The Jastrow Dictionary

Marcus Jastrow, compiler. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi and the Midrashic Literature. London : Luzac & Co., and New York , G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1886-1895. Click on image	Marcus Jastrow, compiler. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi and the Midrashic Literature. London : Luzac & Co./ New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903. Click on image

Marcus Jastrow published the first edition of his dictionary in two volumes over the course of the last seventeen, illness-plagued years of his life.  A prefatory note dated July 1886 printed in the first volume details the plan for the complete future edition. But this single volume, covering only the first half of the Hebrew alphabet, was published, as is evident from the title page, in 1895. It may be the case that fascicles of the dictionary appeared prior to 1895 as installments of a work in progress. The complete two-volume set, however, would not appear until 1903, shortly before Jastrow’s death. In his preface to the 1903 edition, Jastrow acknowledged his scholarly debts, most notably to Jacob Levy, Alexander Kohut and to other major figures of 19th century German-Jewish scholarship. Unmentioned is the fact that the format of the Jastrow dictionary entry ultimately derives not from Jewish sources, however, but from a seventeenth-century Christian Hebraist lexicographer, Johannes Buxtorf.

Marcus Jastrow, compiler.
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi and the Midrashic Literature.
New York/Berlin: Verlag Choreb; London : Shapiro, Vallentine & Co., 1926.

The second, “authorisited” [sic!], edition of the Jastrow dictionary was published in 1926 in one volume.  Subsequent re-printings appeared in both two and one volume editions ( eg., 1943, 1950, 1967 in two volumes; 1971, 1985, 1996 in one volume).  The 1926 edition, meanwhile, introduced a Hebrew title page opposite the English-only original, as well as two new publishers, Shapiro Vallentine & Co., in London and Choreb in New York and Berlin , attesting in part to the wider distribution and popularity of the work.  The essential format of the Jastrow dictionary entry remained unchanged.

Marcus Jastrow and Anglo-American Jewish Scholarship

Cyrus Adler, Isidore Singer, et al., eds.
The Jewish Encyclopedia. 12 vols.
New York: London, Funk & Wagnalls company, 1901-1906

Among the greatest monuments to modern Jewish scholarship is the first English-language Jewish Encyclopedia, published simultaneously in New York and London between 1901 and 1906. Marcus Jastrow served on the encyclopedia’s editorial board and supervised its “Department of Talmud”; his son Morris Jastrow, Jr., also was a member of the editorial board, overseeing the “Department of Bible.”  Displayed here is the title page of the decorated deluxe edition printed in 1910, specially prepared as a family gift.

The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic text [Torah, Nevi'im, u-Khetuvim].
A new translation with the aid of previous versions and with constant consultation of Jewish authorities.
Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 5677 (1917 C.E.).

Click on image Titlepage	Click on image Preface, page v

This new translation of the Hebrew Bible was designed to provide the best modern Jewish critical Bible scholarship to an English-speaking audience and to revise previous English translations that reflected christological understandings of controversial passages.  So, for example, the contested word ‘almah in Isaiah 7:14 is translated as “young woman” rather than the pre-figurative “virgin.”  As the preface to the 1917 edition shows, Marcus Jastrow served on the original editorial committee and prepared a translation of the Book of Job for the Jewish Publication Society of America during the first stage of the project.  

Morris Jastrow and Anglo-American Jewish Scholarship

Morris Jastrow.
The Book of Job.
Philadelphia & London, J.B. Lippincott company, 1920.

Page 310. Morris Jastrow's translation of Job, chapter 28

Morris Jastrow, Professor of Semitic Languages and Librarian of the University of Pennsylvania from 1898 to 1919, authored numerous works on Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies and helped pioneer the critical study of religion in the American university setting.  Jastrow’s new translation of the Book of Job, published in 1920, is dedicated to Edgar Fahs Smith, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania and a professor of Chemistry.  Curiously, Jastrow makes no mention of his father’s efforts twenty years earlier to translate the same Biblical book.

Morris Jastrow and Richard J.H. Gottheil, eds.
Semitic Studies Series No. 11:The Annals of Ashurbanapal.
Transcribed text by Robert J. Lau; Glossary by Stephen Langdon.
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1903.

Aside from his teaching, research and administrative responsibilities at Penn, Morris Jastrow also served as the co-editor, with Richard J. H. Gottheil, Columbia University ’s first professor of Jewish Studies, of a “Semitic Studies Series.”  Published in this series is a glossary of words found in ancient inscriptions recovered from the extraordinary Royal Library established by Ashurbanapal, ruler of Assyria, during the 7th century B.C.E..  In his introduction to this volume, Morris Jastrow explains the lexicographical design of the glossary – how, for example, it directs the reader from each entry to the line and column number in which the word appears in the original text.  Similarly, Jastrow explains that the list of ideographs displayed here (these original signs do not appear in the glossary) is arranged numerically: each number corresponds to superscripted numbers assigned to ideographs in the body of the hand-copied texts.