Fragment of the Month: January 2021

 

Dictionaries and glossaries of every kind, most of them dealing with Biblical Hebrew and written in Judaeo-Arabic, form a significant part of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection. The fragments discussed below are remarkable in as much as they come from a unicum – the only copy of an otherwise unknown book – and contain translations into Judaeo-Greek, a language already rare in the Genizah.  

 

Clockwise from top left, T-S NS 268.93 F contains pages 8, 1, 4 and 5 of the book. The correct orientation of T-S NS 268.93 B (positioned so as to read the label) is achieved by rotating around the vertical axis and contains pp. 2, 7, 6 and 3. T-S Misc.16.10 F contains (always from left) pp. 3 and 6; its back contains pp. 5 and 4. Therefore, T-S NS 268.93 exemplifies a common in quarto imposition,² and T-S Misc.16.10 corresponds to its lower part. 

 

 

There are no traces of binding nor deep vertical folds between the pages, and it is likely that both leaves never made it into an actual book, but were waste sheets discarded by the printer, or perhaps proof pages, although no proof marks are visible on either fragment.³ 

 

 

The first page is a title page, adorned with woodcut borders featuring two floral motifs. The front matter (pp. 2–5) is printed in one column without vowel points; large spaces and geresh signs are used for punctuation.

 

The trilingual dictionary (TD) itself starts on the mid-fifth page. Biblical examples, Judaeo-Spanish (JS) and Judaeo-Greek (JG) translations appear with diacritics; punctuation consists of geresh signs and vertical lines. A larger typeface is used for glosses framed by empty space; extended characters are used in the main text to retain the proper shape of the frame. References to the biblical books or parashot, often abbreviated in random fashion to fit the space,⁴ are aligned along the outer margin and set in Rashi type. This practical and pleasing page design was developed for lexicographical works already at the dawn of typography and was later imitated in handwriting.⁵  “Smaller Hebrew typefaces rarely bring out the best either in legibility or letterforms”,⁶ but the text on the whole looks elegant and readable, notwithstanding its size (ca 15 × 10 cm when folded) and material (a lower quality paper).  

 

Early prints lacking colophon, title page or other clear indications of their origin are normally identified through their typeface and decorative elements. Made individually and having a limited life expectancy, they often suffice in uniquely identifying the publisher.  

 

D. Cohen has observed that the typefaces and ornaments appearing in T-S NS 268.93 are identical to those in the early print of Pitron Halomot (Interpretation of Dreams), a composition attributed to Hai b. Sherira Gaon.⁷ Luckily, the title page of Pitron Halomot has survived in its entirety, informing us that it was printed by Gershom b. Eliezer Soncino in Cairo in 1557.⁸  

 

Cohen’s identification is significant, as it added the third item to the list of sixteenth-century Cairo prints, the second being Refu’ot ha-Talmud (Remedies from the Talmud), a unicum preserved in T-S Misc.17.8, ENA and elsewhere⁹. The chronogram Refu’ot ha-Talmud has been variously interpreted as 1557, 1562 or 1563¹⁰. The Remedies are barely legible and quite distinct from both TD fragments and Pitron Halomot – Freimann even went as far as to suggest that the title was faked in order to pass off the bad quality product as a reputable Soncino print.¹¹ Cohen’s dating of TD to 1557 is very likely, but one should keep in mind that decorative elements and type were actively traded between the publishers and some embellishments were re-used decades after their initial appearance. Careful technical study of the wear and tear of the characters and woodcuts may solve the question, whether the dictionary preserved in T-S NS 268.93 and T-S Misc.16.10 can compete with Pitron Halomot for the title of “[t]he first book printed in the Middle East”.¹²

 

I know of no sources explaining why Gershon b. Eliezer Soncino left Constantinople, the city that witnessed the spectacular achievements of his father and grandfather, and where his family continued to prosper for centuries to come.¹³ It is unclear whether his decision was forced or voluntary, a well-considered move or a hazardous escapade.¹⁴ Moving printing presses across the Ottoman Empire was very common – in fact, “[p]rinting, in its first decades, was a peripatetic profession”.¹⁵ Yet associated costs meant that the move was not undertaken lightly. A force majeure could come from suspicious authorities: Greek printer Nikodimos Metaksas brought a tonne of typographical hardware and a printing press all the way from London to Constantinople only to suffer a pogrom and be forced to flee after having published only a single book.¹⁶ Jewish book-printers were generally not seen as dangerous to the Empire’s order and could operate in the same place for years, but neither were they immune to conflicts with local administration, neighbours and competitors. 

 

The major positive motivation for moving a printing press was the desire to bring it closer to prospective buyers. An excellent strategy to conquer a new market would have been starting with practical reference books, like Pitron Halomot and Refu’ot ha-Talmud, and cheap language study aids like TD. Popular books must have been in high demand and thus extremely profitable: in fact, many scholars believe that the first Hebrew book ever printed was David Kimhi’s Shorashim.¹⁷ With time, a publisher could hope to build up a readership for more sophisticated editions. On the other hand, the choice of low-brow texts may witness the (perceived) lack of an educated public in nearby communities. However, books were actively traded across the Empire and beyond, and from the viewpoint of long-distance trade it made sense to develop one’s business in a logistics hub, such as Cairo with its easy access to Palestine, Yemen, Persia and India. The political and economic situation in Egypt in the 1550s was, in all probability, favourable for a new trading opportunity.¹⁸

 

The dictionary that included translations into two ‘vulgar tongues’ would have enjoyed greater popularity than a monolingual Hebrew one. Obviously, Judaeo-Spanish translations would have been welcomed by the recent megurashim, who had already established themselves in the provincial capital and produced scholars.¹⁹ Yet the answer to the question, why print Greek in place where most people do not speak it, is not self-evident. To explain that apparent waste of materials and the wear and tear on the equipment one may offer a number of considerations of varying importance: technical, personal, ideological, commercial and historical, some reinforcing each other: 

 

• Greek could have been printed because it was easier to keep than to omit. The source manuscript for the print edition could have originated from the core Greek-speaking area and been brought to Egypt. Printing was normally done from a handwritten prototype whose graphical arrangement facilitated the typesetter’s work, and ignoring Greek words when working from it could result in unsightly holes, reducing the visual appeal of the page. 

