[Meaning a] mixed drink.
And among Hebrews an intoxicating drink goes by this name: wine mixed with sweeteners; [so named] from the mixing [sugkekra=sqai].
*si/kera: skeuasto\n po/ma. kai\ par' *(ebrai/ois ou(/tw lego/menon me/qusma: oi)=nos summigh\s h(du/smasin: e)k tou= sugkekra=sqai.
cf. Hebrew שֵׁכָר
šēkhār, strong drink.
This is an Aramaic word (see M. Sokoloff,
Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, pp. 1145-46 [it does not seem to occur in any extant sources of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic]), not Hebrew, although the Greek word is used to translate a similar Hebrew word in the Greek Bible: (
Leviticus 10.9,
Numbers 6.3,
Deuteronomy 29.5,
Judges 13.4, 7, 14,
1 Samuel 1.15). The
Septuagint has
si/kera for this word in every place except
1 Samuel 1.15, which has instead
me/qusma. (The B text of the
Judges verses has
me/qusma in the first two occurrences, the second has
si/kera me/qusma [a textual intrusion from a marginal note?].)
Philo Judaeus quotes
Leviticus 10.9 in
On Drunkenness 127 and 138 and so the word
si/kera occurs there too. The occurrence of the word at
Luke 1.15 in the
New Testament is similar to but not an exact quotation of
Numbers 6.3 or
Leviticus 10.9.
The Suda's opening definition,
skeuasto\n po/ma, occurs also in ps.-Herodian,
Partitiones 123-4. The common Semitic root behind this Aramaic word is ultimately the source, via Arabic, of English 'sugar'.
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