Original Sin (and Original Shin!)
Today, we pronounce the letter sin the same way as the letter samekh. Was
this always the case? And why do shin and sin share the same
letter? The only difference between shin
and sin is the location of the dot. But dots were markings that did not
arise until much later.
To answer the first question, scholars today realize that sin and
samekh were not pronounced the same way in Biblical times. A scholar who wrote his dissertation on this
in 1974 was Dr. Richard Steiner, who later taught at Yeshiva University. His
dissertation was: “The Case for Fricative Laterals in Proto-Semitic.” (Have I
lost you already?) Steiner showed that originally the letter sin was
pronounced “SL”. Steiner found remote villages in modern times where this
pronunciation was preserved.
This
original “SL” pronunciation explains many phenomena. For example, the Tanakh
refers to an ancient people called “Casdim” (with a sin). Yet in other
ancient sources they are called “Chaldeans.” What happened to the “L” sound in
the Hebrew? Now we understand that Hebrew did not omit it. It was built in all
along with the sin.
A
few generations ago scholars believed that sin was merely a later
development from shin. But this view has been discarded. Now scholars believe
that the letters were originally separate. They were able to make this
determination based on a review of the other Semitic languages. Since shin
and sin originated as separate letters, we should not normally attempt
to equate roots in which one root has a shin and the other a sin.
A most interesting question is why Hebrew utilizes an alphabet in which
one letter has to do double duty. The answer suggested by scholars today is
somewhat surprising. The background is that Hebrew is one of several languages
that arose from an original language that scholars call Proto-Semitic. The
assumption is that Proto-Semitic had 29 consonants. Over time, in the Hebrew language
that number was reduced to 23. Reduction occurs when sounds disappear due to similarity
and merger. At the stage where Hebrew began to be written down and needed an
alphabet, it borrowed an alphabet from another people (the Phoenicians) that
had only 22 letters. But rather than add a new letter, Hebrew decided to employ
one sign for both shin and sin, since their pronunciations were
not that different.
Over the centuries, everyone who has written a Hebrew dictionary has
been faced with a dilemma. Do the letters shin and sin warrant separate
entries or one merged entry? Now that we realize that the letters originated as
separate letters, they certainly warrant separate entries. But some books are
attempting to be easy to use by non-Hebrew speakers, like Ernest Klein, A
Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of
English. Here, this very scholarly
book merged all the shins and sins into one long entry, because the
author was trying to make his book user-friendly for readers of English. Another work that merged the shin and sin
entries was the dictionary of Marcus Jastrow. (Perhaps when this work was
published at the end of the 19th century, it was still thought that
the letters were related.)
Now I will address an interesting word where the shin/sin
issue comes up. At Isaiah 2:16 we are presented with the word mesakrot
(with a sin). Here God talks about punishing the daughters of Zion,
because “they are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks (netuyot garon)
and are meskarot einyaim…” The root of mesakrot is sin, kuf,
resh. In all of Tanakh this root only appears here, so we are faced with
the difficult issue of determining what it means.
But wait a minute. We all know
the root shin, kuf, resh. This is sheker, to lie.
This root appears 119 times in Tanakh. When the dots were added in the
post-Talmudic period, why was it decided to put the dot on the left here, and create
a unique root? Why could they not have dotted it on the right like they did 119
other times?
One
possibility is that they had a strong tradition that the letter was a sin.
Also, perhaps they could not fathom a reasonable interpretation of an
expression “lying with their eyes.” (The Eagles’ “Lying Eyes” song had not been
composed yet!)
How have our commentaries dealt with this word mesakrot? This is
a very relevant question because our verse with meskarot einyaim is the
source for the sikur ayin line in the al chet prayer. (In the
early versions of the al chet prayer, the line was spelled with a samekh.
Now, it is usually spelled with a sin since all agree that it derives
from our verse in Isaiah, but it remains in the samekh position in the
acrostic!)
Rashi on Isaiah 2:16 offers two
interpretations: looking, and putting red make-up on their eyes. The basis for these interpretations is that in
Mishnaic and Talmudic times there was a root in Hebrew samekh, kuf, resh,
which had two different meanings: a “looking” meaning, and a “painting red”
meaning. Rashi’s thinking was that perhaps one of these was the original
meaning of sin-kuf-resh, even though the spelling changed over the
centuries to samekh. Other Rishonim interpret meskarot einyaim to
mean “winking with their eyes” (as a form of seduction). But this is just a guess from the context.
Most interesting is the approach taken by
S.D. Luzzatto. He points out that there are some texts of Is. 2:16 that have
the word with a shin. He suggests that this was the original reading. He
theorizes that, since the context of the verse is a criticism of haughtiness, “lying
with one’s eyes” means seeing people and pretending not to see them.
I now
believe I understand why the post-Talmudic Masoretes put the dot on the left. A
possible idiom of “lying with their eyes” was unclear to them. What was clear to
them were two different meanings with a sin (looking, and painting red).
Even though they had to assume that the original sin in one or both of
these roots evolved into a samekh, this was preferable to them than
creating a difficult idiom. (Or alternatively, perhaps they did have a strong
tradition that the letter was a sin.)
Going back to the al chet prayer, there
are really two separate questions that are raised by the sikur ayin line.
One is what is the meaning of the phrase meskarot einyaim at Is. 2:16? The
other is what did the post-Talmudic author of the al chet prayer have in
mind when he composed the line sikur ayin? We have seen that the first
question is a hard question, due to the uniqueness of the root sin-kuf-resh.
But the second question is a bit easier. We know what the root samekh-kuf-resh
meant in the Talmudic and post-Talmudic periods: “looking” or “painting a red
stripe.” Since the latter does not fit the context in the al chet, there
sikur must have something to do with “looking.” And based on sources
such as Bereshit Rabbah 18:2, it seems that the transgression referred to is
looking around too much with one’s eyes, i.e., prying into the affairs of
others.
P.S.
There was once a writer in Binghamton (Sholom Staiman), who wrote under the
pseudonym: “Shin Sin.” A collection of
his writings is found in the Congregation Beth Aaron library.
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