Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies.

THE TAUBMAN LECTURES IN JEWISH STUDIES

Daniel Boyarin, Series Editor

The Taubman Professorship and Lectures

The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies was established at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975 by grants from Milton I. Taubman and the Taubman Foundation; an equal sum was contributed by the family of Maurice Amado, Walter A. Haas, Daniel E. Koshland, Madeleine Haas Russell, and Benjamin H. Swig. Distinguished scholars in the fields of Jewish studies are invited to teach at Berkeley for the enrichment of students and to give open lectures for the benefit of the public at large. Publication of the lectures is made possible by a special gift of the Taubman Foundation.

1. Biblical Prose Prayer as a Window to the Popular Religion of Ancient Israel, by Moshe Greenberg

2. Hebrew Poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, by Dan Pagis

3. The Promise of the Land: The Inheritance of the Land of Canaan by the Israelites, by Moshe Weinfeld

4. Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity, by Galit Hasan-Rokem

5. Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death, by Elliot Wolfson

6. Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis, by Aharon Shemesh

7. The Invention of Judaism: Torah and Jewish Identity from Deuteronomy to Paul, by John J. Collins

8. The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe, by Moshe Taube

The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe

The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe

Moshe Taube

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press Oakland, California

© 2023 by Moshe Taube

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons [CC BY-NC-ND] license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses.

Suggested citation: Taube, M. The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe. Oakland: University of California Press, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.137

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Taube, Moshe, author.

Title: The cultural legacy of the pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe / Moshe Taube. Other titles: Taubman lectures in Jewish studies ; 8.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2023] | Series: The Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies ; 8 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022028896 (print) | LCCN 2022028897 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520390782 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520390799 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Europe, Eastern—History.

Classification: LCC DS135.E81 T38 2023 (print) | LCC DS135.E81 (ebook) | DDC 305.6/9609437—dc23/eng/20220721

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022028896

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022028897

28 27 26 25 24 23

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe: The Beginnings

2. Translations from Hebrew in Rus′ in the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Centuries: Made by Converts?

3. The Heresy of the Judaizers and the Translations from Hebrew in Muscovite Russia in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century

Textual Findings and Analyses of the Translations

Historical Background of the Translations and Link to the Judaizers

General Conclusion

Appendixes

Notes

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The present monograph, consisting of three chapters, is an adaptation of a series of three lectures delivered at the University of California, Berkeley between October 29 and November 5, 2019. I am indebted to Professor Daniel Boyarin for inviting me to give these presentations in the framework of the Taubman Lectures.

I am grateful to my dear friends William F. Ryan and Yoash Meisler, and to my better half Dana Taube for their remarks and corrections. I am also indebted to two reviewers at the University of California Press for their helpful suggestions.

Introduction

The present work deals with the traces of cultural activity, taking chiefly the form of translation, of the pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe, and it is based on my forty years of research on translated texts produced in the Middle Ages in the Eastern European lands called Rus′. These lands, which adopted in the tenth century the Greek Orthodox variety of Christianity, are home to populations speaking various dialects and have repeatedly witnessed shifting political borders. The Slavic dialects spoken across them have in the long run produced three written languages—Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian.

With the Christianization of the Slavs in the Balkans from the ninth century onward, starting in Bulgaria, a multitude of originally Jewish texts was translated from Greek into Old Church Slavonic, the first written language of the Slavs, reflecting mainly Bulgarian dialects. Among the first texts to be translated were biblical ones such as the book of Psalms, which in both Jewish and Christian cultures is a major component of the liturgy, and extrabiblical literature, including apocryphal and pseudepigraphic texts, as, for example, “texts and fragments about Adam, Enoch, Noah, Jacob, Abraham, Moses, and other exalted patriarchs and prophets, that were often viewed as the lives of the protological saints and were incorporated in hagiographical collections” (Orlov 2009, 4). These texts were transferred in ever-growing numbers to Rus′ after its Christianization in 988.

Indirect Jewish input in East and South Slavic culture can thus be observed mostly in texts that were translated in Bulgaria from Greek into Slavic between the tenth and twelfth centuries, and subsequently arrived in the ancient principality of Kyivan Rus′, where they were copied, while simultaneously also being linguistically adapted to local particularities of pronunciation, grammar, and lexicon. It is possible (but not very likely), although some Russian scholars have claimed otherwise, that a few of these texts were not imported from Bulgaria but translated directly from Greek in the eleventh-twelfth centuries in the recently Christianized Rusʹ.

The identification of such instances of indirect input and the distinction between East Slavic copies of translations made in Bulgaria and translations made in Rusʹ requires a painstakingly detailed analysis of (a) variation in orthography reflecting phonetic variation in pronunciation, of (b) lexical variants reflecting semantic distinctions in the Slavic dialects, and finally and most importantly, of (c) textual differences reflecting distinct sources of the translations. It is this kind of analysis that I have been pursuing for the last four decades.

Direct Jewish input, on the other hand, involves Slavic texts translated from the Hebrew in Rusʹ, such as portions of the tenth-century historical compilation known as the Josippon, as well as various Midrashic accounts of Moses and other Old Testament figures. In a second phase, direct Jewish input refers to a number of scientific and philosophical works translated from Arabic into Hebrew and then from Hebrew into the variety of East Slavic we will refer to as Ruthenian. This a convenient neutral designation in English for the language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which is referred to by various names, some of them historically and politically charged, such as prosta mova or “simple speech,” Ruska mova or “Rusian speech” (Rusian is a term coined by H. G. Lunt for the adjective derived from Rusʹ), as well as staroukraïnsʹka mova or “Old Ukrainian speech” and starabelaruskaja mova or “Old Belarusian speech” in the writings of Ukrainian and Belarusian scholars, respectively; traditionally Russian and Soviet scholars, on the other hand, call this zapadno-russkij “West Russian.” Among these translations we find al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers, Maimonides’s Logical Terminology, the pseudo-Aristotelian mirror of princes Secret of Secrets, and more.

The distinction between direct and indirect input is not in all cases clear- cut, and we discuss some cases of disagreement regarding both the place of translation and the language of origin of the Slavic text.

The questions to be asked about each text are manifold: Who were the translators? Where was the translation made? When was it made? From what language was the Slavic translated? Into what variety of Slavic was it made? For whom was the translation intended? Who were the actual readers? How were the translations received by the readers and by the religious authorities? And most important: Why and for what purpose were the translations made at all? The answers are not always obvious and much controversy remains.

We are thus facing a complex puzzle of multiple dimensions—philological, religious and cultural. Each of them has to be tackled in order to bring forth and analyze the textual evidence that serves as basis for all the historical conclusions that may be reached. The exposition of the evidence and of its textual and historical analyses is presented chronologically:

The first lecture (chapter 1) outlines what little we know, both from Jewish and Christian sources, about the history of the Jewish presence in Eastern Europe, and in particular in Kyivan Rusʹ, in the period from the tenth to the thirteenth century. It sets forth the meager evidence regarding the level of education of these early Jews, their linguistic situation, and the written traces they have left us—basically, in the form of translations. We focus on two such traces, one a translation of the biblical book of Esther that turns out to have been made from Judaeo-Greek, and the other an excerpt from the chronicle Josippon, made directly from Hebrew.

The second lecture (chapter 2) discusses the translations of Midrashic excerpts found in Russian compilations, translations made from Hebrew between the thirteenth and early fifteenth centuries by (converted?) Jews of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the heir of Rusʹ after the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century and following the destruction of Kyiv in 1241.

The third lecture (chapter 3), which is also the longest, consists of two sections. The first section deals with the textual findings and analyses of the translations of scientific and philosophical texts written originally in Arabic, such as al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers, Maimonides’ Logical Terminology, and pseudo-Aristotle’s Secret of Secrets. These translations were made in the second half of the fifteenth century directly from Hebrew into Ruthenian, the written language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, thus necessarily involving the participation of Jews from the Grand Duchy. The manuscripts containing these texts were preserved in various monastic and princely libraries in Muscovy, where they were copied, eventually Russified, and occasionally corrupted by the copyists who struggled to cope with the bizarre language and the unfamiliar contents. The second section of the lecture deals with the historical background and settings of these translations, demonstrating that they are linked to the movement known as “the Heresy of the Judaizers” that emerged in Novgorod and spread to Moscow in the 1470s.

