This article seeks to establish that the ‘strong’ meaning of the verbal forms derived from שנא in the Genesis Apocryphon and the book of Daniel is of a dramatic, even violent, change; when used to denote a ‘change’ in mind or countenance, this refers to mental anguish, and so opens up a hitherto overlooked connection between this Jewish literature and the Hellenistic science of physiognomy. The semantic input of this Hellenistic context is important for a better understanding of the range of this Aramaic lexeme, and of the other lexeme employed to denote a ‘change’ by these two early Jewish texts, חלף. Thus this article will attempt to demonstrate the importance of the wider cultural context in which lexemes articulate their meaning.
