Meaning of “an” in Matthew (King James Version)

Solution 1:

OED

anhungered, adj.

Etymology: apparently for earlier a-hungred

archaic

1. Overcome with hunger, hungry.

c1300 K. Alis. 1229 The folk and the poraile weoren an-hungred.

1377 Langland Piers Plowman B. x. 59 (Oriel) Bothe an-hungred and a-þrist.

1526 Bible (Tyndale) Matt. xii. 1 His disciples wer anhongred.

The prefix an- is a reduced, unstressed, form of the prefix on- - found before a following vowel or "h". This use of "on" remains in the phrase "on high".

Solution 2:

1. Searching through the entire KJV, I see several other uses of "an hungred." Matthew 12:1 would seem to disprove the "it really means an hungred [person]" theory because there the subject is plural: "his disciples were an hungred." There's also Mark 2:25 and the parallel passage in Luke 6:3, as well as Mark 4:2.
2. Unfortunately, I can't come up with a way to search for "an plus a participle," but searching for " an " shows, of course, many places where the article is used before any word starting with "h": "an holy day," "an hin of oil." Yes, this was absolutely a standard rule (though perhaps irrelevant to this question).
3. There are only 9 occurrences of "an hungred," all of them in the gospels. The word "hungred" does not occur in the KJV without the "an."

Conspiracy theory: The King James Bible was a team effort by multiple translators. Maybe whoever worked on the gospels was fond of the construction "an hungred"?

More plausible theory: We need a language historian to help us out, but I think the theory that it is some sort of "enhungered" type of construction is most plausible. I find it implausible that "an" is actually acting as an article in this scenario.

Unrelated footnote: Just in case people find this page while on an unrelated quest: There's an unrelated archaic use of "an" in Elizabethan/Jacobean English, in usages that would be rendered as "if" in modern English, as a contraction of "and if" ("An I should live a thousand years, I never should forget it").

Solution 3:

I'm not sure of the technical term but a or an are used before words other than nouns sometimes.

Take the nursery rhyme Dashing away with her smoothing iron for example, which contains a-washing a-hanging and a-airing

The function of the a or an seems to be to suggest duration. If I spend a few minutes looking for temporarily mislaid glasses, I may be said to be "hunting" for them but if I go "a hunting" I may be out for most of the day trying to catch my supper.

If I spend a few seconds washing my hands I am "washing" but if I am "a washing" I may be taking a couple of hours to do the weekly clothes wash.

If I choose to skip lunch on a busy day that might make me temporarily hungry but if I am "an hungered" I am probably underfed or starving due to an ongoing serious unavailability of food.