1

The Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe

The Beginnings

I assume that for most people encountering the words Eastern European Jewry, what immediately comes to mind is Ashkenazic Jewry, whose roots are in the German-speaking areas of Western and Central Europe. Thinking of a name of an early Jewish scholarly figure from Eastern Europe, such as an author of a rabbinical work, the earliest ones coming to mind would probably be, if Poland were to be included (though most Poles of today would no doubt take exception to their being labeled part of Eastern Europe), the sixteenth-century Ashkenazic rabbis from Cracow, R. Moses Isserles (ca. 1530–72), known by the acronym Remu, and R. Solomon Lurie (1510–73), known by the acronym Rashal. This is understandable, since the great figures of the previous generation, like R. Yakov Pollak (1460–1541), considered the first Polish rabbinic authority (though born and raised in Germany), and his pupil R. Sholem-Shakhne of Lublin (1495–1558), the teacher of both Isserles and Lurie, have barely left us any writings of their own.[1]

If we move east of Cracow, to Lviv (aka Lwów, Lemberg), Minsk, or Vilnius in search of names of early scholars, the situation is no better. Moscow I do not mention at all, since Jews were not normally found in the Muscovite state until fairly recently, in the modern period, as indicated by Solzhenitsyn in the ambiguous title of his not entirely unpartisan 2001 book Dvesti let vmeste (Two Hundred Years Together), referring to the relations between Russia and the Jews between 1795 and 1995—that is, after the partitions of Poland in 1772 and 1793, which brought under the rule of the Russian Empire hundreds of thousands of Jews living in the areas that from 1791 onwards made up the greater part of the Tḥum ha-moshav, the “Pale of Settlement.”

Nevertheless, the Jewish presence in East European lands precedes the migrations from Ashkenaz and perhaps even the formation of Ashkenazic Jewry. The Jewish population in Eastern Europe before the arrival of the Ashkenazic Jews is considered by scholars to stem from the south, mainly from Byzantium, Persia, and Babylonia, and, according to some scholars, to some degree also from Khazaria (see M. Weinreich 1956, 623; for a detailed discussion of the southern origins of this early Jewry, see Brook 2003a and the literature cited in note 1). However, details about this Jewry and a fortiori studies of its cultural and intellectual activity are scarce.[2]

Here, in brief, is the little we know about the early history of the Jews in Eastern Europe and their intellectual activity before the Ashkenazic Jews, arriving in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in ever growing waves in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with their superior erudition and dominant tradition, took over and practically obliterated whatever local Jewish tradition may have existed in these territories.[3]

The ancient city of Kyiv, the first capital of Rusʹ, had a Jewish community by the early tenth century—that is, well before the Christianization of Rusʹ by the Kyivan prince Vladimir in 988. This is evidenced by a Hebrew letter from the Cairo Genizah (a synagogue storeroom) discovered by Norman Golb in the Taylor-Schechter Collection of the Cambridge University Library in 1962 and published by Golb and Omeljan Pritsak in 1982. The letter (see excerpt below) relates the misadventures of a certain Yakov bar Ḥanukkah, hardly an Ashkenazic name, imprisoned as the guarantor for his brother’s debts (see appendix 1). The brother had borrowed money from gentiles, but was killed by robbers and his money was taken. Then the creditors had Yakov arrested as guarantor and he remained chained and shackled for a whole year, after which the community decided to bail him out, having already paid sixty silver ingots; however, there remained forty ingots due. The letter of pleading for help on his behalf is addressed to all Jewish communities that the bearer of the letter may encounter, and it is signed by several leaders of the Jewish community, who refer to themselves as “the community of Kyiv” (qahal shel qijov).

The letter is dated paleographically to the middle of the tenth century—that is, to the time when Kyiv was still a pagan town. The names of the signatories, such as Ḥanukkah bar Moshe, Kupin bar Yosef (or perhaps Kopin, Kufin, Kofin—the Hebrew script does not permit further precision), and Sinai Bar Shmuel, do not sound Ashkenazic either.

Slavic sources, too, confirm the early presence of Jews in Kyiv and their interaction with the local residents.[4] The Primary Chronicle, also called The Account of Bygone Years (Povestʹ Vremennykh Let)—a compilation made in Kyiv, whose initial stage is considered to date to the end of the eleventh century or the beginning of the twelfth—has an account (possibly apocryphal) under the year 6494 from creation ( = 986 CE) about Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, while still a pagan, being approached by representatives of the monotheistic religions in order to choose the “true religion”, setting off a contest to which representatives of several religions were invited, a contest that was won by the Greeks from Byzantium with their variety of Christianity.

Among the religions invited to present their case were representatives of Islam, who naturally lost the contest because abstention from drinking wine was unthinkable for the Rusʹ. At the contest there appeared also “Khazarian Jews,” though they are the only ones of whom it is not said that they were invited. Their case was rejected on the ground that if they were indeed the people chosen by God, as they claimed, then why were they in exile and not in their promised land (see appendix 2)?

We are not sure what the term “Khazarian Jews” signifies here.[5] It may refer to Jews arriving from the Khazaria for the contest, or to Jews originating from Khazaria but residing in Kyiv, which, until the middle of the tenth century, had been a western outpost of the Khazarian Empire, with a resident governor. According to Omeljan Pritsak, it is this governor who also signed and approved the Genizah letter with the word at the bottom left of the letter (see fig. 1), which he proposes to read huqurum (“I have read”) in some variety of Khazar Turkic (see, however, the objections raised by Zuckerman 2011, 11ff. and further literature quoted there). In any case, the statement by these Jews about Jerusalem being ruled by Christians casts further doubt on the authenticity of the whole account of the 986 debate about the “true religion,” or at least on the date of its insertion into the Primary Chronicle, since Jerusalem was conquered by the crusaders only in 1099 (as noted, e.g., by Weinryb 1962 and Birnbaum 1973).

In another East Slavic source, the Life of Saint Theodosius of the Caves Monastery in Kyiv (d. 1074) we read about the strange custom of the saint to go out at night from the monastery and debate with the Jews of Kyiv. We must be cautious, however, about the historicity of events depicted in the hagiographic genre.

mnogash′dy v noshchi vstaja i otaj v′sekh iskhozhaashe k zhidom i tekh ezhe o khriste prepiraja korja zhe i dosazhaja tem i jako otmenniky i bezakonniky tekh naricaja. zh′daashe bo ezhe o khristove ispovedanii ubien byti.

Many times he rose at night, and unknown to all he went to the Jews and debated with them about Christ, he refuted them and reproached them calling them Apostates and Lawless, for he expected to be killed preaching for Christ. (See Abramovich and Tschižewskij 1964, 65.)

Kyiv was devastated by the Tatars in the 1240s and we do not hear about its Jews for two centuries—until the middle of the fifteenth century. By then, however, Kyiv was no longer the capital of Rusʹ, but a small principality soon to be integrated into the rising Grand Duchy of Lithuania (see map below).

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we have some evidence of a Jewish presence in the territories of Halych-Volhynia, to the west of Kyiv, which were less affected by the Tatar invasion. Thus, we read in the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle in the year 1288, that, on the passing away of the local prince Volodimer Vasilkovich, everyone mourned his death, including the Jews (see Pritsak 1988, 13ff.; Kulik 2004–5, 15):

i zhidove plakakhusja aki vo vzjat′e Ierusalimu egda vedjakhut′ ja vo polon vavilon′skii.

and the Jews wept as during the capture of Jerusalem, when they were led into captivity in Babylon.

FIGURE 1. The Kyivan letter, Cambridge MS T-S 12.122. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Cambridge Library.

FIGURE 2. Expansion of the Grand-Duchy of Lithuania thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. Map by M.K. 2006 provided by Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5.

Over the course of these centuries, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland annexed these lands, which subsequently (1562–1795) came to form an integral part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

It is generally agreed that the Jews of Kyivan Rusʹ, just like their coreligionists everywhere in the diaspora, adopted the local language and spoke a Jewish variety of it; in our case, that would be a Jewish variety of East Slavic, referred to in Jewish historiography as (Eastern) Knaanic (on this term, see appendix 3).

We do actually have an early testimony of Knaanic (sc., Slavic) being spoken by Jews in a letter of reference from the community of Salonica to the neighboring Jewish communities, dated to the eleventh century. In the letter we are told about a rather unusual phenomenon in Jewish history—namely, a monolingual Jew. He is described as a Jew “from the community of Rusʹ” (miqahal rusiya) who is on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and requires assistance and guidance, since, the letter says, “he knows neither the Holy Tongue [Hebrew] nor Greek or Arabic, but only the language of Canaan spoken by the people of his native land” (see appendix 4).