 

• Although the Soncinos did publish in languages loosely related or even completely unrelated to their personal experience, such as Persian,²⁰ on the whole they stayed in Greek-speaking territories long enough to  develop some taste for the language and perhaps even an attachment to it. Several members of the clan undertook the printing of Greek texts: Girolamo/Hieronymus/Gershom printed in Greek script, Eliezer b. Gershom included Ladino and Judaeo-Greek translations in his Pentateuch (Constantinople, 1547, further CP).²¹ Gershom b. Eliezer could have wished to continue the family tradition. 

 

• The Soncinos were conscious of the contemporary cultural trends and would have been familiar with the emerging appreciation of Greek as one of three classical tongues fundamental for Western culture: Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew. Multilingual lexicography in these languages was destined to become a standard. For a Jewish person, the classical triad would translate into Hebrew, Ladino (as a form of Latin) and Greek (as a form of Ancient Greek). Thus, including Greek in the dictionary would complete the default set of languages and make it into a comprehensive up-to-date educational tool. 

 

• Printing in Judaeo-Greek could have been gainful if intended for short-distant trade. All major islands (Cyprus, Crete) and some smaller ones within easy reach from Egypt had Jewish communities where Greek was the primary spoken language.²² Furthermore, Greek-speaking Jews maintained a strong presence in the Holy Land, in particular in Jerusalem and Safed, where Romaniote benefactors were the first point of address for charitable contributions.²³ Educational tools including Greek would have been welcome in Palestinian communities.

 

• Lastly, Greek could have been printed for Greek-speaking Jews, autochthones or newcomers, living in Egypt at the time. Scholars are unanimous that upon the conquest of the seventh century, “Arabic succeeded where Greek failed”.²⁴ It is not my intention here to challenge the consensus that deep, but only to point to another possibility. In as far as it is commonly presumed that there were no Greek-speaking Jewish communities in Egypt during the classical genizah period, Greek personal names occurring in genizah sources are generally attributed to Byzantine immigrants or temporary sojourners. Yet unless a document is penned in a distinctly Byzantine hand and/or refers to an unambiguously Byzantine geographical context, there can be little certainty in such presumptions. A poor and low-profile group of Greek speakers, perhaps as small as a couple of families, could have persisted in an Arabic-speaking environment leaving few (other) traces behind. In fact, a great number of Byzantine communities were precisely this —tiny and low-profile groups––, and Romaniote naming practices make it difficult for males to be reliably identified as Greek speakers.

 

In more recent and better documented times, both Venetian and Ottoman bureaucracies registered Jews moving between Egypt and their respective jurisdictions, and some of these individuals bear names that are widespread in Greek-speaking communities.²⁵ At the very least, Greek-speaking would be advantageous for merchants in coastal cities engaged in maritime trade with former Byzantine territories. An intermittent or even permanent Judaeo-Greek settlement in Egypt up to the Modern period is not an impossible scenario. 

 

The major part of the introductory matter did not survive, but its content and structure are sufficiently clear. It must have consisted of several introductory sections. First, the author defines the purpose of the edition, possibly adorning it with some self-advertisement, and explains the importance of the book for the beginner Hebrew students (מתחילים, p. 2, l. 9). Then he addresses the structure of the entry on a theoretical and practical level: כל שרש אודיע כמה ענינים (p.3, l. 4), ועל כל ענין וענין אכתו[ב בלשון הקדש [] ואחר כך בלשון יוני  (p.3, ll.12–13). On pp. 4 he discusses Hebrew roots and explains the concept of פעל as a model triliteral root (ll. 18–22), which by the mid-sixteenth century would have become widespread. Due to the bad state of preservation of these hakdamot, it is difficult to assess whether they were copied from earlier introductions, heavily relied on them or showed some originality. 

 

In the very end the author returns to lexical semantics: 

 

 “[A root can have many] meanings, as by saying eat you can point to eating, burning and decay. Although you could bring them together in the same notion, some of them show varying notions. Similarly, there exist two or three synonymous roots [referring] to one notion, such as fled, rushed, both of which convey the notion of escape, even though there is a certain difference between them, unknown to us” (p. 5, ll. 1–8).

 

It is impressive, how carefully he treads between the meaning-maximalism and meaning-minimalism, trying to bring together the ideal of one root with a single meaning and the acceptance of multiple meanings for each root.²⁶ Humble recognition of human limitations serves as an ultimate common ground unlikely to alienate the followers of either theory. 

 

The traditional explanations of Hebrew roots’ semantics were almost exclusively sourced from biblical scholarship. Successful concise explanations coined by popular commentators had the best chances to enter the dictionaries. E.g., TD’s definition of אבס as מקום מאכל הבהמות echoes Radak’s commentary on Isaiah 1:3 (who himself may echo earlier commentators). At the other end, dictionary entries could be recycled into the works of subsequent commentators, especially those interested in peshat and compactness. It is therefore no wonder that some definitions of TD (אבס as מקום מאכל הבהמות, and אבק as עפר דק) appear, e.g., in Metsudat Tsion to 2 Chr 9:25 and Nah 1:3. This, of course, does not mean that Ba’al ha-Metsudot was familiar with the TD, but that both were woven into the mutually reinforcing strands of exegesis and lexicology. 

