|
NEW DISCOVERIES, METHODOLOGICAL innovations and technological breakthroughs have greatly enhanced our historical understanding of the meaning of ancient words. Contemporary scholarship has benefited enormously from the discovery of new physical evidence, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, medieval manuscript fragments from Cairo, and epigraphic sources of information. There is a general recognition today of the methodological need to stop lumping Hebrew and Aramaic together and there is a keener understanding of the different regions and time periods implicit in rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic. Known sources have been reexamined in light of these new discoveries and increasingly sophisticated digital technologies and software applications have had a significant impact on traditional areas of humanistic research. There is perhaps no better, albeit bitter-sweet, symbol of the revolutionary transformation of rabbinic scholarship on the cusp of the digital age than the monumental, multi-volume concordances to the Mishnah, the Tosefta and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds compiled manually by Chaim Yehoshua Kasowsky, who died in 1960 and completed after his death by his son Biniamin. It is true that these alphabetical lists of words are essentially navigational aids, not dictionaries. Concordances can address issues of orthography and pronunciation, but certainly not signification or usage, at least not directly. Still, the Kasowskys’ manual achievements, accomplished over the course of more than four decades, frame this conclusion by pointing out that the basic manner in which Jastrow and his predecessors have worked has been on the wane for over two decades. Following are examples that reflect the nature of these changes for the evolving craft of rabbinic lexicography.
Working without the aid of a computer, the Kasowskys compiled hundreds of thousands of words in the course of creating their unprecedented concordances. In the majority of their concordances, each word is arranged according to its root structure; each word has been meticulously vocalized; each noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, particle, prefix and suffix formation has been assembled; each entry is accompanied by illustrative quotations and linguistic notes. Displayed here is the first of a five-volume supplement to a forty-two volume concordance started by Chaim Kasowsky in 1954. The supplement lists in alphabetical order all occurrences of personal names, nicknames and place names in the Babylonian Talmud and all the passages where they can be found. Daniel Sperber.
|
 |
 |
|---|
The growth of interest in rabbinic literature in the English-speaking world has spurred the publication of a number of new English-language reference aids to guide the student through the maze of classical rabbinic literature. This practical Talmud dictionary by Yitshak Frank, supervised editorially by Ezra Zion Melamed (author of an Aramaic-Hebrew dictionary as well as multiple studies of rabbinic literature), and issued by Feldheim Publishers, exemplifies this trend. To simplify its use for the reader, the author notably omits words that rarely occur in favor of words that “occur at least ten times.” The Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew entry elements are presented in vocalized Hebrew characters; each entry is accompanied by a literal translation into English and Hebrew; the dictionary explanations are in English, accompanied by illustrative quotations and cross-references. Frank’s dictionary also contains a list of abbreviations commonly appearing in rabbinic literature as well as useful bibliographical references for further reading and research.
Michael Sokoloff
A dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine period. [2nd ed.].
Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press/Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
A dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic periods.
Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press/Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
A dictionary of Judean Aramaic.
Ramat-Gan : Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003.
Michael Sokoloff, of the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages at Bar Ilan University in Israel, has completed three landmark dictionaries in the contemporary field of rabbinic lexicography. His Palestinian Aramaic Dictionary of the Byzantine period (2nd edition, 2002); his dictionary of Jewish Babylonia Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic periods (2002); and most recently his dictionary of Judean Aramaic (2003), which heavily relies on epigraphic sources, all reflect his methodological emphasis on the need to distinguish between different periods, morphologies and sources of Aramaic. Sokoloff has incorporated variant textual readings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in medieval manuscripts and in Cairo genizah fragments to establish a critical understanding of the vast sea of rabbinic literature. To reach his goals, he has utilized new tools and digital resources. In the preface to his dictionary of Jewish Babylonia Aramaic, for example, Sokoloff states that “[...] the basis of the present dictionary was a database in the form of a Key Word in Context [concordance] (KWIC) of the entire corpus of rabbinic literature” (p. 18). Similarly, he has consulted the “Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon” (CAL) computer project, directed by S. Kaufman, at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and the “Hebrew Language historical dictionary project” at the Academy of Hebrew Language in Jerusalem.
Ma'agarim : the Hebrew language historical dictionary project.
Mif`al ha-milon ha-histori la-lashon ha-`Ivrit [computer file] Jerusalem: ha-Akademyah la-lashon ha-`Ivrit, 1998-.
The historical dictionary of the Hebrew language, a project begun in 1959 by Zeev Ben Hayim, and currently headed by Abraham Tal, author of a dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic, is a monumental effort to provide a scientifically reliable guide to all periods and literary types of the Hebrew language, including “… the most reliable sources of Halakha and Aggada, liturgical texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, documents and inscriptions, the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, as well as from medieval, Haskala and modern literature.” Its format is modeled on European historical dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary and employs a “quadruple system of signs” to indicate the accuracy of the transmitted source; the text-critical treatment of a source; its potentially bi-lingual (especially Hebrew-Aramaic) character; indications of the period or historical strata reflected by a particular source. Intended to be an up-to-date (and updatability) resource, the Ma’agarim project utilizes the most recent lexicographical research and modern digital technologies.
