Language:
English
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Jewish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
73,1 (2022) 1-23
Keywords:
Jewish scholars History
;
Hebrew language Grammar
;
Study and teaching
;
History
;
Hebrew language, Biblical Gender
;
Language and languages Gender
;
Philology History
Abstract:
The first systematic analyses of Hebrew grammar were composed by Rabbanite and Karaite scholars of the tenth and eleventh centuries, partly by drawing on the conventions of Arabic linguistics. However, certain technical grammatical terms, including the expressions leshon zakhar (‘masculine’) and leshon neqevah (‘feminine’), can be found in Midrashic and Talmudic texts. This article considers the grammatical knowledge underlying the rabbinic expositions. Points of comparison are sought in late-antique grammatical treatises and non-rabbinic interpretive works, including Philo’s commentaries and scholia on the Iliad and Aeneid, with particular attention to perceived relationships between grammatical gender and cultural gender norms. By differentiating this understanding of linguistic gender from those articulated in the commentaries and grammars of medieval Jewish scholars of the Muslim world, the article argues that the rabbinic expositions were shaped by grammatical concepts that are well attested in late-ancient Graeco-Roman textual scholarship.
DOI:
10.18647/3520/jjs-2022
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
