright met Cheney's wife, Mama Borthick. Borthick was a modern woman and early feminist whom Wright came to see as his intellectual equal. Wright and Borthick began an affair, leaving their respective spouses and children and running away together to Europe, causing great scandal. Borthick began translating the work of Swedish feminist Ellen Kay, whom she admired, and she and Wright were largely responsible for introducing Kay's work to American audiences. To escape the relentless criticism over their scandalous affair, since Wright's wife refused to grant him a divorce, Wright designed and built for Borthick his famous Taliesin estate, his dream home, which also included studio space for Wright to work in, where he designed Fallingwater and the Guggenheim. Unfortunately, their time was cut short when Julian Carlton, a chef and servant from Barbados who was working there, became increasingly unstable and paranoid, having a grudge against a draftsman also working at Taliesin. So Wright had given him notice, and while Wright himself was away, Carlton took revenge by killing Borthick, her children who were visiting at the time, and several servants with an axe and then lighting the house on fire. Carlton tried to kill himself and died seven weeks later in prison. Wright would eventually repair his beloved Taliesin and live there for the rest of his life. Now, Wright named his dream house Taliesin after the semi-legendary early medieval Borthonic poet because of his Welsh heritage on his mother's side. He had changed his middle name from Lincoln to Lloyd in honor of the Lloyd-Jones family after his parents had separated when he was 14 and he never saw his father again. The poet Taliesin, whose name means shining brow, was said to have lived some time in the sixth century and has been connected to various legendary kings including King Arthur. Though many poems have been ascribed at one point or another to Taliesin, modern scholars have identified at least some poetry that seems to date to around the right time to have been written by the historical Taliesin, including some of the material in the Middle Welsh manuscript known as the Book of Taliesin. One of the poems in the Book of Taliesin, called Pre de Anuvin, The Spoils of Anuvin, tells of Arthur's dangerous journey to Anun, the other world in Welsh mythology, and the acquisition of a magical cauldron which some have argued may be one of the sources of the legend of the Holy Grail, having become conflated with Christian elements such as the Holy Chalice which Jesus was said to have used at the last supper. Welsh Anun or Anuvin, related to Gaulish Antumnos, comes from Gallo Bretonic Andei Dubnos, Underworld, from Proto-Celtic Andei below, from Proto-Indo-European Ender, Under, also giving us Under through Old English and Inferno through Latin and Dubnos, the Deep or World, from Proto-Indo-European Deub, Deep Hollow, also giving us words such as Deep, Dip, and Dive. So not only does it refer to a kind of Celtic Otherworld in which Deities live, note that the poem Pradae Anuvin depicts it as an island with Arthur traveling there by boat, as in the usual depiction of Avalon as an island, but also a kind of Underworld of the Dead. Later Anuvin became conflated with both the Christian Heaven and the Christian Hell, as in modern Welsh it means Deep or Hell. The idea of an Underworld is one of the most universal mythological elements found in different cultures around the world, and as a result these different traditions have often become syncretized as different cultures have come into contact. Syncretism is the blending or merging of different traditions and it's this process of syncretism that may lie behind the tradition of Sabbath, either borrowed or influenced by the Babylonian tradition of unlucky days, coinciding with the phases of the moon, but transformed into weekly rest days in Judaism. In terms of syncretism of different traditions of the Underworld, the most familiar to English speakers is the use of the word Hell, which originally referred to a Germanic conception of the Underworld, to mean the Christian place of punishment in the afterlife. In Old Norse, the word Hell could refer to the Underworld as well as the ruler of the Underworld, the daughter of Loki. By the way, this is the source of the character Hela in the movie Thor Ragnarok, where she is presented as the daughter of Odin and sister of Loki and Thor. The place Hell, located in the primordial icy region called Niflheim, meaning Dark World, another Marvel Thor movie, containing Nifl Hell, meaning Dark Hell. The lowest region of Hell wasn't exactly a place of punishment, though that is the role of Nifl Hell, but it is the location of the afterlife for all those who