LITMIR.BIZ

       Notes on Usage

      On Translation and Transliteration

      At times throughout the book, I refer to words or passages that are Hebrew or Greek. Whenever knowledge of the original Hebrew adds to an understanding of my point, I quote it in Hebrew and also translate it. At other times, I may provide only translation or transliteration, depending on what is most appropriate for the context. If I would like the Hebrew term itself accessible to all readers, I transliterate it, sometimes in addition to providing the original Hebrew. For the most part, I provide the Greek only in translation or transliteration—though occasionally, when it is most pertinent, I provide the original as well. Greek transliteration follows The SBL Handbook of Style. Hebrew transliteration attempts to follow the scholarly practice of rendering consonants uniquely and conveying additional information about vocalization. At the same time, I wish to present the transliterations such that they can be read following the convention of modern Hebrew pronunciation (which, it must be noted, is merely a convention). To these ends, I have built upon both The SBL Handbook “academic” style and “general-purpose” style to create my own transliteration system, which is detailed below. Please note that this is not a full scholarly system. In order to read the transliterated Hebrew words according to conventional pronunciation, simply ignore the diacritical marks (excluding the underdot beneath the h, which indicates the guttural ḥet). The only exception to these pronunciation rules is the letter ו (waw), which is rendered with a w, though conventionally pronounced as a v. As a further general exception to the transliteration rules detailed below, certain common words in Hebrew and Aramaic (including many personal and place names) have at times been rendered according to general usage (or largely according to general usage). Transliterations of vowels in mishnaic passages are based on a combination of the vocalization in MS Parma, MS Kaufmann, and the Albeck edition of the Mishnah (vocalized by Yalon; most frequently, I follow MS Kaufmann). In translating passages of the Mishnah and Tosefta, I follow the standard scholarly practice of rendering fairly literally, and I use square brackets to indicate glosses (and, at times, to indicate corrections or glosses in the manuscript).

      On the Manuscripts Used

      Against the scholarly consensus, I have decided to make MS Parma (de Rossi 138) the base text for quoting and translating. Scholars have shown convincingly that the alternative, MS Kaufmann, preserves forms not preserved anywhere else (see Bar-Asher, “The Different Traditions,” and the earlier work he cites). They have shown that this scribe seems to have copied words or forms that would not quite have made sense. At the same time, the scribe of MS Parma seems to have been aware of the different forms and consciously chose those most standard. Feintuch, “On the Parma Manuscript,” shows that this scribe will fill the end of a line with a shortening of the archaic form of a word, but when commencing the next line with the complete word, he will use the more standard form. Despite these arguments, I have chosen to make MS Parma primary for two reasons. First, the minor differences in linguistic form have no impact on my argument. Indeed, the two manuscripts are nearly identical in every single narrative considered. That MS Kaufmann may be somehow closer to the original linguistic form of the Mishnah (an argument that can be called into question) is irrelevant here. Second, Krupp (“On the Relationship”) and others have marshaled significant evidence that MS Parma of the Mishnah was part of the same manuscript as MS Vatican 31 of the Sifra, which is an eleventh-century manuscript.

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