Another piece of evidence that Jews in Rusʹ knew the local vernacular, including its lowest obscenities, comes from the thirteenth-century scholar from England R. Moses ben Isaac ben Hanessiah, who, in his grammatical study titled The Book of Onyx (Sēfer ha-shoham), under the root y.b.m. quotes a piece of information that he had received orally (amar li—“he told me”) from his disciple R. Isaac from Chernigov (near Kyiv)—namely, that the verb yabem means “to copulate” in the language of “Tiras,” that is, in the language of Rusʹ (see appendix 5).

The assumption that the Jews of medieval Rusʹ spoke a variety of local Slavic does not, however, entail that they wrote Slavic, and if they did, which I find unlikely, we have no testimony to corroborate such an assumption. Judging by their poor level of learning and erudition, they did not. This poor level is noted in the early thirteenth-century work by the author of Or Zaruaʿ, R. Isaac of Vienna, citing a responsum by R. Eliezer of Bohemia to R. Yehuda he-Hasid of Regensburg on the hiring and salary of hazzanim (cantors), where R. Eliezer affirms that “in most locations in Poland, Rusʹ, and Hungary where there are no Torah scholars, due to their poverty, they hire an educated man wherever they can find one, and he serves them as cantor and rabbi and teacher for their sons” (see appendix 6).

And indeed, despite their antique origins, the Jewish communities in these lands did not produce any prominent scholars.

We do read, here and there during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries (see Pereswetoff-Morath 2002, 2:18ff.), of Jewish scholars going to Rusʹ, and of Jews coming from Rusʹ to study at the renowned rabbinical academies in Germany, France, and even Spain.

We thus read in the Sēfer hayashar, edited in the second half of the twelfth century by the disciples of Rabbenu Tam (R. Jacob ben Meir) from Ramerupt, Champagne, about a scholar from Kyiv named R. Moses (R. Moshe ben Yosef, also called “Moses the First”), who is mentioned as part of the line of transmission of a ruling allowing the use of wine that had been touched by gentiles if it is used for a purpose other than drinking, such as being mixed into ink in order to improve its quality. R. Moses of Kyiv is said to have received this ruling orally from Rabbenu Tam (mi-pi rabbi moshe mi-kijov mi-pi rabbenu tam—“from the mouth of R. Moses of Kyiv from the mouth of Rabbenu Tam”).

R. Moses of Kyiv is also mentioned in the work on the genealogy of halakhic scholars Jiḥussej tannaʾim ve-ʾamoraʾim (first printed by R. N. Rabinowitz in Lyck in 1874) authored in the second half of the twelfth century by R. Yehuda ben Kalonymos ben Meir of Speyer, as addressing a legal question on levirate marriage to the rabbinic authority in Baghdad, the Gaon Samuel ben ʿAli, about what should come first, yibbum or ḥalitzah.[6] He is also mentioned in the responsa of the thirteenth-century R. Meir ben Barukh of Rothenburg (Maharam), as receiving a reply from the same Gaon Samuel on divorcing a rebellious wife (moredet), a ruling that enabled any woman who so desired to end her marriage by declaring: “I can’t stand the sight of him” (meʾis ʿalaj—lit., “he is repulsive to me”), despite a contradictory ruling in the Talmud (see Kulik 2004–5, 15; 2012, 375).

Given that R. Moses, originally from Kyiv, studied in Ramerupt under Rabbenu Tam, it may well be that the correspondence mentioned took place between Baghdad and Ramerupt, not Baghdad and Kyiv.[7] In any case, regardless of these mentions, we do not have any written work by R. Moses from Kyiv or by any other contemporary scholar from Eastern Europe; nor can we see in these mentions evidence of “the existence of Jewish intellectual activity in Kiev for a certain period” (Pritsak 1988, 9).

There remain nevertheless some traces of intellectual activity of the early pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. These traces appear in the form of translations, mainly but not exclusively from Hebrew into East Slavic. Such translations have survived in Russian and Ruthenian texts written in Cyrillic script, and are preserved in Christian codices.

There can hardly be any doubt that these translations were made with the participation of Jews with a knowledge of Hebrew, whether they were practicing Jews or converts to Christianity. This assumption is made necessary by the fact that in Eastern Europe, unlike in the West, there were no Christian Hebraists. This absence, in turn, is owing to the fact that in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance there were no universities east of Cracow,[8] indeed there were no institutions of higher learning until well into the early modern period.

The Jewish translations consist of two chronological groups, which also differ in their thematic makeup. The earlier group precedes the mid-fifteenth century, though by how much remains controversial, whereas the latter group dates to the second half of the fifteenth century.

Before surveying the early group in its totality (see chapter 2), I would like to discuss two of its items—namely, the Book of Esther and the account of the visit of Alexander the Great to Jerusalem from the Josippon—since they constitute the cornerstone for the theory about a whole group of translators from various languages, among them Hebrew, in Kyivan Rusʹ before the Tatar invasions.

The theory was developed by Nikita Meshcherskij (1905–87),[9] a Soviet scholar of princely origin, persecuted during the Stalinist period, who must be credited with the revival, however slow and defective, of biblical and Hebrew scholarship in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. Meshcherskij postulated a whole school of translators in ancient Kyiv in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a school that allegedly produced translations from Greek, Hebrew, and even Syriac. Francis Thomson, in a series of papers in the 1980s, which were republished in his 1999 book The Reception of Byzantine Culture in Mediaeval Russia, cast serious doubt on the existence of translations in Kyivan Rusʹ from any language, asserting that most of the texts allegedly translated in Rusʹ were in fact translations made in Bulgaria and then copied in Rusʹ.

Let us turn to the texts in question. The translation of Esther, despite its belonging to the early group, differs from the other items in an important respect: Esther is indeed a Jewish translation into Old Rusian,[10] but unlike the other items in the early group of translations, it is not, pace Meshcherskij and his followers, a translation made directly from Hebrew, but, as demonstrated by Lunt and Taube (1994 and 1998), it was made from another Jewish language—namely, Judaeo-Greek.

The Slavic book of Esther is attested in about thirty copies, all of them East Slavic, the two earliest of which are dated to around 1400 CE. It is preserved in codices consisting of historiographical compilations that include also other historical books of the Bible.

We are accustomed to think of the Old Testament books as a part of a bulky volume called the Bible, but such a volume was not to be found at that time in any Russian Orthodox church, nor in any monastic library across the Slavic world. What we do encounter in the Medieval Orthodox Slavic world are partial collections of biblical books, such as the Psalter, which is one of the sources of the liturgy, the books of the prophets, and collections of the historical books. In the Greek tradition, the collection of Old Testament historical books comprises eight books called the Octateuch, which include the Pentateuch plus Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. In the East Slavic tradition (see Mathiesen 1983), not attested before 1350, the collection of historical books is enlarged to include ten items—namely, the eight books of the Octateuch followed by I–II Samuel and I–II Kings (in the Septuagint tradition “The Four Kingdoms”—Tetrabasileion)—that count as a single item, No. 9, after which comes Esther as No. 10.

Thus, when Archbishop Gennadij of Novgorod undertook in the 1480s to assemble a full collection of biblical books, probably for the purpose of polemics with the Novgorod Judaizers (see below, chapter 3), he was forced, with some of the books simply not available to him in either Slavic or Greek, to make use of Latin sources, which were considered nothing less than heretical by the Russian Church.

All these books were translated into Slavic from the Greek in Bulgaria in the tenth and eleventh centuries and later brought to Rusʹ. But the book of Esther is different. Despite being a canonical book, it is not attested anywhere in the Slavic world before the appearance around 1400 CE of the earliest witnesses of the Old Rusian translation. In addition, not a single verse from it figures in Christian liturgy, whether in the Greek or the Roman rite.

Given that the written culture of the Slavs during the first centuries after Christianization (both the East Slavs of Rusʹ and the South Slavs of the Balkans), is almost entirely based on Christian Greek culture, we must assume, whenever facing a translated Slavic text, that we are dealing by default with a translation from Greek, unless we find compelling evidence for a different source. Let us now return to the translation of Esther.

The nineteenth-century Russian scholars who were the first to examine the Esther translation stated without hesitation, however surprising that may sound, that it was a translation from Hebrew. Thus, Archimandrite Leonid (Kavelin), describing in 1883 the earliest manuscript containing Esther, which, at the time, was preserved at the Trinity Lavra of Saint Sergius, cites from the manuscript a marginal note of unspecified date, but probably from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century:

na verkhu nadpisʹ: ni Vulgata, ni 70, a perevod s evrejskago pretochnyj. strannoe dēlo!