 

Most illustrative material for the roots of TD comes from Biblical Hebrew. Aramaic appears in one example from Daniel (p. 7, l. 17) being called targum, as it is usual in JG biblical glossaries. An illustration from Mishna follows (l. 18). 

 

The Scripture of TD is not a high-class impeccable MT: the differences are inconsequential but numerous. As expected, TD tends to generalize towards more common forms and more frequent orthography, e.g. prefers shureq over qibbuṣ (p. 8, l. 10), writes אָגְרָה בַּקָּצִיר (p. 7, l. 20) instead of בַקָּצִיר, and tolerates minor lexical variations, such as presence/absence of the conjunction vav (e.g., עַד for וְעַד on p. 6, l.2). Sporadically TD confuses similar sounding endings, offering וּרְאִיתֶם for וּרְאִיתֶן (p. 6, l. 10), לֵיהּ  (Dan 7:4) for לַהּ, etc. This loose attitude to the text leads to misquotation in at least one case.

 

The diacritics or letters that are irrelevant for the pronunciation tradition of the author are ignored, e.g., dagesh omitted (הַגָדוֹל, p.8, l.7), qameṣ changed for pataḥ (e.g., הָאָבְנַיִם for הָאָבְנָיִם, p. 6, l. 10, Ex 1:16), segol (מִתְאַבֶּלֶת) for ṣere (מִתְאַבֵּלֵת, p. 6, l.4), etc. 

 

Some contextual examples point to the context rather than quote it: מִתְאַבֶּלֶת עַל-מֵת ‘mourned for the dead’ (2 Sam 14:2) becomes ‘mourned for her son’ (on woman of Tekoa). 

 

Misprints/mistakes in the Hebrew examples are further marred by typesetting inaccuracies, such as the wrong alignment between the text and its reference. E.g., p. 8 contains two examples, Ex 38:27 and Ex 38:17, but the reference to the weekly portion Vayakhel ויקהל (Ex 35:1–38:20) is missing, either because it was visually confused with the reference of the next example יחזקל  (sc. יחזקאל), or perhaps due to its closeness to the previous example from Pekudei (Ex 38:21–40:38).  

 

Notwithstanding being a printed product, the dictionary apparently relies on an oral culture of Bible study.

 

The Judaeo-Spanish translations have pride of place in the TD: they precede the Judaeo-Greek ones, just like the Ladino translation of CP is privileged against the Greek by its mise-en-page. Yet the prominence is seeming: there is actually more Judaeo-Greek than Judaeo-Spanish in the preserved fragments of the dictionary (forty five glosses vs forty two), and JG semantics is more nuanced. 

 

A part of the JG glosses of TD is drawn directly from the Greek-speaking tradition of biblical exegesis, and they are products of this tradition just as Hebrew definitions are products of the Hebrew one. Such glosses can be assessed/appreciated on the background of bilingual glossaries, mostly known from the Genizah, and biblical translations, in particular the closest chronologically and the largest of them, the CP.²⁷ Of course, two interpreters belonging to the same tradition does not mean that they both use the same Greek x to translate Hebrew y – such understanding would be too simplistic and limited. Rather, they both employ the same techniques and draw on the same vocabulary: through centuries of development, the Greek Jewish Bible has amassed a language of its own. μάζωγμα applied to אגר on p.7, l.19 is not used in this function in CP, but its frequency in JG translations makes it a marker of the tradition.  

 

On the other hand, some JG translations of TD – better not called ‘glosses’ – could have been generated as translations of Hebrew translations: “שממה וחרבן” (p. 5, l.24) prompts “ἀπόρια, ἐρημιά”, albeit in chiastic fashion. Such equivalents are closer to the interlingual translations of modernity: it is the concept that is translated, not the context, and the traditional mechanisms of translation are involved to a lesser extent.

 

In the case of “ἀπόρια, ἐρημιά” it would be, however, incautious to claim that traditional mechanisms are not involved at all. The specific word order could be influenced by the traditional oral poetry, e.g., 

 

Πέ μου νὰ ζῇς, καλόγερε, τίνος εἶναι τ’ ἀμπέλι;

– Τῆς ἀποριᾶς, τῆς ἐρημιᾶς, τοῦ γιοῦ μου τοῦ Γιαννάκι. 

“Please tell me, Father/Elder, to whom this vineyard belongs? 

It belongs to misery, to desolation, to my son Giannakis” (ILEG s.v. ἀπορία, Nisyros). 

 

Similar text is known from Epirus (Anonymous 1891); the sequence ἀπoρία, ἐρημιά may have been the basis of a pan-Hellenic formula for the first hemistich of decapentasyllabic verse. Unfortunately, we have too little data about sixteenth-century JG to judge whether such associations could have emerged in the author’s mind – although it would have been probable several centuries later.²⁸ 

 

Note that both ἀπoρία and ἐρημιά are extremely suitable ‘unifying equivalents’ from the viewpoint of meaning-minimalism theory: the first lexeme, understood as ‘misery, misfortune, distress’ (ILEG s.v. ἀπoρία 2), easily covers ‘lament, mourning’ for the Hebrew example in l. 25. On the other hand, ἐρημιά ‘emptiness, deserted place’ allows it to reach out even further to the meaning ‘field’, attributed in modern dictionaries to a homonym:  ולכן נקרא מקום החרב אֲבֵל (p. 6, l.1). A sophisticated choice of Greek vocabulary helps to bridge seemingly irreducible gaps.

 

The grammatical theory espoused by the author must have constituted yet another complicating factor in his search for a good translation. Many Hebrew roots are verbal, but how can such roots be reproduced in Greek without compromising their verbal quality and at the same time satisfying all the semantic requirements? In p. 5, ll. 13, 15 the author starts with translating Hebrew dictionary forms through the 3 sg. of the default past tense of JG and JS, but quickly renounces this strategy in favour of nouns and, in the case of Judaeo-Spanish, infinitives. Some awkward translations (e.g., ἀποστολή, p. 7, l. 21) may be due to the perceived necessity of generating nomina acti, which could be also understood as nomina actionis.

