Kernerman Dictionary News • Number 13 • June 2005
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Menaħem Ben Saruq’s Maħberet:
The first Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary
Maħberet
Menaħem is,
as noted above, the first systematic dictionary of Hebrew. It contains
all of the vocabulary of the entire Bible, providing some 2,500 roots,
arranged in approximately 8,000 lexemes, in alphabetical order by root,
according to Menaħem’s perception of the root. It is systematic in that
the entries are arranged in alphabetical order with the root as a main entry
and its derivatives as sub-entries. The alphabetization is usually preserved
in relation to the first two letters of the root, but not always in relation
to the third. For example, the rootחר"ף
[ħ-r-f] comes after the root חר"ץ [ħ-r-ts]. Roots comprising four letters or
more appear among the regular roots (and are not assigned a separate section,
as was done by Menaħem’s successors, Rabbi Jonah ibn Janah and Rabbi
David Qimhi, in their dictionaries). For example, חרצב [ħartsab]
and חרצן [ħartsan]
appear immediately after the root חר"ץ [ħ-r-ts]
(and not at the end of all of the entries for the letter ħet). The root is presented with all of its derivatives
below it, verbs and nouns alike, and this example was followed by
lexicographers throughout the Middle Ages, until modern times, when nouns
began to be listed according to their initial letter even if it is not
radical. Eliezer Ben Yehuda10 seems to have been the first Hebrew lexicographer in
modern times to separate nouns from verbs. For example, he listed the root כל"ל
[k-l-l] including its verbal
conjugations in the kaph section,
but placed the noun מכללה ([mikhlala]
college), from the same root, in the mem section. In more
recent years, other editing systems, such as that used in Milon ha-Hoveh,11 have
been developed. The original name of Maħberet
Menaħem was, apparently, Sefer Pitronim (Book of
Interpretations), and Menaħem’s pupils referred to it by that name.
But in the body of the book, Menaħem calls the list of entries that
begin with the letter aleph – Maħberet Aleph, the bet
section – Maħberet Bet, and so on, for a total of 22 maħbarot.
Thus the name of the entire dictionary became Maħberet, very
close to the time of its completion, and Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, 1040-1105) already
refers to it by that name.12 The name Maħberet
(from חב"ר [ħ-b-r], to unite,
associate, link up) reflects contemporary trends in names of
dictionaries; it is similar to Agron (from אג"ר ['-g-r], to compile,
collect) and the names of the dictionaries compiled by Rav Sa'adiah
Gaon and Alfâsi; the name used for Arabic dictionaries, Jâmi',
literally, a collection of words; and the modern Hebrew expression otzar
milim, the conterpart of the Latin term “thesaurus”. In modern times, due
to the tendency to prefer one word to a phrase, the word millon was
devised, apparently by Eliezer Ben Yehuda (in 1880), on the basis of the word
millah (word), as a translation of “dictionary”. Menaħem devoted his
dictionary solely to words in the Bible, whose language he considered
exemplary, and though he did not compile a grammar book at the same time, the
dictionary also includes numerous discussions on grammar, in excursuses or in
brief remarks in a few entries. Apart from these explicit remarks, the method
used in editing the dictionary is instructive with regard to his grammatical
approach, at least in the area of root theory. The theory underlying Maħberet
Menaħem advocates an abstract root that can be composed of one
consonant, or of two consonants or more, a theory that also governed the
works of Alfâsi, his contemporary, and For example, the main entryש"ב [sh-b]
includes roots that have been considered as roots in their own right ever
since the time of Judah hayyuj
(Fez, Morocco - Córdoba, ca. 1000): נש"ב [n-sh-b], יש"ב
[y-sh-b], שו"ב [sh-w-b], שב"י
[sh-b-y], שב"ב [sh-b-b].14 According
to the method used by Menaħem and his contemporaries, and the method
used by some of their predecessors, every letter that is not used in every
inflection of a word, such as yod, waw and nun in these
roots, is not radical. After all, for the meaning ישיבה ([yeshiva]
sitting) we say ישבתי ([yashavti]
I sat) in the past tense, but אֵשֵב (['eshev] I’ll sit) in the
future tense and שֶבֶת([shevet] sit) in the
infinitive, omitting the initial yod. For שִׁיבה ([shiva] returning),
we say אשוּב (['ashuv]
I’ll return) in the future tense but שַבתי ([shavti]
I returned) in the past tense, omitting the waw. And as for שִבְיה ([shivya] captivity), the
Bible contains the statement וַיִּשְבְּ
ממנו שבי ([vayishb …], Num. 21:1), omitting the final yod.