At the top—an inscription: Neither Vulgate, nor Septuagint, but a very precise translation from the Hebrew. Strange affair!

The assurance with which the first scholars deemed Esther a translation from Hebrew is based on textual grounds. It stems from the fact that the Masoretic Text (i.e., the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the twenty-four books of the Jewish Bible) in this case is rather different from the Greek Septuagint, which contains several additions, such as a letter from King Artaxerxes, the dream of Mardochai, Esther’s prayer, and more. With all these additions absent from the Slavic Esther, the conclusion was clear: the text was a translation from Hebrew!

In 1897, Aleksej Sobolevskij gave a talk (published in his 1903 book on pages 433–36) in which he announced that in view of some Grecisms in the Slavic text, he considered it a translation from Greek, but his claim remained a lonely voice until the 1980s, when my teacher Moshe Altbauer and I, together with Horace G. Lunt, demonstrated that in fact it was a translation from Greek, as suggested by Sobolevskij. This view was accepted by Francis Thomson in his 1993 paper, “Made in Russia: A Survey of the Translations Allegedly Made in Kievan Russia” (reprinted in his 1999 book as chapter 5). Nevertheless, the controversy regarding the language of origin persists to this day (see Altbauer and Taube 1984; Lunt and Taube 1994, 1998; Alekseev 1987, 1988, 1993, 1996, 1999b, 2001, 2003, 2014; Lysén 2001).

As for the two interdependent thorny questions of the time and place of translation, several opinions have been put forth. In view of the fact that all extant copies are East Slavic and that the language is quite archaic (or archaizing), the prevailing view was (and remains) that the translation was made in Rusʹ, either before the twelfth century (thus Meshcherskij 1956a; 1964, 183; 1978, 47; Alekseev 1987, 11–12), or sometime between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries (thus Sobolevskij 1903, 436). A less frequent view is the suggestion that it was made in the fourteenth century (thus Evseev 1902, 131–32).[11] More recently, William Veder (2013) introduced a new, even more complicating factor into this complex puzzle, by positing a Slavic ancestral copy in Glagolitic script (of undetermined age) that was transliterated into Cyrillic in fourteenth-century Ruthenia (sc., the Grand Duchy of Lithuania).[12]

My own views on these questions fluctuated and evolved over time. In our first statement on the subject (Altbauer and Taube 1984, 319; see the similar point in Taube 1985, 209) we wrote: “The final redaction is undoubtedly Rusian, but we believe that certain of the words point to an older, South Slavic layer that may well represent the original translation.”

In a later paper, aimed for biblical scholars in general, and coauthored with Horace G. Lunt, we presented (Lunt and Taube 1994, 362) a much more extensive series of scenarios:

The linguistic and philological evidence leads us to conclude that the Slavonic Esther must have existed before 1300. Perhaps our sadly botched Vorlage of ca. 1350 is a tattered and patched-up remnant of the Bible that Methodius completed in haste in 885. (If so, one must wonder why he did not use the standard Septuagint for his translation.) Perhaps it is the work of the energetic, if not always competent, translators in tenth-century Bulgaria. The possibility that it could have been produced in Rusʹ after ca. 1037, when Slavonic seems to have become the official church language among the East Slavs, is remote. We cannot exclude thirteenth-century Bulgaria or Serbia, when there was a revived interest in history and new translations of Byzantine historians were undertaken.

In our edition of Esther (Lunt and Taube 1998, 7), the formulation of time and place is even vaguer (owing to a disagreement between the two coauthors):

All this has led us to posit a 167-verse Greek version of Esther, made by a translator conversant with traditional Jewish views of the meaning of certain passages. At some time between 863 and 1375, at some place in the Christian Orthodox Slavic world, this Greek Esther was translated into the written Slavic appropriate to the time and place. Evidence that allows more precise delineation of the circumstances and persons involved is not available.

This formulation reflects my view as of today.

A balanced account of the controversy can be found in the 2017 paper by Basil Lourié, who sides with the Greek theory, but adds a twist of his own—a further intermediate stage after the translation from Hebrew into Jewish Greek made, in his view, in the Hellenistic period (e.g., fourth-century Alexandria), namely, a Christian translation from this Greek version into Syriac, and then a translation from Syriac into Slavic made quite early, perhaps in the eleventh century, in Bulgaria. This hypothesis, suggesting a further layer, is not without merits, but it has its own difficulties (which will not be discussed here) and so cannot be considered the final word on the matter. Be this as it may, the important point, convincingly established, is that the immediate source for the translation into Slavic must have been a Greek intermediary version corresponding to the Masoretic Text and differing from the Septuagint with all its additions, hence necessarily a Jewish Greek text.

The Greek text posited as a source of the Slavic translation (whether direct or indirect) has, alas, not been preserved, which is a problem, but we do have several indications of its existence in the past:

First, already in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Megillah 17–18, we find a discussion on whether reciting the story of Esther in Greek fulfills the obligation of reading the scroll of Esther (Qeriʾat ha-megillah).

Second, the chief rabbi of Constantinople in the sixteenth century, R. Eliyahu Mizraḥi (a.k.a. Reem, 1437–1526), in his collection of responsa titled Mayim ʿAmuqim (Deep waters) item 79 (first printing Venice 1674, f. 137), addresses a question from a member of his community about the custom of the Romaniote Jews to recite in Greek the story of Mardochai and Esther in the synagogue on the second day of Purim, a custom condemned by the Sephardi rabbis newly arrived from Spain.

And third, the Polyglot Bible printed in 1547 in Constantinople (see Krivoruchko 2007) promises on its title page the Five Books of Moses plus the Five Scrolls (sc., Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther) in Hebrew and in Judaeo-Greek, although it contains only the Five Books of Moses, whereas the scrolls are not to be found in any of the few extant copies.

In the absence of an extant Judaeo-Greek text, the arguments supporting the assumption of an underlying Greek version different from the Septuagint are necessarily of a textual and linguistic nature. The textual differences between the book of Esther in Hebrew and the much longer version of the Septuagint, including several additions,[13] have been well known since Saint Jerome, and can be easily observed by comparing the beginning of the text (see appendix 7).

Beyond the extra text, the Septuagint also demonstrates the phonetic differences between Hebrew and Greek, differences that are most easily discernible in the renderings of the Persian names of persons and of places. Thus, the capital Susa in the Septuagint corresponds to Hebrew Shushan; King Artaxerxes to Aḥashverosh, and so on.

If we now compare (see appendix 8) the Slavic translation to the Hebrew Masoretic Text, we observe that the Slavic corresponds to the Hebrew, but with phonetic differences reflected in the spelling of the names, pointing to a Greek intermediary.[14]

Thus, the Slavic forms Achasveros, Susan, Chous are transliterations of the Masoretic names with some phonetic differences to be explained by the interference of Greek, since the Hebrew hushing sound sh, not available in Greek, is consistently rendered by the hissing sound s and therefore it also appears as s in Slavic.

Nevertheless, some of the proponents of Esther being a direct translation from Hebrew (e.g., Lysén 2001, 289) try to explain these instances by pointing out the nondistinguishing of s from sh in some Lithuanian dialects of Yiddish, or what is known as Sábesdiker losn (“Sabbath language”). This explanation seems implausible in view of this phonetic phenomenon in Yiddish being late, partial, and geographically limited (see U. Weinreich 1952).[15]

Beyond the phonetics of the proper names, we observe in the Slavic version several syntactic or phraseological Hellenisms, such as verse 5.12, in which a negation particle added to a conditional conjunction serves to render “except” (like one of the meanings of the form sinon in French), whereas in Hebrew this meaning is rendered by the combination ki ʾim (see appendix 9).

The Slavic rendering of Hebrew ki ʾim (lit., “for”/“that if”) by ashche ne (“if not”) can only be explained by a Greek intermediary text that had ei mē (lit., “if not”), as indeed does the Greek version that in the past was called the Lucianic recension and that is now simply referred to as the Greek Alpha-text of Esther (see Fox 1990).[16]

The Septuagint here has a different locution, equally current in Greek: all’ ē (lit., “other than”). Worthy of notice is also the literal correspondence of the Slavic verb privede (“brought”) to Hebrew hēviʾah, as against the Septuagint’s keklēken (“has called”).

A second example of a phraseological Hellenism is in 2:13 (see appendix 10). In this verse we focus on the Slavic generalizing particle ashche (lit., “if”) added here to the relative pronoun jezhe (“which”), turning “everything that” into “everything whatsoever.” This is a calque reflecting Greek usage, where the particle eʾan (“if haply”) has exactly the same function, as evidenced by the Septuagint rendering here, although the rest of the verse is quite different from both the Hebrew and the Slavic.

