Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>]

Yitzhak:

I appreciate very much your interest and observations on this text. I 
have written an essay on it, in a book I am working on, so this will 
help me.

1. I had not considered "tongue of the holy" as opposed to "holy 
tongue". If I understand you, you are saying that the referent is indeed 
the Hebrew language, but it is not being called holy in its essence, so 
to speak, but only accidentally, in that the Torah happens to be in 
Hebrew (or God just happens to speak Hebrew). The concept of holiness 
isn't applied to Hebrew in virtue of its intrinsic properties; but it 
nonetheless has some necessary connections with holiness: there is the 
giving (and re-giving) of languages and alphabets (by God to Israel); 
there is "fulfilling one's duty" with regard to reading certain texts in 
a certain language; and there is "defiling the hands", which holy books 
can do, only when written in a certain language and alphabet (Megila 8b).
[In further research I found "lashon kodesh", not "hakodesh", at 
Sanhedrin 97b, see below. Does that mean "holy tongue"?]

2. Thanks for pointing out the pun... Isn't it the second one? As I 
understand it me'ushar ("upright") has both spatial and moral 
connotations (as in English), and the latter is applied here to the 
victorious or nobler script. It is also kind of a joke, since people 
know that it really means "Assyrian". But getting back to "it is content 
having only a script", I'm not sure I understand this. Where does "only" 
come from, and what cases are distinguished by this? Is it sort of like 
saying that the particular script doesn't matter?

3. I don't know what to make of "Ashurith" at M. Megila 2. It seems that 
the Talmud passes over the anomaly. I can't really see your solution. I 
looked at all instances of "Ashurith" and the term seems to be used 
consistently in the Talmud except for here and perhaps Sanhedrin 97b 
(Hanan b. Tahlifa remarks on a scroll written "in Ashurith and holy 
tongue" (lashon kodesh"), as if that were unusual. What does he mean?) 
Thus I would be inclined to think that when used in reference to spoken 
language it would mean Aramaic; but as you say the Aramaic case has 
already been dealt with. (But not in a very clear way.)

4. I have a different take on the interplay between Zutra/Uqba,  Hisda 
and the later editors. First of all, I read the whole section under "and 
he shall write in his own name..." to be quite unified and coherent, and 
I attribute this overall design to some late editor(s). Because there is 
this unifying argument, it is not surprising that earlier thinkers seem 
to be commenting on later ones; because it is really the editor who is 
doing the commenting, by means of the quotation he inserts in a 
particular place. Another apparent anachronism would lie in the fact 
that "Rabbi" (Judah the Prince), who lived before Hisda, also "comments" 
on Mar Zutra/Uqba's statement. He had yet a different theory about the 
history of the Hebrew and Aramaic languages and alphabets. The 
complexity of his theory requires that it be placed after the statements 
of Uqba and Hisda, so that it "presupposes" them in the argument.

The identification of hedyototh and Cutheans comes after a reference to 
hedyototh in the previous paragraph, where Abaye says that "he shall 
write..." applies only to a king, not a hedyot; and is contradicted by 
the anonymous editor (or Rabbah?). The connection is open to 
interpretation, but I doubt that it is accidental. My reading is that 
Aramaic speakers are in a sense like commoners, and Hebrew speakers like 
the king. Samaritans are "commoners" compared to the kinglike Jews, 
despite their use of the original Hebrew alphabet, because they use 
Targums which are lower-class Torahs. (I assume that this is a 
distortion, since Samaritans and Jews both had Hebrew Torahs as well as 
Targums.) Nevertheless Rabbah's point of view conveys an overall 
impression of universality or individual merit, which would counteract 
the Jewish-Samaritan rivalry.

5. I haven't read the corresponding Yerushalmi sections. (There isn't an 
online English version, is there?) It is very interesting that it claims 
originality for the "Ashurith" alphabet -- a claim that must be false, 
and, given the statements of Rabbi and Mar Uqba (as well as other 
evidence like coins and DSS), probably known by most people to be false. 
In the Bavli only Shimon b. Eliezer holds this view, which is presented 
at the end, and thus after the reader has already been exposed to the 
more historically correct statements. In my reading, the editor doesn't 
expect us to take it literally, but to appreciate that in its current 
preferred or "holy" status, it is AS IF the Aramaic alphabet were the 
original vehicle of Torah, just as in prayers and in carrying the Torah, 
it is AS IF one were in God's presence (according to R. Hana and the 
editor).
So although you may say that the Bavli is more sympathetic to Aramaic 
because of external circumstances, I wonder if it isn't just spinning 
out the dialectic held in the Yerushalmi's false assertion about the 
Aramaic alphabet.


Gabe Eisenstein