 

TD is a battlefield where traditional translational techniques fight imported theoretical concepts with varied success.  

 

Given the grammatical knowledge exhibited in the introduction, the author’s attitudes to semantics, and occasional proximity of the text to Radak’s Shorashim – in as much as all these can be reconstructed from a few torn pages -- one may allocate TD to Kimhian lexicographical tradition. Greek intellectuals were interested in Mikhlol and Sefer ha-shorashim, as witnessed by sixteenth-century book ownership records from Constantinople and Candia.²⁹ Very close to TD must be Kitzur Shorashim, currently the focus of the major research project Liber Radicum.³⁰ According to the project leader J. Kogel, this lexicographical work is preserved in eighty complete manuscripts copied before 1550, ca 150 fragments and three incunabula. Intriguingly, some of these manuscripts contain Greek glosses.³¹

 

Greek words have accents marked with meteg, although inconsistently, and there is no evident principle governing its appearance. The very presence of accentuation shows that the author was familiar (or came from a tradition that was familiar) with standard Greek orthography.

 

Vowels are marked according to the fool-proof system using both matres and diacritics, e.g. for [e] there will be a yod preceded by segol or ṣere. Final [-a] can be written as either ה or א. 

 

Rafe is consistently used for voiceless fricatives [f], [θ], [x]. [x] is spelt with kaf, never with het.  As to voiced fricatives, [δ] is dalet without rafe; the stop [d] is dalet dgusha. Geresh is used once with gimel; the phonetic value of ג׳ can be established on the basis of typological and historical comparison as [d͡z].

 

There is no clarity as to the ways to spell the initial [v-]: βούρλου is written with vav, but βαζέλι with bet. Initial [k] is always qof, never kaf.

 

Regardless of the following sound, [s] is written as shin, except for βαζέλι with sameh. This latter case, as well as using a graphic representation of [s] for [z] in מַשׁוֹקְמָא may indicate the impact of Romance or German orthography. 

 

The author of TD employs two types of spelling for sonorants followed by front vowels. The first is unmarked:  [li] in ἀλήθεια, θλίψη, λίμνη is written as lamed+hirik+yod, i.e. no different from combination of any other consonant+/i/, e.g. δύναμη דִינָאמִי. However, θέλημα is written down with lamed+shewa +yod+hirik+yod, and the same combination is used in βασέλι and ἀποστολή. Grapheme sequence nun+shewa+yod+hirik+yod is used for the allophone of /n/ in θρονί and λεκάνι. Functionally equivalent to lamed+shewa+yod+hirik+yod would be lamed+zero vocalization+yod+hirik+yod. Such sequence does not indeed occur with lamed, but the spelling of πάθνη with nun+hirik+yod+yod is an obvious misprint for nun+yod+hirik+yod, i.e. nun+∅+yod+hirik+yod. In all the above examples sonorants are followed by /i/, but there is also one example with /e/: ἀνέβασμα has nun+∅+yod+ṣere. 

 

The phonetic sequences [niʝʝ], [lʝiʝ] and similar are neither known nor reconstructable for Early Modern Greek. I conclude that the abovementioned grapheme combinations with two yods were used to write down palatalized allophones /ʎ/ and /ɲ/, widely spread in the Early Modern Greek period and preserved until today in some Northern dialects.³² As in modern dialects, it is difficult to predict the appearance of the palatalized allophone: ἐθέλησεν is spelt as [li], but in its cognate θέλημα with [ʎi]. The occasional presence of such combinations after other consonants points to an underlining [ɲ]: spelling ἐσκαμί with mem+shewa+yod+hirik+yod is due to its origin in σκαμνί. 

 

Some phonological phenomena witnessed by the TD are common, others less so. Among those common is the loss of prenasalization, which is not systematic, e.g. [‘kabos] κάμπος but [aŋd͡zistri] ἀντζίστρι.

 

Vowel rising is suggested by a single example βούρλου, which may evidence the dialect background of the author (Northern Greek zone?), a language interference with a Judaeo-Iberian dialect, or be a simple misprint. Notably, several JS examples show the same phenomenon: ciertu, anzuelu, etc., but inconsistently: junco. 

 

The prothetic vowel mostly occurs as [e]: ἐστάχυ, ἐφτερό, ἐγdί, but there is also one case with [i] and a glide developing before it: ^ʝἰτρομάρα, a phenomenon that would be natural in a continuous speech but not in a dictionary entry. 

 

Prothetic vowels before initial clusters and, much less likely, the epenthesis in θελίψη can perhaps be taken as evidence of foreign phonological influence. 

 

In three cases TD employs animated masculine nouns in acc./voc. as dictionary forms: πατέρα, ἄρχοντα, ἀφέντη. Several explanations of the phenomenon can be offered: first, loss of final /s/ is known in Early Modern Greek notarial texts from Crete.³³ However, /s/ is preserved in ἄρχος, κάμπος and σάνταλος. On the basis of this data one may conjecture that in the speech form of the author the loss of sibilant was limited to the first-declension nouns, but it looks likelier that we are dealing with the effect of language contact rather than an internal Greek development. “[T]he re-interpretation of vocatives of one language as nominatives in another language seems to be rather the rule in situations where languages with morphologically encoded vocatives come into contact with languages without it”.³⁴ For a speaker of a Western Romance or Germanic language Greek vocatives could be easily confused for nominatives. 

