Greek Loanwords in the Palestinian Talmud: Some New Suggestions

GREEK THE PALESTINIAN TALMUD Journal of Semitic StudiesLOANWORDS XLVII/1 AutumnIN2002 © The University of Manchester 2002. All rights reserved GREEK LOANWORDS IN THE PALESTINIAN TALMUD: SOME NEW SUGGESTIONS1 GIUSEPPE VELTRI MARTIN-LUTHER-UNIVERSITY, HALLE-WITTENBERG Abstract This short note argues that the puzzling phrase ‫ אחת דריבוי‬in y.Shabb. 8c is a transliteration of the Greek (tà) âgaqà (toÕ) djroÕ bíou, ‘the benefit of long life', and that ‫אסטו מוכריא‬, which is given in y.Shabb. 8b as Aquila's rendering of ‫ בתי נפש‬in Isa. 3:20, represents the Greek stómion xaríen = ‘a fine ornament for the neck'. As many scholars have noted, the Palestinian Talmud bears witness to the deep influence of its Graeco-Roman environment. It is hence not surprising that a perusal of the Gemara reveals from time to time the presence of Greek (and Latin) loanwords which have been mistaken as Aramaic or Hebrew. In this note I would like to draw attention to some difficult Hebrew and/or Aramaic expressions which, in my opinion, should be deciphered as Greek words in Hebrew transliteration. 1 ‫( = אחת דריבוי‬tà) âgaqà (toÕ) djroÕ bíou y.Shabb. 8c records a curious episode of a Roman officer who chased away R. Ele{azar from the public lavatory: ‫רבי לעזר עאל לפונייה אתא אבטיונה דרומאי ואקומיה ויתיב ליה אמ' הכין‬ ‫כל עמא לא אקים לבר נש אלא לי לית איפשר דאנא נפיק מיכא עד דנידע‬ ‫מה הוי בסופיה והוה תמן חיוי שרי נפיק ויהב ליה עדרו תמן אחת דריבוי קרא‬ '‫עלוי אתן אדם תחתיך וגו‬ 1 I would like to thank Dan Levene, now of the University of Southampton, for some useful notes on an early draft of this article and Philip Alexander for his careful copy editing. 237 GREEK LOANWORDS IN THE PALESTINIAN TALMUD Rabbi Le{azar entered the public lavatory to relieve himself. A Roman officer2 came and made him get up and sat down in his place. (Rabbi Le{azar) said to himself: ‘So, he did not make anyone but me get up! It is not possible that I should go from here until I know what is his end’. There was a snake dwelling there. It came out and gave him ‫ אחת דריבוי‬while he was sitting there. (Rabbi Le{azar) recited about him (the biblical verse): I will give up a man instead of you etc. (Isa. 43:4). ‫ואקומיה‬. The editio princeps reads ‫ואקומיה מאחריה‬. MS Leiden adds ‫ מאחריה‬in a later hand. The absence of the word is confirmed by a Cairo Genizah fragment which has simply ‫ואקומיה‬,3 which Lieber- man considers the original reading.4 ‫ויהב ליה עדרו תמן‬. The correct reading is once again indicated by the Genizah fragments: ‫ויב ליה עד דו תמן‬. ‫אחת דריבוי‬. According to Lieberman ‫ דריבוי‬comes from the Arabic root darba meaning ‘to strike’: the serpent struck the Roman officer. Against this interpretation Michael Sokoloff argues that Arabic influence on the Yerushalmi would be very hard to substantiate. Preferring to derive the word from the Aramaic root ‫דרב‬, he translated ‫ויב ליה‬ ‫ עד דו תמן אחת דריבוי‬as follows: ‘while he was still there, he lowered his…’.5 However, this does not fit the context of the scene because an action by the snake and not by the Roman officer is expected. I would suggest that we have here the Greek (tà) âgaqà (toÕ) djroÕ bíou, ‘the benefit of long life’,6 a euphemistic and ironical expression for death. Originally this would have been written ‫אגת)א( דרו ביו‬, but a redactor or a copyist, not recognizing the first word because it is unusual in Rabbinic vocabulary, changed gimel to Ìet, thus producing a word known to him. This interpretation of the text is confirmed by y.Hag. 77b. There the expression ‫הארכת ימים‬, ‘you shall prolong your days’ (derived from Deut. 22:7) is used with reference to the next life, where everything is long (‫)הארכת ימים לעתיד שכולו ארוך‬. The reference there to 2 ‫ אבטיונה‬is a loanword from Greek ôptíwn, Latin optio, optionis; see S. Krauss, Griechische und lateinische Lehnwörter im Talmud, Midrasch und Targum (Berlin 1898/99; repr. Hildesheim 1964), vol. 2, 5. 3 See L. Ginzberg (ed.), Yerushalmi Fragments from the Genizah (Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 3, New York 1909), 82. 4 Saul Lieberman, Hayerushalmi Kifshuto (Jerusalem 1934), vol. I/1, 112–13. 5 M. Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (Ramat Gan 1990), 156. 