Menaħem classified as radical only a letter that exists in every
inflection. This approach may have been influenced by the concept of essence
and accident in Aristotelian philosophy, according to which only an
attribute that is a constant is an essence and attributes that are variable
are merely accidents, which are not fundamental to the definition of the
“nature” of the object in question. But this is not to suggest that
Menaħem attributed the same meaning to ישיבה, שביה
,שיבה
and נשיבה ([neshiva] blowing). In
the entry ש"ב [sh-b], he arranged them in “departments” (מחלקות [maħlaqot]), that is,
sub-entries, with each sub-entry containing a different definition. He may
have considered them homonymic roots, but it is possible that he was mainly
thinking of the root as an organizing entity. And yet, there are some words
in the dictionary that are treated as polysemic and deriving from one root,
whereas according to his method they should be treated as homonymic.15 In any event, all of the roots that modern methodology
considers 'defective' or geminate are, according to Menaħem’s system, biliteral. For example, on the basis of וַיֵּט
משה את ידו [vayet …]
(Exod. The monoliteral roots were not
placed in their expected position in Menaħem’s dictionary, at the
beginning of the entries for each letter that serves as the initial letter of
a monoliteral root according to his system, but in a concentrated discussion,
apparently because they are very few. This discussion is located in the first
opportune place – at the beginning of the entries for the letter bet,
the first letter in the alphabet that serves as the initial letter of a
monoliteral root.16 And since he is already
explaining this particular type of root, he launches into a discussion of
root theory in general. Maħberet Menaħem is a compact dictionary, and most
of its entries are very short. Usually the entry in the Maħberet is
structured as follows: it comprises a main entry, and if this main entry has
a few definitions, they are presented as “departments”. Each department
includes the relevant words, a few examples from the Bible, and brief
definitions, usually by means of a synonym in a general mode. When summing up
the meaning of several entries that he views as belonging to the same
semantic family, Menaħem uses the following formula: המה X עניין (they are from the meaning of X).
For example, all of the citations presented in the entry ב"ך
[b-kh], department 1, were defined עניין
הנעה המה – i.e., “they are from the meaning of movement”. The Maħberet contains
some embryonic entries that offer only an example from the Bible and no
definition, on the assumption that the educated reader will understand the
meaning from the example. There are also entries with an alternative
definition in the form of כמשמעו, i.e., “in its literal meaning” or
"as is known",17 but without a concrete
definition. Hence, the dictionary was not written for laymen but rather for
the learned who already had a good basic knowledge of the Bible. The overwhelming majority of
entries contain no grammatical, etymological or semantic discussions (for
example, no antonyms are listed); no clues to the declension of the word,
neither of the verbs deriving from it nor of the nouns; and, no comments on
syntax. The Maħberet is mainly a dictionary for the peshat (literal
meaning) philological significance of the word.18 The entries are in most cases
spelled as they appear in the Bible; the plene is plene and the deficient is
deficient, and the entries and the citations are presented without
vocalization. As was the custom of language scholars of the time, no
references are provided for the biblical citations, on the assumption that
the context of the citation is a sufficient indication of its location in the
Bible (and in a few cases also in the Mishnah). However, modern editors (see
below) added references as needed. The Maħberet is a
dictionary devoted to the entire Bible, including the Aramaic words in the
biblical text. Menaħem does not assign a special section to the Aramaic
words, as was done by Rabbi David Qimhi ( It was not that Menaħem did
not distinguish between the two languages, but his approach to the dictionary
was more philological than linguistic, and since the dictionary concerns a
particular book – the Bible, in its entirety – he did not separate the two
languages used in it. In this sense, separation would be merely a technical
matter. But even though the Maħberet
includes all of the words in the Bible, it does not include names,
neither of people nor of places. (Such names were usually dealt with in
concordances, encyclopaedias and lexicons for the Bible, but not in
dictionaries.) Menaħem was a methodical
scholar who was consistent to an extreme in his opinions, and had a critical,
scientific way of looking at things. Since root theory was a focus of great
interest in this period when the philological interpretation of the Bible was
coming into its own, Menaħem and the other members of his generation
considered the status of each letter in a word – that is, whether it was
radical or servile. In one of the early excursuses in the Maħberet,
in the entry אב"ח ['-b-ħ], Menaħem
leveled instructive criticism at Menaħem, too,
interprets the word אבחת as אימה (['eima] great fear) but
although there is no difference between the two philologists concerning the
semantics of the word, they differ in how this conclusion was reached and in
their grammatical approaches. Menaħem’s criticism implies that if there
is no convincing proof for determining the root, it must be put in its proper
perspective: since most taws at the end of words were meant to
indicate the feminine gender, this can also be assumed with regard to אבחת, especially since it is part of a construct phrase.