We also find among the traces of Greek interference some semantic Grecisms, such as the rendering in verse 1.20 of Hebrew jeqar (“honor”) by sramotu (“shame”) (see appendix 11).

This unexpected rendering in Slavic can only be explained (as proposed by Alexander Kulik in 1995) by assuming an intermediate Greek text that, unlike the Septuagint’s rendering of jeqar by timē (“esteem,” “honor”), had instead entropē, which may mean not only “respect,” ” reverence,” but also “shame,” “reproach.”

It should therefore be concluded that the source of the Slavic translation was a Greek version corresponding to the Hebrew Masoretic Text, but different from the Septuagint, hence in all likelihood a Judaeo-Greek text. More details about the Grecisms in Esther are to be found in our edition (Lunt and Taube 1998, 76–79). This does not mean that the controversy regarding the Slavic Esther has ended, either with regard to its source language, or with regard to the time and place of its translation. For example, Irina Lysén’s 2001 book maintains, following Nikita Meshcherskij and Anatolij Alekseev, that the Slavic Esther is a direct translation from Hebrew.

We now turn to the second text serving as cornerstone for Meshcherskij’s theory—the episode of Alexander the Great visiting Jerusalem and meeting the high priest.[17]

The entire episode is adapted from the Josippon,[18] a tenth-century chronicle written in Hebrew in southern Italy and based (indirectly) on Flavius Josephus’s Jewish War.

The Old Rusian version of the episode recounting Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem appears in an entry for the year 1110 in one of the later redactions of the Account of Bygone Years (Povest′ Vremennyx Let), the redaction called the Hypatian Chronicle (Ipatʹevskaja Letopisʹ), whose earliest witness is a manuscript from 1425, but whose time of compilation is claimed to be as early as 1116, or even earlier.

Meshcherskij (1956) published a paper called “An Excerpt from Josippon in the Account of Bygone Years,” comparing the account of Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem in the Hypatian Chronicle with the account in Josippon, and went on to make several strong claims. He contended that the appearance of the excerpt in the Chronicle showed that the whole of Josippon “was available in a direct translation from Hebrew into the language of Rusʹ (to which he referred as ‘Russian’) already at the beginning of the twelfth century, i.e., was translated no later than by the end of the eleventh century” (65–66).

Without any basis, Meshcherskij also affirmed that “the translation could have been made in Kyiv itself, but could perhaps have arrived in Rusʹ through the Khazars, among whom the Hebrew text of the Josippon was wide-spread in the eleventh century” (66). He went on to conclude that this indicated the presence of a whole school of translators from Hebrew in Rusʹ, who translated, among other works, also the book of Esther (66–67).

In his 1958 edition of the Slavic translation of Josephus’s Jewish War, a translation made from Greek, possibly in Rusʹ, Meshcherskij states, when summarizing his analysis of that same excerpt from the Hypatian Chronicle and the Josippon, that “the presence of the excerpt from Josippon analyzed by us in the Account of Bygone Years under the year 1110 makes it possible to determine a terminus ante quem for all the specified Old-Rusian translations from Hebrew. Undoubtedly, they must go back to the era up to the twelfth century” (1958, 153).

Admittedly, the account from the Josippon is an instance of a translation made directly from Hebrew, probably in Rusʹ. It is doubtful, however, whether this was done as early as Meshcherskij and others have claimed.

The comparison of the two versions of the account about Alexander (see appendix 12) shows that in spite of the Rusian version being shorter, it clearly derives directly from the Hebrew Josippon,[19] following it closely in wording and phraseology. The comparison leaves no doubt about the link between the two, notwithstanding the omissions and the instances of interpretation in Old Rusian, such as the easily explainable rendering of “the man,” referring to the figure that appeared to Alexander in his dream to warn him, as “the angel.”

On the other hand, the time of the insertion of the Alexander episode into the Hypatian Chronicle is not as clear; indeed, the account seems to be a subsequent interpolation within an interpolation. It appears toward the end of a discourse on angels that is itself an insertion or an interpolation commenting on the appearance of a pillar of fire over the Caves Monastery in Kyiv on February 12, 1110. The Chronicle explains that this appearance was an angel of God, and that angels may appear as a cloud or fire, and it provides examples from Exodus. The Chronicle then elaborates on this statement, with appropriate biblical quotations, based on materials from the ninth-century Byzantine chronicle of the monk George Hamartolos (“the sinner”). It posits, with Epiphanius of Salamis as the given source (though the idea is known also in Hebrew sources), that there are angels appointed for every creature and for every nation, even for the pagans. As an example, we are offered the account from the Josippon, which does not figure in George Hamartolos’s chronicle.

As an interpolation within an interpolation, the account of Alexander is certainly later than the account of the appearance of a pillar of fire over the Caves Monastery found in the Laurentian redaction of the Primary Chronicle and closer to the time of its integration with the interpolation on angels,[20] into the redaction represented in the 1425 Hypatian Codex,[21] which was possibly compiled as late as the fourteenth century. This point, however, is not settled and remains a matter of controversy.

Meshcherskij repeatedly claimed (1956, 67; 1958, 153; 1964, 201) to be the one who discovered the Hebrew source of the excerpt on Alexander in Jerusalem. The discovery, however, belongs to a Kyivan Jewish lawyer, censor, and rabbi by the name of Herman Markovich Baratz (b. 1835, Dubno; d. 1922, Paris).[22] Starting in the 1850s, Baratz published many papers on Jewish sources and parallels of Old Rusian texts, among them the episode on Alexander in Jerusalem. The paper appears in his collected works on the Jewish elements in Old Russian texts, published posthumously in two volumes in Paris and Berlin, (vol. 1 1927; vol. 2 1924), following his emigration from Russia after the revolution. The identification and comparison of the two excerpts appears in a chapter titled “On the Compilers of the Account of Bygone Years and Its Sources” (Baratz 1924, 248). Meshcherskij, it turns out, appropriated Baratz’s discovery at a time when publications from the West, especially by scholars who emigrated after the Russian Revolution, were not accessible to readers in Soviet libraries, but he later accidentally divulged in a footnote his acquaintance with Baratz’s work (1964, 121).

To sum up the first chapter, we have seen in this brief survey that the meager information on the first Jews of Eastern Europe in the tenth through twelfth centuries suggests the presence of an early Jewish population in Kyiv and the surrounding towns. Those Jews’ origins seem to be from the southeast—that is, the Greek-speaking Romaniote communities in Byzantium, around the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean—to which Kyiv was linked through the ancient fluvial trade route of the Dniepr. These Jews, however, were also open to the newly forming communities of Ashkenaz, both with young men going to study there and with merchants coming from various parts of Ashkenaz to trade in Rusʹ, which was already famous as a source of furs and slaves.

This early Jewish population did not produce any notable scholarly works, but it did leave us some translations, of which we have discussed two—one from Judaeo-Greek and one from Hebrew. The translations are first attested in manuscript copies from around 1400 CE, with the dating of the translation itself remaining a matter of debate, but they are certainly not as early as was claimed by Meshcherskij and his disciples. In the second chapter we will analyze the remainder, or rather the main bulk, of the translations from Hebrew made in Rusʹ before the fifteenth century, and we will discuss the possible scenarios for their emergence.

2

Translations from Hebrew in Rusʹ in the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Centuries

Made by Converts?

After surveying the evidence for the early settlement of Jews in Rusʹ and pointing out their southern provenance, we now address the main bulk of texts included in the first chronological group of translations from Hebrew attested in Muscovite compilations from around 1400 CE onward. In the discussion that follows we will try to set forth the criteria by which these texts are characterized as direct translations, to determine their intended readership, and finally to advance a hypothesis about the identity of the translators and their motivation.

In order for us to realize how unlikely the very emergence of such translations in medieval Rusʹ appears to be, we begin with some historical background.

After the destruction of Kyiv by the Tatars in 1240, a new political power rose in northeastern Rusʹ, the lands known as “Beyond the Woods.” To use Dan Shapira’s (2018, 296) scathing yet cogent description of the rise of Muscovy:

Eastern Slavic princes, monks, and settlers from the southwest and northwest had only recently colonized the vast territories of the Finno-Ugric tribes along the upper courses of the Volga and Oka rivers and established independent principalities. Then they were conquered by the Mongols and incorporated into their empire (whose northwestern segment was called the “Ulus of Juči,” or, anachronistically, the Golden Horde). One of these principalities, vassals of the Mongols, gradually rose to prominence through total collaboration with the Khans. Eventually, using a mix of relentless cruelty and Realpolitik, this principality absorbed the neighboring principalities of “Beyond the Woods” and even supplanted the Golden Horde itself, thereby claiming the dual heritage of Byzantium and the Chinggizid Khans. This huge principality came to be known as Muscovy. Deeply immersed in the political traditions of the Great Eurasian Steppe, fiercely pro-Byzantine and anti-Latin ideologically, the Muscovite juggernaut pushed east and west, annihilating peoples (such as the natives of Siberia) and states in its way.

