Hebrew

DailyHebrew.com » The Genetic Relationship of Aramaic & Hebrew

Jun 21st, 2011

Short and to the point. Be sure to click through to get a bit more and some nice bibliography on the subject (and verb).

Two recent articles from well-respected news agencies have included fallacious details about the relationship between Hebrew and Aramaic. The first described the Aramaic dialect spoken in the first century of the Common Era as “a language which developed from the classical Hebrew of the scriptures, a few hundred years earlier,” and the second claimed that Aramaic is “the linguistic root of modern day Hebrew and Arabic.”

So which one is it? Is Aramaic the root of Hebrew or did Aramaic develop from Hebrew? The answer, of course, is neither. Although they may be related by a shared lineage, there is not a direct genetic relationship between the two. That is to say, one did not derive from the other. Pete Bekins irascibly assimilates these two absurd statements with the tongue-in-check proposal that “Classical Hebrew developed into Aramaic which then morphed back into Modern Hebrew and Arabic.

via DailyHebrew.com » The Genetic Relationship of Aramaic & Hebrew.

Quibbling with NRSV

Jun 17th, 2011

by Christian Brady.

1 comment

I know, I know. This is an old and hackneyed debate and there are far better/worse modern translations to go after. But as I am finishing up my translation of Targum Ruth (huzzah!) I see that the NRSV has made some lame choices, presumably to be “gender inclusive.” In this case there is some basic biology and not just patriarchal dominance behind the language:

Ruth 4:13
‏וַיִּקַּח בֹּעַז אֶת־רוּת וַתְּהִי־לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה וַיָּבֹא אֵלֶיה
So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together…

Really? Yes, it was consensual and I firmly read the Book of Ruth as having strong female roles, but they don’t need the help of the translator.

“Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features in the Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Literatures of Antiquity”

Mar 11th, 2011

by Christian Brady.

No comments yet

This is an exciting project that our colleagues at Manchester and Durham have been working on. News from Alex Samely:
Dear Colleagues,

I have pleasure in announcing the availability of a new terminological framework for the analysis of ancient Jewish literature, the “Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features in the Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Literatures of Antiquity”.

This Inventory gathers together all the basic literary options available to ancient Jewish text makers and puts them into a systematic order. It is available in PDF and web-based formats from:

www.manchester.ac.uk/ancientjewishliterature

The Inventory identifies literary structures found in any one of the anonymous or pseudepigraphic works of ancient Judaism. The corpus on which the Inventory is based includes the Pseudepigrapha, the Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls (only near-complete texts are included), and rabbinic literature to the end of the Babylonian Talmud.

Several hundred features are defined and organized in a systematic order under twelve main headings. Each feature is illustrated by one or more ancient text containing it.

The categories reflect insights drawn from a large variety of modern disciplines, including philology, literary studies, text linguistics, discourse analysis, narratology and post-structuralism.

The Inventory is the first major result of a four-year research project funded by the AHRC which started in 2007 at Manchester and Durham Universities.

The website also has a discussion forum. Scholars are invited to share observations on, and experiences with, the Inventory or related questions.

A Database of literary Profiles is being prepared which applies the Inventory to individual texts from the Project corpus. Scholars may be given pre-publication access to the Database if they wish to create a Profile, under their own name, for a text with which they are concerned. Please get in touch with me if you are interested in this.

There will be a workshop on problems in the literary analysis of post-biblical Jewish literature in Manchester on 11-12 July 2011. The workshop will be discussion-based, but also introduce the use of the Inventory and of the pre-publication Database for sample texts, including texts suggested by participants. The workshop is open to colleagues, post-docs and postgraduate research students working on any ancient Jewish or related text. There is assistance with travel costs and accommodation is free. A document is attached containing further details and a registration form. It is also available from the Project website:

www.manchester.ac.uk/ancientjewishliterature.

Yours,
Alexander Samely

Alexander Samely
Professor of Jewish Thought
Co-Director, Centre for Jewish Studies
Middle Eastern Studies / Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, Samuel Alexander Building
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
Tel. (0)161-2753072
Research Project: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/ancientjewishliterature/
Midrash Database: http://mishnah.llc.manchester.ac.uk/home.aspx

Hebrew on the iPad, at last!

