Studies in Semitic Linguistics and Manuscripts: A Liber Discipulorum in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Khan

Studies in Semitic Linguistics and Manuscripts: A Liber Discipulorum in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Khan

Vidro, Nadia

University College London.

Vollandt, Ronny

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich.

Wagner, Esther-Miriam

Woolf Institute; University of Cambridge.

Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith 

École Pratique des Hautes Études-PSL; Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes-CNRS.

2018 (English)Collection (editor) (Refereed)

Abstract [en]

This Festschrift is a collection of papers in honour of Geoffrey Khan, the Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge, written by his former and current students and post-doctoral researchers. The work of Geoffrey Khan has had a tremendous impact on a vast array of domains of study, including Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Semitic grammar and linguistics, Bible vocalisation traditions, Cairo Genizah studies, palaeography, codicology and Arabic papyrology. This richness of investigated themes is reflected by the twenty-one papers in the present volume.

The volume consists of two parts. Papers in Part 1, ‘Linguistics, Grammar and Exegesis’, propose new interpretations of biblical language phenomena, discuss medieval approaches to the grammar of Biblical Hebrew and the narrative structure of the Bible, describe early-modern developments in the Hebrew language, and document and analyse three dialects of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic. Part 2, ‘Texts, Scribes and the Making of Books and Documents’, is dedicated to manuscripts and their production, and in particular to the work of scribes. All papers in this part centre around manuscripts discovered in the Cairo Genizah and other similar collections. While thematically diverse, all contributions are united by a common approach of focusing on a careful description of the ‘document’ – whether it is a manuscript or a recording of a speaker of a contemporary endangered language – prior to its interpretation in the light of the most recent ideas of the relevant disciplines.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2018. , p. 467

Series

Studia Semitica Upsaliensia, ISSN 0585-5535 ; 30

Keywords [en]

Hebrew, Judaeo-Arabic, North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic, Jewish languages, manuscript, Cairo Genizah, medieval, linguistics, language documentation, phonological change, folktale, gender transformation

National Category

Specific Languages

Research subject

Semitic Languages

Identifiers

URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-347037ISBN: 978-91-513-0290-4 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-347037DiVA, id: diva2:1192909

Note

CONTENTS

THE EDITORS Studies in Semitic Linguistics and Manuscripts: A Liber Discipulorum in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Khan   7

Part 1: Linguistics, Grammar and Exegesis

PETER J. WILLIAMS Semitic Long /i/ Vowels in the Greek of Codex Vaticanus of the New Testament   15

AARON D. HORNKOHL Biblical Hebrew Tense–Aspect–Mood, Word Order and Pragmatics: Some Observations on Recent Approaches   27

JOHAN M. V. LUNDBERG Long or Short? The Use of Long and Short Wayyiqṭols in Biblical, Parabiblical and Commentary Scrolls from Qumran   57

ELIZABETH ROBAR Unmarked Modality and Rhetorical Questions in Biblical Hebrew   75

SHAI HEIJMANS The Shewa in the First of Two Identical Letters and the Compound Babylonian Vocalisation   98

DANIEL BIRNSTIEL הֶחָכָם, but הַחָכְמָה: Some Notes on the Vocalisation of the Definite Article in Tiberian Hebrew   111

SAMUEL BLAPP The Use of Dageš in the Non-Standard Tiberian Manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible from the Cairo Genizah   132

LILY KAHN The Ashkenazic Hebrew of Nathan Nata Hannover’s Yeven Meṣula (1653)   151

FIONA BLUMFIELD Medieval Jewish Exegetical Insights into the Use of Infinitive Absolute as the Equivalent of a Preceding Finite Form   181

MEIRA POLLIACK Implementation as Innovation: The Arabic Terms Qiṣṣa and Ḵabar in Medieval Karaite Interpretation of Biblical Narrative and its Redaction History   200

LIDIA NAPIORKOWSKA Patterns of Diffusion of Phonological Change in the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Azran   217

ELEANOR COGHILL The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Telkepe   234

OZ ALONI ‘The King and the Wazir’: A Folk-Tale in the Jewish North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Zakho   272

 

Part 2: Texts, Scribes and the Making of Books and Documents

JUDITH OLSZOWY-SCHLANGER Crossing Palaeographical Borders: Bi Alphabetical Scribes and the Development of Hebrew Script – The Case of the Maghrebi Cursive   299

BENJAMIN M. OUTHWAITE Beyond the Leningrad Codex: Samuel b. Jacob in the Cairo Genizah   320

NADIA VIDRO Arabic Vocalisation in Judaeo-Arabic Grammars of Classical Arabic   341

ESTARA J ARRANT The Structural and Linguistic Features of Three Hebrew Begging Letters from the Cairo Genizah   352

ESTHER-MIRIAM WAGNER Birds of a Feather? Arabic Scribal Conventions in Christian and Jewish Arabic   376

MAGDALEN M. CONNOLLY A 19th Century CE Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic Folk Narrative: Text, Translation and Grammatical Notes       392

REBECCA J. W. JEFFERSON Popular Renditions of Hebrew Hymns in 19th Century Yemen: How a Crudely Formed, Vocalised Manuscript Codex Can Provide Insights into the Local Pronunciation and Practice of Prayer   421

RONNY VOLLANDT The Status Quaestionis of Research on the Arabic Bible   442