Therefore, he determined that its root was אב"ח ['-b-ħ]. And since this word
is unique in the Bible (hapax legomenon) and there is nothing with
which to compare it, we have no choice but to determine its meaning on the
basis of the context alone. As soon as the Maħberet was
published, it met with strong reactions, first in The question of כרסם / קרסם [kirsem / qirsem] is not confined to the matter
of letter substitution. It raises another fundamental question: Should the
language of the Bible be compared with the language of the sages? Is the
language of the sages equal in status to the language of the Bible? This is
not a question of having faith in the sages or accepting their rulings. The
question that troubled Menaħem ben Saruq as a poet was the purity of
language. What is the nature of the language of God, which certainly is more
exalted than the language created by humans? What is the language that should
serve as a model for poetry? For example, is the creation of
denominative verbs from nouns permissible and considered pure language? Menaħem
ben Saruq objected to this practice, not only in the poetic language of his
contemporaries and the language of liturgy in the centuries just prior to his
time, but even in the language of the Mishnah. One thing is clear: more than
dealing with the question of what was possible from the standpoint of
language, he was dealing with the question of the limits of extrapolating
from linguistic forms and phenomena that are documented in the Bible, and
with the question of the boundaries of good taste in Hebrew morphology. Menaħem therefore related to
a very sensitive point – the boundary of good linguistic taste. He did not
consent to making small compromises – he viewed the phenomenon as completely inadmissible.
If a practice was not appropriate in ten cases, then it was not appropriate
in a single case, and not only in poetry – we have seen that he took his
campaign into the field of prose as well, and even dealt retrospectively with
ancient literature, the Mishnah! His interest was the language usage in his
time and afterward, and defining the concept of purity of the language. One of Dunash’s strongest
complaints against Menaħem’s
work was his fundamental ideological objection to the practice of comparing
biblical words with Arabic. Menaħem
compared Hebrew with Aramaic, which he also viewed as being a holy tongue,
but even here he did so only when absolutely necessary, and in any event, he
did not compare Hebrew with Arabic, which he viewed as a secular language. In
order to prove his point, Dunash presented some 160 examples of comparisons
with Arabic. What increased the resonance of
the Maħberet was the
continuation of the polemic over etymological, semantic and grammatical
issues that arose in it and Dunash’s responses to the dictionary.
Three of Menaħem’s pupils,
Isaac ben Gikatilla, Isaac ben Kaprun, and Judah ben David, joined forces to
formulate answers to Dunash’s responses, and in turn, a pupil of Dunash,
Yehudi ben Sheshet, composed answers to their answers. The amazing fact is
that even after The Maħberet came
down to us in many copies in manuscript form and in 1854 it was published for
the first time by Zvi Filipowski,24 but his edition got very unfavorable reviews. A new
critical edition was published by Prof. Angel Sáenz-Badillos,25 one of the greatest modern scholars in the field of
Hebrew philology of medieval Many other aspects of the
perception and interpretation of the Bible, the status of the rulings of the
sages of the Masorah27 in the new philological commentary, and Menaħem’s
method of interpretation in general are reflected in the Maħberet,
but space does not permit a discussion of these aspects in this article.28 The fact that Menaħem’s root
theory became outdated within the span of a generation does not negate his
originality and achievements. He can also be credited with achievements in
the formulation of Hebrew grammatical terminology, notwithstanding the fact
that some of it evidenced signs of groping in the dark. For example, the root
is called both יסוד ([yesod] element,
foundation, base) and עיקר (['iqar] essence,
principle) as well as שורש ([shoresh] root). The act
of attributing a particular letter to a root is called להשריש ([lehashrish] to take/strike root). One thousand years later, there
is no doubt that Menaħem was right with regard to many aspects, but was
wrong with others. For the latter he was subjected to incisive criticism from
his adversary, Dunash ben Labrat. Although these disputes were difficult and
unpleasant on the personal level, on the scientific level they were extremely
fruitful and there is no doubt that they greatly advanced and benefited
Hebrew language research. Moreover, thanks to Menaħem is it possible to
understand the enormous changes that took place in the generations that
followed. Notes 1 See E.
Ashtor, Korot ha-yehudim be-sefarad ha-muslemit. 2 Menaħem is usually referred to by his
first name and not by his appellation because his name became attached to the
name of his dictionary, Maħberet, which is usually called Maħberet
Menaħem. 3 See Y. Blau’s
introductory article on MENAHEM BEN 4 See S.L.