didn't die heroically in battle. Those who did die in battle, the Einherjar, instead go to Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain, in Asgard, hosted by Odin with much feasting, drinking, and fighting, awaiting Ragnarok when they will fight alongside the Aysir. The word Hell comes ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root Kel to cover Conceal, Save, also the source of the words Conceal, Hole, and Occult, as well as the words Hall and Valhalla. And speaking of Ragnarok, the Norse end of the world, the root Kel is also found in the word Apocalypse, the Christian end of the world, from Greek Appo, off, away from, and Calliptane to cover Conceal. The Christian Apocalypse is told in the Book of Revelation, and that's literally what Revelation means too, from Latin Re, opposite of, and Wallari, to cover Vale. The final battle of the Apocalypse is sometimes referred to as Armageddon, which is in fact the name of the location of this battle, and that word Armageddon comes from the Hebrew place name Har Megidon, literally Mountain Place of Crowds, an actual location where a number of Israelite battles took place. And you'll remember that word Har, Mountain, from Har Gevnoonim, that cheesy mountain. Now getting back to Hell, that Germanic word, again through the process of syncretism, was used to translate into English various other words for the underworld. The Latin Vulgate Bible uses the word In fairness, which we saw as related to Welsh Anun, and is barred from the Roman conception of the underworld. The Greek Christian New Testament also uses the word Tartarus, of uncertain etymology, to refer to the underworld, which is borrowed from Greek mythology, where it is the lowest level of the underworld, where the wicked are punished, and also where the Titans are imprisoned, much like Niffel Hell in Norse mythology. In the Greek Septuagint, two words are used to refer to the underworld. One, a borrowing from Hebrew, and the other, a syncretic borrowing from Greek mythology, Hades. Hades, like Hell, refers to both the place and the ruler of the underworld. In this case, the brother of Zeus, and though the etymology of the name is uncertain, it probably means unseen from the negative prefix Ah and Edain, to see, from the Proto-Indo-European root Wade, to see, reminding us of the derivation of Hell from Conceal covered. Greek Hades was used to refer to Hebrew Shail, itself a word of unknown origin, a neutral term for the underworld, not specifically a place of punishment. The other Hebrew word for the underworld, which simply became a loan word in the Septuagint is Gehenom, or Gehena in its modern English form. It literally means the valley of Hinnom, again an actual real-world location where, according to the Book of Jeremiah, children were sacrificed to the Canaanite God Moloch. Subsequently, being thought of as a cursed place and becomes figuratively used to refer to the underworld as a place of punishment, particularly in rabbinic literature. A specific location in Gehena, which is only mentioned in the Talmud and not the Hebrew Bible itself, is Tsoa Rotahat, literally meaning boiling excrement. Like Niflhel and Tartarus, it is a place a particularly harsh punishment doled out to those who have committed certain sins. Specifically, all who scoff at the words of the wise men, and one passage of the Talmud is interpreted by some as depicting Jesus being located there. And what is particularly extreme about the punishment in that place is that those suffering there are never given relief from their punishment, not even on the Sabbath. So, we've seen the Jewish Sabbath being borrowed from the Babylonian calendar, the academic sabbatical borrowed from the Jewish Shemitah the Christian Pentecost adapted from Shavuot, the Blitzfold named after a traditional Shavuot recipe, German paper folding lending its name to Origami, paper coming from Japan to China, the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright borrowing from kindergarten toys and Welsh mythology, and a hell of a lot of complicated syncretism of the concept of the underworld, taking us finally back to the Sabbath and demonstrating yet again the many levels of connections in the world around us. Thanks for watching, and special thanks to Mara Katz for suggesting the topic and providing some of the ideas that went into it. If you've enjoyed these etymological explorations and cultural connections, please subscribe and click the little bell to be notified of every new episode. And check out our Patreon where you can make a contribution to help me make more videos. I'm at alliterative on Twitter and you can visit our website alliterative.net for more language connections in our podcast, blog, and more.