With the Tatar invasion, Kyiv, as well as the neighboring towns like Chernigov and Vladimir-Volynsk, places in which a Jewish presence had been attested before the invasion, had lost their importance for centuries to come. The ancient center of the Rus′ polity, Kyiv, found itself separated from the northern and northeastern provinces that, from the fourteenth century onward, constituted the heart of Muscovite Russia. This rift became definitive when the principalities of Western Rusʹ that escaped the Tatar yoke came under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a young state in full expansion, still pagan, and more and more Slavicized.[1]

Starting with the second half of the fourteenth century, all East Slavic territories with an ancient Jewish population became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Duchy now included in its sphere of control the principalities of Polotsk, Turov-Pinsk, Brest, Kyiv, Chernigov, and Volhynia. The fourteenth century was also the time when the Ashkenazi Jews began in earnest their immigration to Poland and Lithuania.

By contrast, the Muscovite principality in the fourteenth century, the era of its gradual liberation from the Tatar yoke and its ascension as a political power, did not know at all real, flesh-and-blood Jews. Vassilij I (1371–1425), the grand prince of Moscow who initiated the process of unifying Russia, did not admit Jewish immigrants, not even the visit of Jewish merchants; nor did his successors. To use the words of Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath (2002, 1:236), “There never were any Jewish communities on Muscovite territory, and Jewish visitors are almost unheard of before c. 1450.” Yet unexpectedly, from the end of the fourteenth century onward, we begin to notice Russian compilations containing texts translated from Hebrew.

The appearance of translations from Hebrew is even more remarkable in view of the fact that Muscovy was not known as a place of great erudition and learning. Muscovite Russia had no significant printing before the middle of the seventeenth century, and no universities until the middle of the eighteenth century, when, in 1755, Mikhail Lomonosov founded Moscow University. Unlike in the West, the Russian clergy was, in most cases, barely literate. Nothing of the classical learning of the ancient Greeks and Romans penetrated the walls of pious obscurantism in Russian church institutions, including the monasteries (see Thomson 1999, esp. the introduction and chapter 7). Even the most curious monks in medieval and Renaissance Muscovite Russia had no access to the intellectual treasures of classical antiquity, except through some writings of John of Damascus, which, however, were not wildly popular or massively copied.

There were in Rusʹ no Christian Hebraists like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Sebastian Münster, or Johann Reuchlin. We must therefore imagine a different scenario to explain the emergence of the translations from Hebrew.

The early group of translations from Hebrew—attested in manuscripts from ca. 1400 onward, but translated earlier, possibly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries[2]—consists of historical accounts found in compilations such as the retelling of the Old Testament called Tolkovaja Paleja (Commented Palaea) (see Tvorogov 1987),[3] or incorporated into universal chronicles translated from Greek, called “Chronographs.” The translations include:

(a) The Life and ascension of Moses, based on a late Midrashic account named in Hebrew Divrej ha-jamim le-moshe rabbēnu (The Chronicles of Moses Our Teacher) (see Shinan 1977; Taube 1993). It contains many episodes not provided in the Bible, such as:

(1) A dream Pharaoh had about an old man standing in front of him with a pair of scales in his hand, in one pan all the inhabitants of Egypt and in the other pan only one child, and that child balanced the entire population of Egypt, which was interpreted to him by one of his counselors as an ominous threat to the kingdom from a newborn child from among the Israelites, explaining his order (Exodus 1: 15–22) that all the newborn sons be put to death.

(2) An episode explaining how Moses became “heavy of lips” and “heavy of tongue,” following an incident where the three-year-old Moses snatched the crown off Pharaoh’s head and put it on his own head. Balaam the diviner, one of his counselors, then reminded the king of his dream and suggested the child be beheaded. God intervened by sending the angel Gabriel in the guise of one of the royal officials, who suggested a test in order to determine whether this was a premeditated act or not. Let the king order to be brought before him a shiny precious jewel and a fiery coal. If he stretches out his hand to grab the precious jewel, then it is proved that he possesses sense and deserves death. When they brought before him the precious stone and the burning coal, the boy reached out his hand in order to seize the jewel, but an angel pushed his hand and he picked up the coal and brought it toward his face, touching with it his lips and tongue, and was rendered “heavy of lips” and “heavy of tongue” (Exodus 4:10).

(3) Details of Moses’s adventures during his exile years after he killed an Egyptian and Pharaoh ordered that he be put to death (Exodus 2:11ff.), including his miraculous flight to Midian with the help of Michael the Archangel, and his forty-year stint as king of Cush (Ethiopia, in Slavic “Saracens”).

The translation of the Chronicles of Moses our Teacher was integrated into the Commented Palaea, and supplemented by excerpts from other Midrashic sources including additional details (see Taube 1993)—for example, on the miraculous finding of Joseph’s coffin in the Nile on the eve of the Exodus thanks to Jacob’s granddaughter Serah, as well as (see below) on the making of the Golden Calf with the help of the piece of parchment on which Moses had written the ineffable name in order to bring up Joseph’s coffin from the bottom of the Nile.

(b) Excerpts from the Josippon in the Academy Chronograph. The Josippon is a tenth-century Hebrew historical compilation based on the Latin reworking by pseudo-Hegesippus of Flavius Josephus’s Greek work The Jewish War. The excerpts include stories about the last kings of Judaea and the Babylonian exile, along with details from the Midrash on the miraculous, albeit non-immaculate conception of King Jechoniah’s son Salthiel in prison, on Salthiel’s son Zerubbabel and King Darius, and on the persecution of Jews under Antioch IV Epiphanes, and the Hasmonean revolt (see discussion below). The excerpts were integrated, together with other Midrashic accounts, into the Academy Chronograph, a late fifteenth-century Russian compilation attested in three manuscripts (see Taube 1989; Tvorogov 1989).

It is not clear whether the excerpt in the Hypatian Chronicle from the Josippon on Alexander the Great visiting Jerusalem, discussed in the first chapter, belongs to the same translation as those in the Academy Chronograph. In both cases the excerpts were integrated into later compilations, which makes the task of precisely defining the translation in terms of time and place extremely difficult.

(c) The Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus, a Slavic translation of a Hebrew reworking of the last part of the Josippon, dealing with the destruction of the Second Temple. The reworking was done at some point between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries and subsequently translated into Slavic. The Hebrew version, attested in a single lacunary manuscript dated 1462, is preserved at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Huntington collection MS 345, and carries the title Josippon ben Gorion. The Slavic version, titled Vzjatie Ierusalimu tretee Titovo (The third capture of Jerusalem by Titus), was integrated into the Russian compilation called Letopisetsʹ Ellinskij i Rimskij vtoroj redaktsii (Hellenic and Roman chronicler of the second redaction) (see Taube 1989, 2014; Tvorogov 1999–2001).

The common denominator of the translations in this group is the fact that they all deal with Jewish historical figures and events, both of the Old Testament and of later periods, topics that are of great interest to Jews, but even more so to Christians. Given the absence of Christian Hebraists in Rusʹ (see discussion above), we must assume the participation of a Jewish translator, perhaps a convert to Christianity, with good knowledge of Hebrew and familiarity with Talmudic and Midrashic sources.

The Russian compilations in which the translations from Hebrew are attested are basically made up of Byzantine sources translated from Greek into Slavic, such as the historical books of the Old Testament and the Greek chronicles of the sixth-century John Malalas and the ninth-century George Hamartolos, and are obviously destined for Christian readers. But, as has been shown convincingly by Francis Thomson (1999, chapters 2–3), Russian editors in general did not know Greek, and when they did enlarge their compilation by using other texts of Byzantine origin, it was invariably by quoting translated texts already available in Slavic, not by translating anew from Greek. Hence, if we do not expect a medieval Russian compiler to be able to translate from Greek, we certainly do not expect him to be able to translate from Hebrew. Therefore, when we come across an editor of a Russian compilation who displays excellent knowledge of Hebrew written sources, we should be very attentive. Such is the case with the editor of one of the redactions of the Commented Palaea, a compilation of the fourteenth or perhaps even thirteenth century. Since all the witnesses are East Slavic, one has to assume that it was probably compiled in Rusʹ. Nevertheless, a Bulgarian scholar (see Slavova 2002, 386ff.) proposes that its earliest version was compiled in Bulgaria in the early tenth century and then copied and augmented in Rusʹ.