6 Note also that the compositum djróbiov (‘long lived’) appears in old Greek only as an adjective and in reference to the life of the gods: see H.G. Liddell, R. Scott and A.H.M. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (9th ed., Oxford 1940), 388. 238 GREEK LOANWORDS IN THE PALESTINIAN TALMUD the man bitten by a snake provides a further striking parallel to the story in y.Shabb. 8c: He (AÌer) was sitting teaching in the valley of Ginosar when he saw a man climbing to the top of a palm-tree and taking the mother bird together with her young. The (man) descended from there in peace (i.e. without harm). On another day, he saw another man climbing to the top of the palm-tree and taking the young, but leaving the mother bird free. He (the man) descended, (but) a serpent bit him and he died. He said: ‘It is written, You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, so that it may go well with you, and that you may prolong your days (Deut. 22:7). Where is the goodness of this? Where is the long life of this? He did not know that R. Jacob had expounded the verse earlier: ‘So that it may go well with you refers to the world to come, because all of it is good: and that you may prolong your days refers to the afterlife, because all of it is long’. The meaning of the scene with the Roman officer is now clear. The behaviour of the officer was unusual, so the Rabbi was interested to see how things would end. In the public lavatory there was a snake which gave the officer ‘the benefit of long life’ (i.e., fatally wounded him so that he died). This would have been the Rabbi's destiny if the officer had not chased him from his place. The life of the Roman was taken instead of the life of the Rabbi. 2 ‫ = אסטו מוכריא‬stómion xaríen The Rabbinic tradition of the Greek version of Aquila has often been the subject of philological research. I would like to offer here a new interpretation of his translation of ‫ בתי נפש‬in Isa. 3:20. Aquila's translation of this in the Hexapla reads kaì o÷kouv t±v cux±v, while Symmachus interprets tà skéj t¬n ∏mpnoia. The Targum of Isaiah has ‫ קדישיא‬and Jerome olfactoriola. The Talmud Yerushalmi (y.Shabb. 8b) preserves another translation of the phrase attributed to Aquila: ‫ובתי הנפש תירג' עקילס אסטו מוכריא דבר שניתן על‬ ‫הנפש‬. The unvocalized Rabbinic Hebrew does not help much in recovering the original Greek of Aquila. Several proposals have been made: • ‫ = אסטומוכיאה‬stomaxe⁄a: Azaria de'Rossi, according to Buxtorf;7 • ‫ = אסטומוכריאה‬stoma(o)xß(á)ria: Lightfoot, Anger, Friedmann, Silverstone and Azaria de'Rossi according to David Cassel;8 7 See A.E. Silverstone, Aquila and Onkelos (Manchester 1931), 42–3. See Azariah de’Rossi, Me'or {Einayim, ed. David Cassel, chapter 45 (Vilna 1866), vol. 2, 383–93. 8 239 GREEK LOANWORDS IN THE PALESTINIAN TALMUD • ‫ = אסטומוכריאה‬ênstomáxia: Jastrow;9 • ‫ = אסטרומביא‬strombíon, a diminutive of strómbon, stróƒov, ‘band of cloth wound round the body’: Krauss (‘Windelband um den Leib’), following the reading of the Yalqu† Makiri.10 The difficult expression ‫ בתי נפש‬was understood by Aquila as equivalent to ‫בת נפש‬, a new Hebrew formation similar to ‫בת עין‬. One might be tempted to suppose that he might have taken ‫ בית נפש‬in its Rabbinic meaning of the pharynx or oesophagus,11 but the preposition ‫ על‬suggests something on the outside rather than something inside (‫דבר שניתן על הנפש‬, ‘something which is on the nefesh’). In my view nefesh here means the neck, rather than an inner organ such as the pharynx. I propose, therefore, to read (‫אסטומא)יון( כריא)ן‬, stómion xaríen, ‘a fine ornament for the neck’.12 For this meaning of stómion see Pollux Grammaticus 5.98: ÊJpou dè kaì ºrmoi kaì ÷squmia… kaì stómia kaì malákia (Stephanus: inter mundum muliebrem). 9 See M. Jastrow, Dictionary of the Talmud Babli, Yerushalmi, Midrashic Literature and Targumim (New York 1950), vol. 1, 90. 10 See S. Krauss, ‘Akylas, der Poselyt’, in: Festschrift zum achtzigsten Geburtstage Moritz Steinschneider's (Leipzig 1896), 148–96; cf. J. Reider, ‘Prolegomena to a Greek-Hebrew and Hebrew-Greek Index to Aquila’, JQR 7 (1916–17), 359. 11 See J. Preuss, Biblisch-talmudische Medizin, ed. S. Paley (1911; repr. New York 1971), 103. 12 Liddell, Scott and Jones, Greek-English Lexicon, 1649. 240