[Avodah] Targumim from Sinai

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 07:31:36AM -0400, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: Rashi there says Moshe explained the Torah in 70 languages, but does that
: mean that Aramaic rather than Hebrew was the spoken language of B'Y?
...

The name of the food "mann" presumes they asked the question "Man hu?" not
"Mah zeh?"

>From the Kuzari, vol II (Hartwig's public-domain translation at
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitab_al_Khazari/Part_Two>, see
<http://www.tsel.org/torah/kuzari/sheni.html> for Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew),
emphasis mine:

    67. Al-Khazari: Is Hebrew superior to other languages? Do we not
    see distinctly that the latter are more finished and comprehensive?

    68. The Rabbi: It shared the fate of its bearers, degenerating
    and dwindling with them. Considered historically and logically,
    its original form is the noblest. According to tradition it is the
    language in which God spoke to Adam and Eve, and in which the latter
    conversed. It is proved by the derivation of Adam from adamah,
    ishshah from ish; hayyah from hayy; Cain from qanithi; Sheth from
    shath, and Noah from yenah, menu. This is supported by the evidence
    of the Torah. The whole is traced back to Eber, Noah and Adam. It
    is the language of Eber after whom it was called Hebrew, because
    after the confusion of tongues it was he who retained it. Abraham
    was an Aramaean of Ur Kasdim, because the language of the Chaldaeans
    was Aramaic. HE EMPLOYED HEBREW AS A SPECIALLY HOLY LANGUAGE AND
    ARAMAIC FOR EVERYDAY USE. For this reason Ishmael brought it to
    the Arabic speaking nations, and the consequence was that Aramaic,
    Arabic and Hebrew are similar to each other in their vocabulary,
    grammatical rules, and formations. The superiority of Hebrew is
    manifest from the logical point of view if we consider the people who
    employed it for discourses, particularly at the time when prophecy
    was rife among them, also for preaching, songs and psalmody. It is
    conceivable that their rulers such as for instance, Moses, Joshua,
    David, and Solomon lacked the words to express what they wished, as
    it is the case with us to-day, because it is lost to us? Dost thou
    not see how the Torah, when describing the Tabernacle, Ephod and
    breastplate and other objects, always finds the most suitable word
    for all these strange matters? How beautifully is this description
    composed? It is just the same with the names of people, species of
    birds and stones, the diction of David's Psalms, the lamentations of
    Job, and his dispute with his friends, the addresses of Isaiah, etc.

(BTW, it pays to keep on reading to see how the Chaver actually answers
the question of how Hebrew is superior.)

Even back to Avraham, we used Aramaic for secular conversation. The
notion of having a Yiddish, Ladino, or even dare I say it Abazi"t (Ivrit
bat zemaneinu) is as old as the avos.

And thus of the 70 targumim, the only one of use to us at that time was
that written in mame-lashen, Aramaic. Which is *literally* mame-lashen
-- where did Avraham find Sarai, and where did Eliezer and Yaaqov go to
find the imahos?


We also found that the gemara tells us that Adam spoke Aramaic, not
Hebrew. I laconically suggested that Aramaic doesn't necessarily mean
Aramaic, but rather the general concept of la'az. My notion was based
on a vague recollection of this Kuzari. What? Mal'akhim can figure out
English, but not Hebrew's sister? And in fact in Chagiga 16a the notion
is framed as mal'akhim only speak Hebew. It could be a machloqes, or one
could say (as I want to) that "Aramaic" is sometimes an aggadic buzzword
for any chol language.

In the case of what language Adam spoke, the ra'ayah is from a pasuq
in Tehillim attributed to Adam that has Aramaic in it. (Somehow, it's
a machloqes acharonim what exactly in that pasuq is Aramaic. That would
seem to mean Aramit mamash.

Our understanding of this gemara is complicated by having to explain
Rashi (11:1) who says the pre-Migdal "safah achas" was LhQ, the same
language he says was used in maaseh bereishis (2:23). The notion that
maaseh bereishis was in LhQ is in Berakhos 13a and Sanhedrin 21b. And
the Ramban (Shemos 30:13) holds that LhQ was the language that HQBH
spoke to Adam in, and was the language of all people until migdal Bavel.

I would surmise that R' Yehudah amar Rav was about Adam after the
cheit. That in Gan Eden he, like the mal'akhim, only communicated in LhQ.
But afterward, he was capable of dealing with reality in a manner other
than qedushah, and Aramaic arose. That being the point of both aggaditos,
not the ancestry of the language used by the Aramiim.

More needs to be thought through about the Ramban, along with identifying
what "safah achas" and "devarim achadim" mean. Are either the same concept
as "lashon"? We've discussed this before, but I never was convinced of any
particular conclusion, nor did we weave it into this area of dicussion.

:                They were redeemed from Egypt because they didn't change 
: their distinctive clothing, their names or their language -- shelo shinu es
: leshonam.  Now you want to tell me that the language they clung to in Egypt
: and never changed was actually Aramaic, the lingua franca of the ancient
: Middle East?   I'm not buying that.

Why not? The tzad hashaveh -- not that a phantom maamar chazal woven
from thre different sources necessarily has one -- is that we resisted
assimilation. Not that Aramaic was special as much as it not being Mitzri.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 48th day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        6 weeks and 6 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org   Yesod sheb'Malchus: What binds different
Fax: (270) 514-1507             people together into one cohesive whole?