Thus, in the 1406 redaction of the Commented Palaea we read а retelling of Deuteronomy 9:17, where Moses reminisces about breaking the tablets of the Law after descending from Mount Sinai and seeing that the Israelites had in the meantime made a golden idol: “And I took the two tablets, and cast them out of my hands, and broke them before your eyes. Judging that you are not a people worthy of the deposition of the true Law, like a bride having fornicated in front of her wedding canopy” (Deut. 9:17; see appendix 13).

The second sentence is a comment by the editor on the biblical verse, and its final part—“like a bride having fornicated in front of her wedding canopy”—reflects the words brought in two variants in the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 36b: ʿaluva kalla she-zinta be-qerev ḥuppatah; Shabbath 88b ʿaluva kalla mezanna be-tokh ḥuppatah (Wretched is the bride who fornicated amid/within her wedding canopy). Exegetes like Rashi (on Gittin 36b) and Maharal (on Shabbath 88b) link this expression explicitly with the making of the Golden Calf, while Moses was still on Mount Sinai receiving the tablets of the Law. The editor’s familiarity with the Talmudic and Midrashic expression, “like a bride who fornicated before her wedding canopy” is quite impressive and unexpected.

Not only does the editor of the Commented Palaea show acquaintance with Jewish sources; he occasionally even boasts about it. Thus, in retelling the account of Moses finding Joseph’s bones in the Nile on the eve of the Exodus from Egypt, the editor of the 1406 version of the Commented Palaea seems to know the Midrashic account about the Egyptians having hidden Joseph’s coffin in the Nile so that the Israelites should not be able to take his bones with them when leaving Egypt, as they had been made to swear by Joseph to do before his death. He then adds: “But you, Jew, tell us, how did they take Joseph’s bones, (how did they) find them, being sunk in the sea for four hundred years? If you do not know we will tell you, for everything is to be known . . .” (see appendix 14)

And indeed, the Commented Palaea goes on and relates in detail the events on the eve of the Exodus, based on the Babylonian Talmud (Soṭah 13a) and Midrash Genesis Rabbati (see appendix 15).

The primary references of this account are the biblical verses, Genesis 50:25:

And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from hence.

and Exodus 13:19:

And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straightly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and you shall carry up my bones away hence with you.

The main elements of the story, including the name of Serah, daughter of Asher, as the one who knew the location of Joseph’s relics and the mentioning of the metal coffin immersed in the Nile, are outlined already in the Babylonian Talmud, Soṭah 13a (see appendix 16).

Further details from the Midrash, reflected in the Russian version, resemble very much those found in Genesis Rabbati (a late Midrashic compilation usually attributed to R. Moses ha-Darshan of Narbonne [first half of the eleventh century]). In this Midrash we finally witness all the elements of the account united in a single compilation, sometimes as variants attributed to anonymous ve-jesh omrim (“and there are those who say”) (see appendix 17).

Admittedly there are differences. The Slavic version modifies and at times corrupts some of the details: thus Asher’s daughter and Jacob’s granddaughter Serah, who is listed in rabbinic sources, starting with the post-Talmudic treatise Kallah rabbati, as one of the group of chosen people who went straight to paradise while still alive, becomes a nameless “daughter of Jacob.” The pebble or golden foil thrown into the Nile becomes “a piece of parchment,” and Micah becomes a nameless “hard-hearted Jew.”

Beside the historical accounts, the Commented Palaea also contains anti-Jewish invectives and remarks, such as the frequently appearing words slyshishi li okajannyj zhidovine (“do you hear, cursed Jew?”). This suggests that the text was intended as a polemic against the Jewish religion or the Jewish people. Muscovite Russia, however, did not have Jews living within its borders. It is for that reason that Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath aptly called his book about anti-Judaic texts in medieval Russia A Grin without a Cat, alluding to the fading Cheshire cat in Lewis Carroll’s Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, and quite appropriately described the Commented Palaea as a “comprehensive, basically Christological commentary to books of the Old Testament in an anti-Judaic vein” (Pereswetoff-Morath 2002, 1:31).

In some instances we witness in the Palaea direct addresses of contemporary Jews in a straightforward attempt to proselytize them, such as “But you, Jew, living today, why are you not jealous of the Israelites of old, on whose account Egypt was punished? . . . So also you, Jew, do not be insensate and irrational like the snakes. The prophecies you have read, the time of Creation you know. Renovate your body, regain the sight of your eyes, throw off the decayed garment which is incredulity, become renewed through the Holy Baptism, rush to Christ and become one with us” (see appendix 18).

Beside the Palaea, there is another Russian compilation with passages translated from Midrashic sources, and this is item b in our list of translations (see above, p. 15), the Academy Chronograph (see Taube 1992). In it we find inserted a narrative describing the attempt to enforce the Hellenization of the Jews of Palestine during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (ca. 215 BC–164 BC), an attempt that resulted in the revolt led by the family of the Hasmoneans. The story of the revolt is based on Josippon but contains additions of Talmudic and Midrashic origin, providing interesting details—for example, the decree issued by the Greek authorities banning Jewish women from observing the practice of ritual immersion (ṭevila) and the miracle that happened when the Jews found, each in his own house, a source of water allowing them to continue their practice. The account in the Academy Chronograph is very similar to the one in the Midrash Maaśeh Ḥanukkah (see appendix 19).

Another account of Hebrew origin to be found in the Academy Chronograph (see Taube 1992) is the story of the captivity of Jechoniah, the penultimate king of Judea, who was taken prisoner by the Babylonians, and of the miraculous conception of his son Shealtiel (in Slavic, following the Greek, the name is rendered Salathiel). (See appendix 20.)

The account in the Chronograph resembles very much the ones found in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 37b–38a) and Midrash (Leviticus Rabbah 19). In the Hebrew we have several more details, like the Sanhedrin approaching the Babylonian king’s wife through her hairdresser, like the upright position, owing to the lack of space, in which Shealtiel was conceived in jail, and the learned opinion of the Talmudic source—namely, that normally a woman cannot become pregnant in that position. Hence this conception was obviously a miracle (see appendix 21).

Once again we witness in these accounts the intimate acquaintance with Talmudic and Midrashic traditions on the part of the translator into Slavic, even if some of the details in the Midrash are omitted. Such acquaintance can only be attributed to a learned Jew and cannot be expected from a non-Jewish scholar in Rusʹ.

The last text of the early group to be discussed in this chapter is item c in our list of translations (see above, p.15), the account called The Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus (i.e., following the first capture by Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon, in 597 BC and the second capture by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 167 BC). This historical account, relating the suppression by Rome of the Judaean Revolt and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE by Titus, has always been of great interest to Jews and Christians alike. All the extant narratives of these events ultimately go back to the writings of Joseph son of Matthias, a Jew from Palestine, one of the leaders of the revolt in Galilee, who went over to the Roman side and later called himself Flavius Josephus, in honor of his master, the emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus.

Here is a schematic chronological presentation of the account about the destruction of the Second Temple:

1. First century CE., Josephus Flavius, Jewish War, written in Greek.

2. Second (or perhaps fourth) century, (pseudo-)Hegesippus, Historiae, anonymous Christian adaptation in Latin of the Greek text.

3. Tenth century, Josippon. An anonymous Jewish adaptation in Hebrew of Hegesippus’s Latin Historiae.

4. Sometime between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries, an anonymous Hebrew reworking of the last part of Josippon on the sacking of Jerusalem by Titus. A Jewish adaptation.

5. Eleventh or twelfth century, anonymous adaptation of Flavius’s Jewish War into the language of Rusʹ. Translation from Greek.

6. Sometime between twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, an anonymous translation of the Hebrew reworking of Josippon into the language of Rusʹ. Translated by a (converted?) Jew.

7. Fifteenth century (first half), integration of the translation (in 6) by a Christian editor (or converted Jew?) into the Russian compilation Hellenic and Roman Chronicler with the title O vzjatii Ierusalimu tretee Titovo (On the third capture of Jerusalem by Titus).

The initial text, Flavius’s Jewish War (no. 1), an apologia pro vita sua, reflects the author’s tendency to rationalize and justify his betrayal, coupled with an attempt to denigrate his former comrades in arms, the stubborn rebels, and by the same token to exonerate his Roman mentors and protectors, with Titus first among them. This biased approach of the author, who never ceased maintaining that he had always remained a loyal Jew, caused manifold complications by the time it reached its Slavic form (or rather Slavic forms), as we shall demonstrate below.

