Daniel Golde (The Jewish Theological Seminary)
Since the days of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, scholars of Jewish studies have tried to show classicists how important rabbinic literature is for their discipline. Although the rabbis could interest classicists for many reasons, in this paper I focus on rabbinic Greek. This modality of Greek is radically different from standard imperial Greek on both a morphological and semantic level. Rabbinic Greek is written in Hebrew script which can only imperfectly capture the sounds of the Greek language. Similarly, the rabbis often fundamentally transform the traditional meaning of Greek words in order to fit their specific literary needs. The rabbinic idiolect forces scholars of classical Greek literature to consider the boundaries of the Greek language.
In order to demonstrate how rabbinic Greek relates to standard Greek, I narrowly focus on one word: קורייס (qvryys). Yechezkiel Kutcher already demonstrated in the 1940s that this word along with all of its permutations derive from the Greek word καῖρος. Building on Kutcher’s astute philological work, I show how the rabbis reinscribe this word with meaning for their own literary purposes. In other words, the rabbis use Greco-Roman language for parochial ends and therefore fundamentally transform the Greek language. Rather than try to find one fixed definition for this word that fits neatly within the semantic range of standard Greek (this is the approach of Samuel Krauss), I emphasize the lack of semantic coherence with no apologies. In order to understand this modality of Greco-Aramaic, I compare rabbinic qvryys with various attestations in the classical canon. The lexicographers, Hesychius and Suda, ponder the meaning of καῖρος in order to better understand its usage in Homer. Although the literary goals of Greek lexicographers could not be more different than those of the rabbis, there is nonetheless some (barely) semantic correspondence between them. I ultimately conclude that rabbinic literature provides a unique way to understand Greek literary development. This conclusion builds on the work of Jenny Labendz who showed how the rabbinic understanding of the word Epicurean (Ἐπῐ́κουρος/ אפיקורוס) transformed over time and space and took on new meaning in Babylonian rabbinic literature of the 6th-7th century CE.
Finally, I introduce certain theoretical concepts about multilingualism in diaspora in order to shed light on what it means for colonized groups to use the language of the imperial center. Rey Chow argues that colonized non-native speakers have tremendous creative potential precisely because of their imperfect grasp of standard forms. These non-native speakers interrogate or even terrorize the boundaries between languages. Ferdinand Saussure likewise understood that as words travel between languages their meanings must transform since language is fundamentally contextual. Chow and Saussure both highlight how language contact leads to linguistic creativity that troubles any static notion of language. With Chow and Saussure considered, we can start to see rabbinic Greek as a creative manifestation of Greek.