 

These preliminary remarks may serve as an introduction to the problems raised by T-S NS 268.93 and T-S Misc.16.10. Among promising tasks for further research are:

• identification of typefaces and research of other technical parameters of TD so as to learn more about its printing;

• assessment of JS glosses, their linguistic profile and relationship with biblical translations;

• comparison between the TD and the versions of Kitsur Shorashim;

• reconstruction of the creation process of TD.

 

The text below is combined from both fragments; pp. 4–8 are followed by the tables of Hebrew examples and glosses. The examples are allocated to the lines in which they begin; the translations are by JPS. The tables of examples allow them to be located and to compare the biblical text of TD with the MT. 

 

The IPA transcriptions of the Greek glosses present the information of the JG form; all the accents there are of the JG original; for explanations see the section ‘The Greek of the TD’. The Greek-script form is standardized as in MG dialectological practice. The translations in the tables of glosses refer to the Judaeo-Greek glosses; Judaeo-Spanish are mostly synonymous; for differences see footnotes. The Judaeo-Spanish glosses are given here for preliminary orientation only; their analysis should be undertaken by those qualified.

 

T-S NS 268.93 F

The title page would have included the title of the work and its author; place of printing and its date in form of chronogram, possibly followed by the mention of the current ruler (Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, 1520–66), and the name of the publisher. Nothing survived. 

 

T-S NS 268.93 B

 

[              יש]ראל
---
[...]ק ההד[]  הר]אשון הזה
]ן הקדש.  הספר השני
]משפטי יי אמת במעשה
]ך לעשותו.
---
]דעתי בפתיחת זה הקבוץ
ל]הודיע למתחילים ביאור
או]תו יוכל ללמדו מהרה
וי]וכל מעצמו לקרוא
]קדש ויהיה הספר
]מה הזאת ואם נ[ע]ר
ז]ה הספר כמזכרת
ולדעת ה]דעת האמתי שהם
]זאת כל הראשונים
]זה שהשער ה[רא]שון
]ם וזהו שער
] ידיעת [ה]כל
] ולש[   חע]ר
ד]ברי השם
א] היסוד
] השער יסוד
] לפי שזה
ש]ער ה[י]סוד

 

Page 3

T-S Misc.16.10 F, T-S NS 268.93 F (ll. 1-8)

 

Glosses

אגם	לִימְנִי	[limni] λίμνη	lake	pi[    ]51	3
	[  ]וש	[‘kabos] κάμπος52	valley, field	valle	4
	ווּרְלוּ	[vurlu] βούρλου53	seaweed, alga		7
	פַּפִּירִי	[papiri] παπύρι	papyrus	junco54	7
	אַנְגִ'ישְטְרִי	[aŋd͡zistri] ἀγτζίστρι55	hook	anzuelu56	9
אגן	לֵיקַאנְיִי	[lekaɲi] λεκάνη	bowl	basin57	11
	בָסֵילְיִי	[vaseʎi] βασέλι58	small bowl		12
אגף	אֵיפְטֵרוֹ	[eftero] ἐφτερό	wing	ala	15
	פּוֹרְטָה	[porta] πόρτα	door	puerta	17
אגר	מַשׁוֹקְמָא	ζ[masokma] μάσωκμα59	gathering	apañar	19
	אַפּוֹשְטוֹלְיִֽי	[aposto’ʎi] ἀποστολή	?sending off60	envoltero61	21
אדב	פּוֹנוֹ	[pono] πόνο	pain	dolor	23
אדם				[]loreadu62	26

 

Page 8

T-S NS 268.93 F

[ח]קת	קוקִינו<63 [             פָרָה א]דוּמָּה ו[.]ק[] אבן אחד יקרה
תצוה	אודם [            ]דומה רוּבִּי[  ] אֹדֶם פִטְדָה ב'
שמואל	לשון א[חד         ] ' אִיִי |   וַאֲדָמָה עַל רֹאשוֹ '
	ונקראה [              ]פי שהיא על הרוב אדומה ' ומ[  ]קרא
	אדם ר[            יצ]רו הגובר עליו הוא האדמה | [] עיר
יהושע	אחת א[      ב]אָדָם הָעִיר לפי שבנאה מי שהיה שמו
	אדם | הָאָדָם הַגָדוֹל בַּעֲנָקִים הוּא |
	ב' ' א' לשון גדולה שֵנְיור ' אַפֵֿנְדִּי |	אדן
ישעיה	הָאֲדון יְיָ  ' ב' יסוד שמסמיכין עליו העמודי '
פקודי	אַלְמִירֵיז ' אֵגְדִּֽי | כִּכָּר לָאָדֶן | וְהָאֲדָנִים לָעַמוּדִים  |
	ב' א' לשון חוזק פוֺרְטֵיזָה ' דִינָאמִי |	אדר
יחזקל בשלח	לְאֶרֶז אַדִּיר ' נֶאְדָּר בַּקֹּדֶשׁ ב' לשון טלת
תלדות	מַנְטָה ' קַאפָה | כְּאַדֶּרֶת שֵׂעָר
	ענין חבה וקרוב דעת  אָמוֺר ' אַגַֽפִּי  |	אהב
וישב	וְיִשְׂרָאֵל אָהַב אֶת יוֹסֵף
הושע	כמו אנה אַדונְדֵּי ' פוּ |  אֱהִי מַלְכְּךָ	אהי
	רוצה לומר אנה מלכך|
ויצא	ב' ' א' טייֵנְדָּה'    טֵינְדָּה|  בְּאֹהֶל רָחֵל	אהל
ישעיה	| והפעל מזה בחסרון אלף  וְלֹא יַהֵל שָׁם
בלק	עֲרָבִי בעץ הצנדל '  שַֽנְדָּלושׁ | כַּאֲהָלִים נָטַע יְיָ |
תלים	מֹר וַאֲהָלוֹת |
	מלה באה לחלק ולהבדיל בין ב' דברים	או
	[  כ]אלו אמר זה או זה | אוֹת אוֹ מוֹפֵת
ש[  ]רים64	[                                 מאל |] המת דרך כשוף	אוב
	[                                   ] מה שפירושו נוד
	[                            ]  אודרי

Academy of Athens. Historical Dictionary of Modern Greek [Ιστορικό λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής [ILEG]. Athens: Estia, 1933-.