Skoss, The Hebrew-Arabic Dictionary of the Bible Known as Kiaâb Jâmi'
Al-Alfâż (Agron) of David ben Abraham Al-Fâsi the Karaite (Tenth
Century), vol. I-II, Yale University Press, 1936-1945. 5 See Simcha
Pinsker, Likutei Qadmoniyot le-toledot benei Miqrah veha-literatur
shellahem, 6 See A. Maman, ‘Peshat and Derash in
Medieval Hebrew lexicons’, in Studies in Memory of Naphtali Kinberg
(1948-1997), Israel Oriental Studies 19 (1999), pp.343-357. 7 The Mishnah is the collection of oral law
compiled by Rabbi 8 The Talmud is a compilation of the Mishnah
and its Amoraic commentary (Gemara); there are the 9 See S. Morag, ‘Reshit ha-milona'ut
ha-'ivrit ve-ha'aravit’, in Molad 3 (NS 1970-71), pp.575-582. 10 Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858-1922) is considered to be the renovator of the
Hebrew language. His Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew,
in 16 volumes, was published from 1908 to 1959. 11 See M. Mishor, ‘Milon ha-Hoveh and Milon Sapir’, in Kernerman
Dictionary News 12 (2004), pp.23-26. 12 For example, in Rashi’s commentary to Leviticus
19:19, entry ובגד
כלאים,
to Isaiah 19:7, entry ערות, and to Jeremiah 4:12, entry תקרעי
בפוך. 13 Rav Sa'adiah Gaon had a
different approach to the root, according to which the root is the actual
morphological basis in the noun form (an approach that resembles the concept
of the root in Latinate and Anglo-Saxon languages). 14 See Maħberet, the entry ש"ב, Badillos edition, pp.360*-359*. 15 For details of the analysis of the examples, see
Maman A., ‘The Flourishing Era of Jewish Exegesis in 16 Badillos edition, pp.75*-76*. 17 For the meaning of the term כמשמעו, the meaning attributed to it by Dunash ben Labrat, Menaħem’s
contemporanous, and the disagreements about it in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, see Maman A., Comparative Semitic Philology in the
Middle Ages from Saadia Gaon to Ibn Barun (10th-12th cent.), Leiden:
Brill 2004, pp.276-283. 18 With regard to the
concept of philological commentary and Menaħem’s
method of interpretation in general, see Sáenz-Badillos A., ‘Early Hebraists
in 19 Sometimes the man’s surname begins in the form of “ben”
and sometimes it begins with its Arabic counterpart, “ibn”, but in most cases
a fixed form is used, either Hebrew or Arabic. 20 David ben Abraham Alfâsi was also of this opinion. 21 hayyuj, who lived following Menaħem's generation
and worked in the same field as his, is regarded the greatest Hebrew
grammarian in the Middle Ages. He discovered the nature of triliterality of
the Hebrew verb even for "weak" roots and composed two large books
to prove his theory. Among other innovations, he also suggested a theoretical
notion of sakin layyin, a “soft unvocalized” morpho-phonemic entity,
in order to solve all kinds of morpho-phonological Hebrew problems. hayyuj’s views
are accepted up to date. 22 Tosafot
(Addenda) refers to the comments made on Rashi’s commentary to the
Babylonian Talmud, by his nephews, Rabbenu Ya'aqov Tam and the Rashbam (Rabbi
Shemuel ben Meir) (twelfth century), followed by other French and Ashkenazi
scholars up to the fourteenth century. In the famous Vilna edition of the
Talmud, the Tosafot are printed in the external margins of the Talmudic text,
opposite Rashi’s commentary, which is printed in the internal margins. 23 Sefer teshuvot rabbenu tam, in Sefer
teshuvot dunash ben labrat…'al sefer mahberet harav menahem, Z.
Filipowski edition, 24 Zvi Ben Yehezkel Filipowski, Maberet Menahem,
Edinburgh 1854. 25 A. Sáenz-Badillos, Menahem Ben Saruq, Mahberet, 26 Genizah material refers to 250,000 fragments from
ragged Hebrew books and documents which were piled for centuries in a special
room in the Cairo Ezra synagogue and are now preserved in several libraries
around the world. 27 Masorah is the philological apparatus and
literature meant to keep the text of the Bible untouched. It is assumed that
this kind of literature emerged soon after the canonization of each book of
the Bible. 28 And see in Sáenz-Badillos’s
article and the essays noted above.
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