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An early Jewish-Persian argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

D. N. MacKenzie
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Extract

The Jewish-Persian manuscript Or. 8659 was brought to my attention by Dr. J. Rosenwasser of the British Museum, to whom I am most grateful for giving me the occasion to examine it closely and discover its great interest. Dr. Rosenwasser had rightly queried the description of the manuscript as ‘a commentary on Joshua’. There are quotations from Joshua on fol. lr and v, it is true, but that is by no means the whole story. He also remarked that the first and last folios deal with the same subject, and fol. 1 should in fact follow immediately on fol. 10. It was with this introduction, and much initial help with the Hebrew passages, that he urged the investigation of the text on me.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1968 , pp. 249 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1968

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References

1 see the plate accompanying Asmussen's, J%. P. ‘Judaeo–Persica II’, Acta Or., 29, 1–2, 1965, 49–60. It is now possible to make a number of further improvements to the readings there: yd'm'dum, 5 bis (America) md' for mr', 5, 6 ybr'dr'nwm, 3, 13, 14 y'zryh. In my translation, JRAS, 1966, 69, the first statement should then read, ‘This Daniel ben Reuben, my son–in–law, has and… gone torn from the ceremonial robe was the property of my brothers’, etc%. It is also clear that Daniel b. Reuben was the only defendant, the man known as ‘Baby’, but the apparent intervention of the name Azariah remains puzzling: a toponymic, ‘z dyh’? The last clause of the translation should read, ‘that it may be a proof for her’, as will appear below.Google Scholar

2 Asmussen, in an appendix to the article cited, 59–60, has quoted four: ‘yyb ‘or’, hmym'l ‘opponent’, k’ ‘when’, and cym‘reason’.

3 The etymon ∗patiyāwant. seems better derived from yā, cf. Skt. prati-yā- ‘be a match for’, than aw (so Horn, GIP, I, 2, 59; Hübschmann's etym., Pers. Stud., 35, ‘überzeugt mich nicht’).

4 see Paper, H. H., ‘The Vatican Judeo-Persian Pentateuch: Genesis’, Acta Or., 28, 3–4, 1965, 263ff.Google Scholar

5 Zotenberg, H., ‘Geschichte Daniels’, Merx' Archiv für wissenschaftliche Erforschung des Allen Testaments (Halle), 1, 1869, 385427Google Scholar

6 Lezard, G., La langue des plus anciens monuments de la prose persane, Paris, 1963.Google Scholar

7 Margoliouth, D%. S., ‘An early Judaeo-Persian document from Khotan’, JRAs, 1903, 747ff.Google Scholar

8 Iav. Imp. Nauk, Ak. (St. Petersburg), 13, 3, 1900, 269–76Google Scholar

9 See my article, ‘The vanguard, lying down?’ Sir J%. J. Zarthoshti Madressa Centenary Volume, Bombay, 1967, 130–6.Google Scholar

10 The abbreviations are those used in his Language des plus anciens monuments de la prose persane (= LPAMPP), Paris, 1963