Alexiou, S. and Martha Aposkiti, ΖΗΝΩΝ, κρητοεπτανησιακὴ τραγωδία (17ου αἰώνα), Ἀθήνα: Στιγμή, 1991.

Anonymous. "Ipeirotika Dimotika Asmata." Zografeios Agon [Ζωγράφειος Αγών] 1 (1891): 68-210.

Arbel, Benjamin. "What Happened to Famagusta's Jews Following the Ottoman Conquest of 1571?". Mediterranean Historical Review 27 (2012): 241-49.

Bakker, Wim F. "Περιγραφή της γλώσσας των συμβολαιογραφικών πράξεων του Μανόλη Βαρούχα." Κρητικά Χρονικά 28-29 (1988-1989): 275-323.

Bakker, Wim F. , and Arnold F. van Gemert. "Mανόλης Bαρούχας. Nοταριακές Πράξεις, Mοναστηράκι Aµαρίου (1597-1613)." Pέθυμνο: University of Crete, 1987.

———. "Οι διαθήκες του κρητικού νοτάριου Αντωνίου Γιαλέα (1529-1532)." Κρητολογία 6 (1978): 5-90.

Bompaire, J. et al., Actes de Vatopédi I, Des origines à 1329 . Paris: P. Lethielleux, 2001: 83-86.

Charalambakis, Christoforos [Χριστόφορος Χαραλαμπάκης]. Κρητολογικά μελετήματα. Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2001.

Cohen, Dov. "The Ladino Bookshelf: Research and Mapping." PhD, Bar-Ilan University, 2011.

———. "Missing Treasures: Tracking Lost Ladino Books." Zutot 17 (2019): 58–73.

Corazzol, Giacomo. "Des copies du Mikhlol et du Sefer Ha-Shorashim attestées à Istamboul et en Crète au XVIe siècle." Liber radicum, Sefer ha-shorashim. (09/06/2020 2020). https://shorashim.hypotheses.org/437.

———. "Gli Ebrei a Candia nei secoli xiv-xvi: L'impatto dell'immigrazione sulla cultura ebraica locale." PhD, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 2015. https://www.theses.fr/2015EPHE4039.

Cowley, A. E. "Ein Soncino-Druck aus Kairo 1566." In Festschrift für Aron Freimann zum 60. Geburtstage, edited by Alexander Marx and Herrmann Meyer, 89-90. Berlin: Soncino-Gesellschaft, 1935.

David, Abraham. “Berav Family in the Land of Israel and Egypt after the Spanish Expulsion,” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 11 (2015): 7–32.

de Lange, Nicholas R. M. Greek Jewish Texts from Cairo Genizah. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1996.

Freimann, Aharon. "Typographisches." Zeitschrift für hebräische Bibliographie 12/1 (1908): 14-15.

Gaskell, Philip. New Introduction to Bibliography Oxford: Clarendon, 1974.

Gaspar Remiro, Mariano. "Vocablos y frases del judeoespañol (Segunda Serie) (V)." Boletín de la Real Academia Española 4, no. 18 (1917): 327-35. https://www.bibliothecasefarad.com/listado-de-libros/vocablos-y-frases-d...

Haberman, A. M. Perakim be-toldoth ha-madpissim ha-ivrim we־inyene sefarim [Studies in the History of Hebrew Printers and Books]. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1978.

Hacker, Joseph R. "Romaniote Jews in Sixteenth-Century Safed: A Chapter in the History of Support for the Jews of Eretz Israel by Communities in the Ottoman Empire (in Hebrew)." Shalem 7 (2001): 133-50.

———. "Constantinople Prints in the 16th Century." Areshet 5 (1972): 457-93 (in Hebrew).

Heller, Marvin J. The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

———. Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

Holton, David, Geoffrey Horrocks, Marjolijne Janssen, Tina Lendari, Io Manolessou, and Notis Toufexis. The Cambridge Grammar of Medieval and Early Modern Greek. 4 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Institute for Modern Greek Studies [Manolis Triandafyllidis Foundation]. Λεξικό της κοινής Νεοελληνικής [Dictionary of Modern Greek] [LKNE]. Thessaloniki: Institute for Modern Greek Studies [Manolis Triandafyllidis Foundation], 1998.

Kahan, Moshe. "Homonymy vs. Polysemy in Medieval Hebrew Lexicography: Between David Qimḥi's "Sefer Ha-Shorashim" and Yonah Ibn Janāḥ's "Kitāb Al-'Uṣūl"." Leshonenu 77 (2015): 223-40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26697388.

Kogel, Judith. "La diffusion inattendue du Dictionnaire Hébreu de Provence édité par Angel Sáenz-Badillos." Revue des Études Juives 175 (2016): 47-66.

Kontosopoulos, Nikolaos G. Διάλεκτοι και ιδώματα της Νέας Ελληνικής. 5 ed. Athens: Grigoris, 2008.

Kriaras, Emmanouil. Lexiko tis mesaionikis Ellinikis dimodous grammateias, 1100-1669. [Λεξικό της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας, 1100-1669]. Thessaloniki: Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, 1969-.

Krivoruchko, Julia G. "The Constantinople Pentateuch within the Context of Septuagint Studies." In XIII Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Ljubljana, 2007, edited by Melvin K. H. Peters, 255-76. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008.

