S6 Friday, March 4, 1977
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Michigan Professor's Study of Judeo-Persian Bibles
Reveals 1,000 Years of Change, Growth in Language
A lengthy article de- ling, of Persian sounds
scribing some of the work into Hebrew letters.
of University of Michigan
What is interesting
Professor Herbert H. about Judeo-Persian, and
Paper in translating an- what makes it relevant to
cient writings was de- our theme of decipher-
scribed in a recent Uni- ment, is the fact that the
versity of Michigan re- Hebrew transliteration
search publication.
tells us so much about the
The article explained
that in the case of some
languages, scholars enjoy
the advantage of knowing
from independent evi-
dence how pronunciation
changed while script re-
mained the same. One
such language is Persian,
which hats been written in
an established or classi-
cal script for the last 1,000
--- years.
From this writing, of
course, one could learn
little or nothing about
pronunciation changes.
But Persian has also for
over a thousand years
DR. HERBERT PAPER
been written routinely in
a second kind of script, way Persian was being
Hebrew letters. spoken from century to
Hebrew long served in century and place to
the Jewish world as Latin place. Judeo-Persian is
served in the West until the main interest of Dr.
after the Renaissance. Paper.
Jewish communities, while
Dr. Paper has pointed
usually speaking the lan- out that Judeo-Persian
guage in use by the people represents the most basic
among whom _they lived, type of decipherment
remained literate in He- problem, the reading of a
brew, the language that known language in a
connected Jews to their known writing system —
spiritual origins. b u t with one added corn-
In Persia it was often plexity, the arbitrary im-
the custom for Persian- position of a non-native
language material - to be writing system on a lan-
spelled out in Hebrew let- guage with a script of its
ters, with Judeo-Persi an own_
writing the result.
Judeo-Persian texts are
Judeo-Persian enabled no mere redundancy in
Jews in Persia to borrow the body of Persian liter-
the native literature and atu re. Many Persian
write it down in a way works of the last 1,000
that made it readable by years are extant only in
Jews who spoke Persian Judeo-Persian versions;
but read Hebrew.
Judeo-Persian is not a
translation of Persian
into Hebrew but rather a
transliteration, or respel-
indeed, some of the very
Page by page Dr. Paper
oldest pieces of such lit- aligned the six versions of
erature —that is, the ear- each verse of the Pen-
liest remaining speci- tateuch. Changing pro-
mens of what is now nunciation of Persian is
called Modern Persian — evident in the ways the
were written down only in verses are rendered in
Judeo-Persian and not in the different versions.
Persian at all.
Taking, for example, the
About 15 years ago Dr. text of Genesis 7:20 ("Fif-
Paper and a few other teen cubits upward did the
scholars began the sys- waters prevail, and the
tematic study of Judeo- mountains were coy-
Persian. Their aim was to ered."), we can look at.the
contribute to our knowl- Persian word for "fifteen
edge of Persian as well as cubits," panzdah, as it
to scrutinize the evolu- would be pronounced to-
tion of a spoken language day.
over a period of many
The Vatican version of
hundreds- of years.
the Judeo-Persian Pen-
One of Prof. Paper's tateuch shows that this
major contributions is a word was pronounced
12-volume, handwritten pazdah in the 16th Cen-
- in Hebrew letters — tury. The 18th Century
compilation of six (and Jerusalem version gives
more) Judeo-Persian ver- punzah, a pronunciation
sions of the PentateuCh. that happens to be the
The fact that the 12 vol- same as a contemporary
umes are handwritten is colloquial pronunciation
no-impediment to their use of this word. And so on.
because they can be re- It is rare to have a
produced from microfilm series of texts of this kind
to meet the demand among in any language that
specialists.
permits one to review the
Dr. Paper gathered six changing language and
known Judeo-Persian gain insight into its va-
Pentateuchs from all over rieties.
the world. - The earliest of
At every point the
them, dating from 1319 Jewish scribes who were
CE is held in the British writing Persian in He-
-Museum. Another, dating brew script were free to
from the 17th Century, is spell out what was actu-
in the Vatican Library. ally pronounced. They
At Hebrew Union College often spelled phoneti-
is a third version. cally, or nearly . so , unin-
Another, created early fluenced by any, spelling
in this century in oddities that might have
Jerusalem, is spelled with been present in Persian
a complete set of vowel script.
marks, which is not ordi-
Some Hebrew scribes
narily the case either
probably knew Persian
with Hebrew or, still less, serif: t, but in many cases
Persian script. Another
texts seem to have been
Jerusalem 'version dates
transcribed from oral
back to 1775 or earlier.
