[Meaning] food being supplied from on high. That is, "what [is] this?"[1]
That which is also called bread of angels, as being supplied by an angel.[2]
Among many manna is called amblision.[3]
*ma/nna: h( a)/nwqen xorhgoume/nh trofh/. toute/sti ti/ tou=to. o(\ kai\ a)/rtos a)gge/lwn le/getai, w(s u(p' a)gge/lou xorhgou/menos. o(/ti para\ polloi=s le/getai to\ ma/nna a)mbli/sion.
See also
mu 129. Cf.
Josephus,
Antiquities of the Jews 3.1.6, web address 1.
[1]
Exodus 16:15: "When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, 'What is this?' For they did not know what it was." According to Nahum Sarna (see bibliography below), the Hebrew מן הוא
man-hu ("What is that?") "is a folk explanation for the term by which the inhabitants of the wilderness knew the substance." Propp points to the Semitic root מון "*mwn (provide, feed) attested in Arabic" and states that "man" is also "a primitive form of the Hebrew interrogative pronoun מה 'ma(h),' 'what?'"
[2] Theodoret of Cyrrhus PG 80.1489c, on
Psalm 77.25
LXX.
[3] The word
amblision is ambiguous. It occurs as
alpha 1522 (from which the present addendum derives), defined there merely as "manna".
Alpha 1521 defines
a)mbli/zw merely as "a verb." It is my opinion that the compiler did not know the meaning of the word, but included it here because he knew that his source used the term to describe manna. Adler's apparatus points to a similar entry in the unpublished
Lexicon Ambrosianum,
Milan Amb. B12 sup, entry 1742. Perhaps the word means "ground" or "milled". Prof. Robert Kraft, Dept. of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania, suggests a relationship to
amulos, an "unmilled, very fine flour or starch," as found in
Aquila's version of
Exodus 16:31. In the passage where the Israelites found that manna tasted like "wafers made with honey,"
Aquila used
amulos for "wafers" rather than the more usual
enkris, or "cake." Pointing to the "U/V/B interchange in Greek vowel sequences (for example
stauro/s/
stabro/s)," Prof. Kraft suggests a derivation of the verb
a)mbli/zein from
a)muli/zein which would mean "to grind very finely." This is especially suggestive since there is the feminine noun "manna", meaning "granules or powder of frankincense," as well as the adjective
amblus, meaning "dull, the edge worn down". There are also references to millstones found in the third heaven, "where manna is constantly being ground" by the angels "for the future use of the pious". Timothy Janz (Lincoln College, Oxford) points to the definition of "ambrosia" as "manna" by
Hesychius. Janz states that "this connection, and the idea of emending the Suda's
amblision to
ambrosion, was already suggested in 1746 by Johannes Alberti in his edition of
Hesychius; it is also referred to in the 19th-c. incarnation of Henri Estienne's TGL (produced by Ambroise Firmin Didot and not to be confused with the TLG), s.v.
amblision".
Ronald E. Clements, Exodus, Cambridge Bible Commentary 3 (Cambridge, 1972) 99
Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Bible (New York, 1956) 365
William Propp, Exodus 1-18, Anchor Bible 2 (New York, 1999) 596
Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary, Exodus (Philadelphia/New York, 1991) 89
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