———. "Prosodic Nature of Word Segmentation in Modern Biblical Judeo-Greek (MBJB)." In Recherches en linguistique grecque: Actes du 5-e colloque international de linguistique grecque, Sorbonne, 13-15.09.2001, edited by Ch. Clairis, 47-50. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002.

Lauer, Rena. "Cretan Jews and the First Sephardic Encounter in the Fifteenth Century." Mediterranean Historical Review 27 (2012): 129-40. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2012.730802.

———. "Venice's Colonial Jews: Community, Identity, and Justice in Late Medieval Venetian Crete." PhD, Harvard University, 2014.

Leber, Taisiya. "Migration of Printers and Printing Presses in the „Transottoman“ Context of the Early Modern Time." In The History of the Book Culture of the XV-XX Centuries, edited by D. N. Ramazanova, 5-20. Moscow: Pashkov Dom, 2018 (in Russian).

Lubell, Stephen. "Sixteenth-Century Hebrew Typography: A Typographical and Historical Analysis Based on the Guillaume I Le Bé Documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France." PhD, University of London, 2013.

Orsati, Paola. "The Judeo-Persian Pentateuch of Constantinople and the Beginnings of Persian Linguistic Studies in Europe." Irano-Judaica 4 (1999).

Palabiyik, Nil. "An Early Case of the Printer's Self-Censorship in Constantinople." The Library 16, no. 4 (2015): 381-404. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/library/16.4.381.

Rowland-Smith, Diana. "The Beginnings of Hebrew Printing in Egypt." The British Library Journal 15 (1989): 16-22.

Rozen, Minna. "Metropolis and Necropolis: The Cultivation of Social Status among the Jews of Istanbul in the 17th and 18th Centuries." In Living in the Ottoman Ecumenical Community: Essays in Honour of Suraiya Faroqhi, edited by Markus Koller and Vera Costantini, 89-114. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

Schoenfeld, A. J. "Immigration and Assimilation in the Jewish Community of Late Venetian Crete." Journal of Modern Greek Studies 25 (2007): 1-16.

Steiner, Richard C. "Saadia vs. Rashi: On the Shift from Meaning-Maximalism to Meaning-Minimalism in Medieval Biblical Lexicology ". Jewish Quarterly Review 88, no. 3-4 (1998): 213-58.

Stifter, David. "Vocative for Nominative." In Vocative! Addressing between System and Performance, edited by Barbara Sonnenhauser and Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna, 43–85. Boston-Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013.

Wasserstein, David J. "Why Did Arabic Succeed Where Greek Failed?". Scripta Classica Israelica 22 (2003): 257-72.

Winter, Michael. "Ottoman Egypt, 1525–1609." In The Cambridge History of Egypt: Volume 2: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century, edited by M. W. Daly. The Cambridge History of Egypt, 1-33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Yaari, Abraham. Ha-Defus Ha-Ivri Be-Kushta [The Jewish Press in Constantinople]. Jerusalem, 1967.

 

---

Footnotes

1 I thank Amir Ashur for valuable corrections and Nadia Vidro for help with access to publications.

2 Gaskell 1974: fig. 47, mutatis mutandis for the direction of reading.

3 On various inaccuracies in the text see below section ‘Hebrew/Aramaic contextual examples’.

4 See, e.g., (a) ברכה for וזאת הברכה; (b) תצא for כי תצא; (c) תלים for תהילים, etc.

5 E.g., Bomberg’s edition of Sefer HaShorashim from 1529.

6 Lubell 2014: 339.

7 Hakohen 2011: 196; Cohen 2019: 70-71.

8 Its classmark in the Bodleian Library is MS Heb. b.11(1).

9 The presumption that only two books were printed in sixteenth-century Egypt, is common, see Rowland-Smith 1989: 16; Heller 2004: 455.

10 On the chronology see Heller 2004: 455.

11 Freimann 1908: 15.

12 Heller 2004: 455.

13 On Soncino printers in general see Haberman (1978: 13–94). On Constantinople prints see Yaari 1967, Hacker 1972; Heller 2004: 26-27. On descendants of the Soncino family remaining in Istanbul see Rozen 2008.

14 Cowley (1935: 90) takes the bad quality of Gershom’s Cairo prints as evidence for the latter.

15 Heller 2008: 106; for examples from Balkan realm see Leber (2018).

16 Palabiyik (Pektaş) (2015: 392).

17 The edition of Shorashim by Obadiah, Manasseh and Benjamin in Rome is dated to 1469–1473, most scholars agree that it happened before 1470.

18 See Winter 1998: 6, 28.

19 See David 2015.

20 See Orsati 1999.

21 For more on this work see Krivoruchko 2008.

22 Jews from the Iberian Peninsula reached Crete, but were gradually absorbed by Romaniotes. Recently there has been a proliferation of research on the topic, e.g. Schoenfeld 2007, Corrazol 2015; also Lauer 2012, 2014. On Cyprus, Venetian authorities expelled foreign Jews as a protective measure, but the local community was spared.

23 See Hacker 2001. 

24 I am paraphrasing the title of D. Wasserstein’s paper (2003).

25 E.g., Arbel 2012.

26 The terminology is from Steiner 1988; see also Kahan 2015.

27 See the classical edition by de Lange 1996.

28 On links between traditional Romaniote translations and folk poetry see Krivoruchko 2012.

29 Corazzol 2020.

30 See https://shorashim.hypotheses.org/.

31 Kogel 2016: 61.

32 For Early Modern Greek see Holton at al. 2019: 199; for Modern Greek see Kontosopoulos 2008: 97.

33 Charalambakis 2001: 191; critical apparatus of Mavromatis 1994 and Bakker & van Gemert 1987; Bakker 1988–89: 284; Holton et al. 2019.

