AARONITES. This term occurs in the E. V. in I Chron. xii. 27; xxvii. 17; but there is nothing exactly corresponding in the Hebrew. In both passages the word is l'Iru.6 for Aaron.—W. L. A. AB (ZN, father) is found as the first member of compound Hebrew proper names, the etymology and meaning of which may be explained by a few remarks on the laws of their construction. This is the more necessary, as many indifferently take the former or latter member of such com pounds to be in the relation of genitive to the other, i. e., consider it equally legitimate to say, Abner means father of lzght, or light of the father.
Nevertheless, it may be laid down as an incontest able canon—being founded not merely on an accessory law, but on one of the characteristic peculiarities of the Syro-Arabian languages (that is, on the state construct)—that, in all cases in which a compound name consists of two nouns, one of which is to be considered in the relation of genitive to the other, that one must invariably be the latter. Abner, therefore, can only mean father of light, or father of Ner.
This error appears to have arisen (besides the want of sure principles• of construction) from the inability to appreciate the metaphorical sense in which the Hebrews use the terms father, son, etc. The name Abigail, father of joy, appeared inex plicable as the name of a woman; and therefore those scholars thought it allowable to sacrifice the construction to the necessities of the sense. And yet it is not difficult to conceive the process by which the idea of a natural father became modified into that of author, cause, source (as when it is said, `bath the rain a father ?' Job xxxviii. 28); nor that, when once the language had sanctioned the use of father as equivalent to source, the word might be sometimes treated as an abstract, in idea, and be applied without gross incongruity to a woman.
As the Ethiopic, and especially the Arabic lan guages very frequently use faker in the sense of possessor (as father of white, a name for milk), some have been disposed to vindicate the same privilege to Hebrew also. Thus Gesenius seems to have entertained this view, when he rendered Abigail by `pater exultationis, i.e. hilaris,' in his Thesaurus.
Very much light yet remains to be thrown on compound Hebrew proper names, by a study of those of the same class in Arabic. The innume rable compound przwonzina and cognomina which the Arabs bestow not only on men, but on beasts and inanimate objects, furnish parallels to almost every peculiarity observable in Hebrew; and al though no example may be found in which a woman is called father of joy, yet the principle of the metaphorical use of terms of relationship, as the first element in a name, will receive ample illustration, and be brought within the reach of our occidental conceptions. (See an instructive paper on the Pranomina of the Arabs, by Kosegarten, in Ewald's Zeitschnft far die Knnde des Ilforgen lancles, i. 297-317).—J. N.
AB ; 'Appci, Joseph. Antiq. iv. 4 ; the Macedonian is the Chaldee name of that month which is the fifth of the ecclesiastical and eleventh of the civil year of the Jews. The name was first introduced after the Babylonian captivity, and does not occur in the Old Testament, in which this month is only mentioned by its numeral desig nation as the fifth. It commenced with the new moon of our August (the reasons for this statement will be given in the article MoNTHs), and always had thirty days. This month is pre-eminent in the Jewish calendar as the period of the most signal national calamities. The 1st is memorable for the death of Aaron (Num. xxxiii. 38). The 9th is the date assigned by Moses Cotzensis (cited in Wagen seil's Sofa, p. 736) to the following events : the declaration that no one then adult, except Joshua and Caleb, should enter into the Promised Land (Num. xiv. 30); the destruction of the first Temple by Nebuchadnezzar (to these first two `the fast of the fifth month,' in Zech. vii. 5; viii. 19, is sup posed to refer; yet the tract Pesachim, cited in Reland's Antiq. Sacr. iv. to, asserts that the /atter was the only fast observed during the Captivity); the destruction of the second Temple by Titus; the devastation of the city Bettar ; the slaughter of Ben Cozibah (Bar Cocffiu), and of several thousand Jews there; and the ploughing up of the foundations of the Temple by Turnus Rufus —the last two of which happened in the time of Hadrian.