sources alone. Thus we can
Hausner Says U.S Must Lead
on World Anti-Terrorism Plan
NEW YORK (JTA) —
Among the steps he said
Gideon Hausner, MK and should be taken are: coop-
Israeli Cabinet Minister eration among security
who was the prosecutor of services in the pooling and
Adolf Eichmann, pre- exchange of information
sented a five-point plan to about terrorists; treating
counteract international an act of terror against one
terrorism. Speaking at a of the contracting states as
press conference preced- an act of terror against all
ing the banquet of the of them; refusal of landing:
annual Mid-Winter Con- rights for the aircraft of
ference of the National countries harboring or
Board of Hadassah at the protecting terrorists and
New York Hilton Hotel, mutual punishment and
he pointed out that inter- extradition of terrorists.
national arrangements to
bring terrorists to trial
Hausner concluded: "I
and extradition treaties
believe that a treaty of
have failed.
this kind will hold out
"With the_ moral ap- more hope for the indi-
roach adopted by Presi- vidual, who will not be left
ent Jimmy Carter to in- helpless when a gun is
ternational problems, I pointed at him. It is a
expect the U.S. to take matter of elementary
the lead in developing ef- self-defense.
fective action against
terror, not necessarily
"But an incidental by-
within the framework of product of such an ar-
the UN, but by bringing rangement would be a
about a multilateral new approach to human
agreement between all rights. The treaty would
mean that the contract-
states prepared to join in ing parties are accepting
cooperative endeavors to the basic human rights of
suppress terrorism by others as their responsi-
bility, even when some of
taking practical action," the people needing pro-
Hausner said.
tection are not their own
d
nationals. -
In
introducing
Hausner, Bernice S. Tan-
nenbaum, national presi-
dent of Hadassah,
charged that "a disturb-
ing pattern has emerged
in which terrorists and
Nazi war criminals are
escaping due prOcess of
law because of moral
apathy and because cer-
tain powerful groups are
being influenced by the
Arab propaganda
machine. -
Mrs. Tannenbaum said
that nations have allowed
themselves to be coerced
into releasing terrorists,
there is a conspiracy to
deny the Holocaust and the
death of millions of Jews
and non-Jews at Nazi
hands and nations have
neglected their duty to
track down and prosecute
Nazis responsible for at-
rocities.
She said that even the
United States has not ful-
filled its obligations and
has tacitly provided
asylum to Nazis who
should be extradited to
Germany.
expett Judeo-Persian
_texts to have been spelled
with a kind of objectivity
from which we can make
valid inferences about
Persian pronunciation.
The availability of Per-
sian material in Hebrew
writing greatly aids our
understanding of both
Persian literature and
Persian language. There
still exist vast numbers of
Judeo-Persian manu-
scripts and a wide variety
of literary materials that
have not yet been edited
or studied.
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The manuscript page above has two versions of
Job 15:16-20. Each verse first appears in Hebrew, and
then is followed in Persian written in Hebrew letters:
Judeo-Persian. The 262-leaf manuscript, virtually the
entire book of Job, is believed to date back to the 15th
Century and is owned by an Israeli professor.
Israel's Ordnance Corps
Developing Military Items
.
TEL AVIV — OVer 700
different military items
were developed for the Is-
rael Defense Forces by its
Ordnance Corps last year,
it was- revealed by the
Jerusalem Post.
At a meeting with mili-
tary correspondents, the
Corps OC, Tat-Aluf
Eliezer Barak, said that
some 120 items had been
developed for the ar-
mored and artillery
corps alone. Another 280
developments were re-
lated to ammunition and
light weapons.
Currently, the
Ordnance Corps is pro-
ducing hundreds of spare
parts for Soviet-made
tanks which were cap-
tured by Israel in the last
two wars. All the cannon
on these tanks have been
standardized to the 105
mm. cannon used in Is-
rael's other tanks.
The Corps has replaced
fuel engines in a large
number of armored per-
sonnel carriers of World
War II vintage with mod-
ern diesel engines and all
these vehicles, which in
any other army would have
been Thrown on the trash
heap, have been fitted with
power steering and other .
improvements.
The commander noted
that these changes cost
about one-tenth of what
new tracked M-113 per-
Sonnel carriers cost, and
that the refurbished ve-
hicles are more than ade-
quate for their tasks.
Tat-Aluf Barak told re-
porters that a comman-
ders' tank cupola, de-
veloped after the Six-Day
War to provide- tank
commanders with added
protection while allowing
them to operate with an
open turret, is .now being
exported to tank man-
ufacturers abroad.
standard equipmen
some of the West's ,
modern tanks, said
Barak.
There are over 70 dif-
ferent technical profes-
sions represented in the
CorpS, which has the task
of ensuring that the
IDF's • equipment is
functional. -
Quality control con-
tinues to play a major
part of the Corps func-
tion, he said. His branch
currently has contact
with 1,015 factories in Is-
rael producing for the
armed forces.