Nov 26th, 2010

by Christian Brady.

6 comments

The iOS 4.2.1 update for the iPad brings a number of goodies that we have long enjoyed 0n the iPhone.¹ One that I had been particularly eager to use is Hebrew input! First impression: Very nice! It seems to work across all apps, but some handle it better than others and some even have key features not available in other apps. So, a quick rundown followed by a gallery.

You install it by going to Settings>General>Keyboard>International Keyboards and add Hebrew. Activate it by simply tapping on the globe icon to the left of the space bar.
Pages – seems to work fine, but does not automatically change the alignment to right justified.
Evernote does! See the screenshot, but Evernote automatically right-justifies the paragraph as you change keyboards.
Mail and Twitter also do so AND all such apps (including Evernote) give you a nice little “change direction” popup (see screenshot of Twitter).
Office2 HD is, as with the app as a whole, more crude. It will accept Hebrew but with few frills including change of direction.
Keynote also accepts Hebrew input without any fuss. It does not, however, allow change of direction (that I could see).
If you use a BlueTooth keyboard the onscreen keyboard disappears to give you more room on screen. How do you switch languages? Two options:
- Using the BT keyboard simply use cmd-spacebar
- Press the Eject key (top right of BT keyboard) to bring up the onscreen keyboard and select it from there.

I have a lot more playing with Hebrew on the iPad before I can say it is a unmitigated success, particularly seeing how files created on the iPad transfer back to the Mac and web (Evernote seems to handle this with no issue). But so far this is a great addition for those of us who want to use the iPad for biblical and rabbinic studies.

One of which was adding “Find my iPhone” feature, previously requiring a MobileMe account, for free. Unfortunately it tells me so far that my iTunes account does not work with this feature (?). [↩]

Ps. 22.29[30] – Who shall bow down?

Mar 22nd, 2008

by Christian Brady.

1 comment

I have just finished my homily on the Fourth Words of Jesus (Matt. 27:46, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) and in reading it with Psalm 22, I realized that there are very different renderings of verse 29 in the English, 30 in the Hebrew.

‏ אכלו וישתחוו כל דשני ארץ לפניו יכרעו כל יורדי עפר ונפשו לא חיה׃

NRSV: Psa. 22.29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and I shall live for him.

NIV: 29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive.

JPS: 30 All those in full vigor shall eat and prostrate themselves; all those at death’s door, whose spirits flag, shall bend the knee before Him.

I do not have my BHS to check the apparatus (and I am about to be late for the service) but I thought I would put this up and see what response better Hebraists than I can offer.

Bob suggested in a comment below that the LXX is quite different that the MT, but if I am reading the Greek correctly (no guarantee of that) does follow the MT fairly closely (it is v. 30 in LXX, just as in MT):
ἔφαγον καὶ προσεκύνησαν πάντες οἱ πίονες τῆς γῆς ἐνώπιον αὐτοῦ προπεσοῦνται πάντες οἱ καταβαίνοντες εἰς τὴν γῆν καὶ ἡ ψυχή μου αὐτῷ ζῇ

The key phrase for the different renderings is the first: ‏אכלו …כל דשני ארץ. This is understood by NIV and JPS as “all those who eat of the fat of the land” (the obvious, literal translation). The NIV chooses the more prosaic non-literal rendering “the rich” while JPS understands the phrase ‏כל דשני ארץ, “all those in full vigor,” as being governed by the verb אכלו rather than the entire element as a unit.

So how does NRSV get “all who sleep in the earth”? Again, my apologies, but I do not have my references with me (other than Accordance) so I am not sure what might be in the MSS. Even the latter clause ‏ונפשו לא חיה in opposite terms. Rather than being something like “those that cannot live” the NRSV renders “and I shall live for him.”

The NRSV is not known for placing Christian interpretations into their translation of the Hebrew Bible so this insistence of reading this verse as a reference to resurrection is surprising to me.

I am eager for others to chime in with their insight.