34 Stifter 2013: 73.

35 The example adduced in the lemma and ascribed to Jeremiah comes from Ηοs 4:3; there is a very similar context in Jer 4:28:  עַל זֹאת תֶּאֱבַל הָאָרֶץ for this shall the earth mourn.

36 Cf. Sp. serpollo?

37 For the grammatical forms used to translate Hebrew see the section ‘Translational Equivalents’.

38 See the section ‘Morphology’.

39 Kriaras has two lemmas, ἄρχος and ἀρχός, the latter with examples from CP only. It is unclear to me what the justification was for having two separate lemmas, as the accents of the CP are reconstructions of its editor D. Hesseling, not facts of the original. The form ἄρχος is frequent, however ἀρχός is also known in Greek dialects (ILEG s.v.), so cannot be excluded a priori. In the CP the Greek word translates שַׂר (e.g., Ex 2:14, Gen 39:1) or כֹּהֵן (e.g., Ex 3:1).

40 The reading ἡ τρομάρα is unlikely, since no other gloss is articulated.

41 According to TLG, the first example with such an accent comes from l. 7 of Diploma Nicephori proti de possessione Prosphori et donatione agri propinqui (A.D. 1018) (Bompaire et al. 2001), where the meaning is ‘poverty’, cf. Kriaras s.v. απορία 1. and 3., ILEG s.v. απορία 1. and 2. On semantics see the section ‘Greek translations’.

42 The accent under aleph can be a misprint, or may reflect a common JG habit of marking non-primary stress, see Krivoruchko 2002.

43 The punctuation is missing.

44 Unclear.

45 The first vowel may be also kamatz.

46 The gloss is unclear to me.

47  < cierto; cf. p. 7, ll. 9 and 26. See the section ‘Phonology’.

48 Meaning as per Kriaras s.v. θρονίν 2a. Used in CP Ex 17:16 to translate כֵּס.

49 See the section ‘Morphology’.

50 Only niqqud without letters is visible in the line. It could have included translations or biblical quotations, but not the text immediately preceding in Job.

51 pi[scina]?

52 Reconstructed after p. 6, l. 1, which has identical Judaeo-Spanish translation.

53 < βούρλο.

54 = rush (plant).

55 < ἀγκίστρι. Many dialects, particularly Aegean ones, use the form αντζίστρι until today (see ILEG s.v. ἀγκίστρι).

56 < anzuelo.

57 Cf. Sp. vasija, Port. bacia.

58 The form βασέλι is, to my knowledge, not registered in the lexicography (ILEG has only the diminutive βασούλλι), but it is built in predictable fashion, cf. πιάτο > πιατέλι ‘small plate’. Although the earliest context with βάζο < vaso in TLG comes from the seventeenth century (tragedy Zenon, ll. 209, 217 and 227; Alexiou & Aposkiti 1991), it must have been borrowed from Italian early enough. For [s] see section ‘Orthography’.

59 The noun is μάζωγμα < μαζεύγω < μαζεύω with common insertion of [γ] in the intervocalic position (Holton et al. 2019). The form μάζωγμα occurs in CP (e.g., Gen 1:10) along with its standard variant μάζωμα (Gen 17:5, Ex 5:12, etc.). [km] is unexpected; there is another case with lack of (representation of) regressive assimilation in -σμα [zma].

60 I know of no evidence that in Early Modern Greek ἀποστολή could mean anything similar to מגלה or envoltero. Kriaras s.v. glosses it as ἐντολή ‘command/order’ and οι απεσταλμένοι (ως σύνολο) ‘those sent with mission (as a group)’. In all probability, ἀποστολή originated from confusion with ἐπιστολή ‘letter’ (being an object wrapped either itself or/and from outside). The latter Greek lexeme can have ἀποστολή as one of its meanings, but not vv., see Kriaras. The current text could have resulted from either initial misunderstanding of the Greek semantics on behalf of the author, or naqdan or printer scrambling the vocalization in the process of copying/printing.

There exists a remote possibility that some JG sociolects may in fact not distinguish between the prefixes ἀπο- and ἐπι- (cf., e.g., the age-old etymological dispute, whether אפוטרופס / אפיטרופוס originate from ἐπίτροπος or ἀπότροπος, and what is the historically correct form of this lexeme). I will not discuss it here for the lack of space.  

61 = wrapper. For the use of the word in old JS biblical translations see Gaspar Remiro 1917: 328, s.v. enboltero. The form occurs in the Sevilla 1602 edition of Guzmán de Alfarache by Mateo Alemán, replaced in later editions by envoltorio.

62 < [co]loreado ‘reddened, mature’.

63 The line is close to the edge, so the vocalization is possibly incomplete: there could have been a holem above vav and perhaps a double yod after qof.

64 Unclear. Perhaps pro שופטים, if the example is Deut 18:11, from Deut 16:18–21:9, or קדושים , if it is either of Lev 19:31, 20:6, 20:27 from Lev 19:1–20:27.

65 Given the order of the languages, the gloss is better interpreted as JS rather than JG ρουμπί[νι] ‘ruby’.

66 A by-form of ιγδίον. The initial vowel was first lost through aphaeresis > ’γδί (see Kriaras s.v. ιγδίον), then a prothetic vowel developed before the cluster (see section ‘Phonology’).

67 MG has variants with and without fricative: σανδάλι  and σαντάλι (LKNE). JS must have used a word so similar that it was judged superfluous, cf. Sp. sándalo.

 

---

Cite this article

Krivoruchko, J. G. (2021). A Sixteenth-Century Trilingual Dictionary of Hebrew. [Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month, January 2021]. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.65691

 

---

If you enjoyed this Fragment of the Month, you can find others  here. 

Contact us: genizah@lib.cam.ac.uk 

The manuscripts in this article are part of the Cairo Genizah Collection in Cambridge University Library. To see more items from this collection visit: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/