Boid's Note on Aramaic Spelling

One detail of Aramaic spelling that might be useful. The masc. def. suffix and the fem indefinite suffix were originally written with HE, but in the first c. A.D. a spelling with ALEF was much commoner, and this became standard in all dialects soon after. The only exception is Samaritan Aramaic. Thus “the Apostle” masc. def. would originally have been written שליחה but was later written שליחא except in Samaritan Aramaic. It might be useful to say explicitly that this is a title of Moses in Sam. texts. As I recall this is implied continually in your notes but not said specifically.

On the connotations of the name Marqe as felt by a speaker of Hebrew or Aramaic. First, the statement that the form marqa would be felt as the abstract noun related to the infinitive pa’el mirroq or infinitive qal mâroq might be clearer if you added the detail that marqe in Samaritan Aramaic is the exact grammatical equivalent of marqa in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. You might also add that although the meaning of being signed sealed and delivered in its full technical legal sense is only ATTESTED in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, that does not prove the meaning didn’t exist in Sam. Aramaic: it might only be that it is not used in the fairly limited body of surviving Sam. Aramaic texts. The two Talmuds have a lot to say about legal documents and legal procedure: hymns don’t need to. It might even only mean that Tal left it out of his dictionary. [Tal leaves out a lot of words that are in the Targum in some mss. but not others, and that is in spite of having previously published an edition of the Sam. Targum with these very words being listed by him in his own critical apparatus to the Targum text! The reason for this is that in all matters he is sloppy when he thinks he can get away with it. The immediate reason is that Tal’s Dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic is actually Ben-Hayyim’s personal card index transferred by Tal to a computer, and Ben-Hayyim never finished his card index because photocopies of some mss. reached him after he had become too busy with other work. The worst omissions were fixed up for Tal by Yisra’el Tsedaka (no relation to Benyamim) whose work was not adequately acknowledged by Tal. (This is a consistent trait). Yisra’el Tsedaka knows Sam. Aramaic better than any other person now alive. You can’t say all this, but you need to know]. A dialect could have both sets of meanings, the legal meaning and the meaning well attested in Sam. Aramaic, because in the first meaning the verb is in the qal and in the second case the verb is in the pa’el, so there would be no confusion. In both meanings the abstract noun would be marqe / marqa. (For this reason I would like you to change the information quoted from me so that the infinitive used to translate the Hebrew word shallem in Deut. XXXII is consistently cited as mirroq (from the pa’el) and not mâroq (from the qal). If you are wondering why I can be so sure the form ought to be pa’el when mâroq and mirroq would be spelt identically as MEM-RESH-VAV-QOF, the answer is that I have looked at the way this verb is used in forms where the difference between qal and pa’el would be apparent, and I see that whenever the form can be identified and the meaning fits something like Hebrew shallem, it is always pa’el). You might consider the Islamic term “the Seal of the Prophets” applied to Muhammad, but there is of course no way of making a direct connection till the legal meaning of MRQ turns up in Sam. Aramaic or till a Jewish Targum is found with the root MRQ rendering SHIN-LAMED-MEM in Deuteronomy XXXII. (I think I can prove the existence of such a Targum at some time from an argument from the variants in the Greek translations, but this would take you outside the scope of the present book. You can quote me as having suggested it and say I’m working on the details of the proof if you like).