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  • From: Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Early Rabbinic views of Hebrew
  • Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 10:21:10 -0700

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



  • Re: [b-hebrew] Early Rabbinic views of Hebrew, Gabe Eisenstein, 05/23/2009

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