We do in fact have several Slavic texts narrating these events. One of them is a translation (no. 5) of Josephus’s Jewish War, made from the Greek, and preserved exclusively in Rusian witnesses (Istrin et al. 1934; Meshcherskij 1958; Pichkhadze et al. 2004).

Beside the Rusian version of Josephus’s Jewish War we have a different text, translated from a Hebrew version (no. 6), integrated into the historical compilation of the first quarter of the fifteenth century, a compilation known as the Second Redaction of The Hellenic and Roman Chronicler (no. 7). This version is titled The Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus.

The Third Capture of Jerusalem, however, is not a direct descendant of the Jewish War. It is based on the work (no. 2) sometimes attributed to another deserter, the second-century Palestinian Jew converted to Christianity known as Hegesippus, whose account, based on Josephus, but augmented with Christian elements, survived in Latin. In recent scholarship this attribution has been contested and it is now customary to speak of pseudo-Hegesippus, a Latin work, written ca. 370 AD by an anonymous Christian author.

In the tenth century an anonymous south Italian Jew translated from Latin into Hebrew large portions of pseudo-Hegesippus’s account, expurgating its most obvious Christian elements and adding details from other Jewish sources. This adaptation (no. 3) is known as the Josippon.

Some passages deriving from the Josippon (for example, the account of Alexander the Great entering Jerusalem, discussed in the first chapter), are preserved in the Hypatian Chronicle under the year 1110, and their presence in this chronicle gave rise to the claim that the Josippon, perhaps even in its entirety, was available in Russian translation in the early twelfth century.

Our present text, The Third Capture of Jerusalem, however, differs from these passages in that it does not derive, at least not directly, from the Josippon. The Third Capture of Jerusalem is actually a translation of a later, thorough reworking in Hebrew (no. 4), done sometime between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries, of the final chapters of the Josippon starting with Titus waging war on the rebels in Jerusalem, followed by a description of the destruction of the Temple, and ending with the collective suicide of the Jewish rebels on the fortified Mount Masada in the Judaean desert.

The Hebrew reworking is attested in a single manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Huntington collection, ms 345), dated to 1462. The Huntington copy is quite distinct from the Josippon in its wording as well as in its order of episodes, despite its carrying the same title Josippon ben Gorion (Josippon son of Gorion).

Thus, the parable of the captain struggling to bring his ship to safe harbor, which in the Josippon proper is part of Josephus’s speech to his fellow rebels when he tries to convince them to join him in his decision to abandon the battle and to surrender to the Romans after the Battle of Jodaphath in Galilee (Flusser 1980, 1:317), is placed in the reworking in the mouth of Titus in his speech to his soldiers after their initial defeat in Jerusalem. Although David Flusser, the editor of the Hebrew Josippon (1980, 2:254) mentions the Huntington copy among the manuscripts belonging to what he calls the “original version,” he does not include it in his stemma codicum (2:53), nor does he quote variants from it, with the exception of Elazar’s speech to the rebels gathered at Masada at the very end of the text; and even there (see Flusser 1980, 2:355ff.) his variants are not given as readings of a word or even of a phrase, as is the case with all his other variant readings, but as variant readings of whole paragraphs, indicating that it is indeed a radically different text.

The Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus, like all translations made from Hebrew in the East Slavic lands, has to be the work of a Jew. The earliest manuscript containing it (Saint Petersburg, BAN 33.8.13) is from the last quarter of the fifteenth century and shows dialectal features of the language of the Novgorod area, an area in which, unlike in Moscow, Jews could occasionally be found, at least until its annexation by Muscovy in 1478. The Russian translation is very precious for the history of the Hebrew text of the reworking, since it conserves portions of the text missing owing to a lacuna of six folia in the still unpublished unique Hebrew Huntington manuscript.

An illustrative example of the differences between the Josippon proper and its Hebrew reworking is a passage in which we find enumerated the many ominous signs that God had sent, to no avail, to the Jews of Jerusalem in order to warn them of the imminent destruction of the city and the Temple. The immediate source of Josippon—namely, pseudo-Hegesippus—clearly tainted by Christological bias, added here the words Lord Jesus and Maria, whereas the Josippon censored the Christian portions, omitting these names (see appendix 22).

Nikita Meshcherskij, who edited the East Slavic translation from the original Greek of Josephus’s Jewish War, quotes in his introduction (1958, 146) two small portions of this passage from the Josippon, together with the text of the Third Capture of Jerusalem (see appendix 23), as proof that the Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus is based directly on the Josippon, albeit on a special version thereof; however, we will see presently that this is not the case, since the Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus has a rather different account from that of the Josippon.

If we disregard the typographic errors and the errors of translation (“all the simple folk” instead of “some of the simple folk”), we observe (see appendix 24) that Meshcherskij has left out the words where the Josippon and the Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus differ radically: the Josippon predicts (see text in appendix 22) that “when the edifice of the Temple will be quadrangular, then there will reign a king over Israel, a king who reigns and rules over the whole earth,” whereas the Third Capture of Jerusalem, following the Hebrew reworking of the Huntington copy, predicts the appearance of this mysterious ruler of Israel for the time when the Temple will be 420 years old. The number of years for the duration of the Second Temple—420—is a well-known Talmudic figure, quoted in eschatological contexts (see appendix 25).

Despite the correspondence on this probative detail, the unique Huntington copy is not identical with the Third Capture of Jerusalem (see appendix 26), as it has a much more extensive account. Most of the extra portions in the Huntington reworking, as compared to the Slavic version of this passage in the Third Capture of Jerusalem, such as the ominous signs of the quadrangular Temple, the beautiful human figure hovering above the Temple, the cow giving birth to a lamb, and the footsteps in the Temple calling for a withdrawal from the city, derive from the Josippon, too, although they are dispersed in different locations of the Josippon and are not found as a single passage as they appear in the sequence attested here.

The most significant import of establishing the Huntington reworking of the Josippon as immediate source for the Russian translation lies in instances where the Hebrew exposes the biases and tendencies of the Russian version (the examples of the Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus are from Tvorogov’s 1999 edition of the Hellenic and Roman Chronicler).

Thus, in the description of the beginning of the military campaign against Jerusalem by the Romans, the Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus reads (Tvorogov 1999, 1:224 1.1):

i radovashasʹ vrazi nashi paguby ego radi.

And our enemies rejoiced over its demise.

Huntington 345:

vajiśmeḥu ojvim ʿal mishbateha.

And enemies rejoiced over her demise.

There is no comment on this difference in Tvorogov’s edition. The addition in the Slavic, speaking of our enemies, cannot but reflect the input of the Jewish translator.

A second example, speaking of the rebels in Jerusalem (12.11):

vēdjashe bo Iosif jako ne xotjat mira.

For Joseph knew that they did not want peace.

Huntington 345:

ki yodeaʿ yosef ki nitʿav beʿeyneyhem ʿal asher nasa ʿalav ʿol romiim.

For Joseph knew that he was abominable in their eyes, for he had taken upon himself the Roman yoke.

This is an intentional distortion of the Hebrew text, reversing the roles of hero and villain, a distortion that has to belong to the translator into Russian, or (although this is less likely) to the editor who integrated the Third Capture of Jerusalem into the Hellenic and Roman Chronicler.

The Russian version of The Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus thus embodies the whole spectrum of ambivalence in the attitude of Russians toward Jews, since it represents several consecutive layers of reworking and adaptation of the same account, with different, sometimes conflicting, biases and ideas about the sense of the story and about who the heroes, and particularly about who the villains, are. Are these the Romans or the Jews? Are these all the Jews or just the rebels? Is Titus the villain of this story or the designed carrier of God’s wrath against the Jews? And is Joseph a positive or a negative figure? The ambivalence about most of these points, with the exception of the unanimous condemnation of the zealous rebels, is maintained in the Jewish tradition as well, and gets further confounded in Slavic.

Thus far we have engaged in the exposition of the East Slavic texts of the early group and their sources. Let us return now to the question of the possible scenarios for the circumstances that could have given rise to this group of translations.

For the dating of the translations, we have posited the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries as the possible time range, although the extant manuscripts are from 1400 onward. As for the place of translation, the Galician-Volhynian regions, where a Jewish presence is attested from the thirteenth century on, is a possibility, although we lack more precise evidence, linguistic or historical, to confirm it.

Regarding the intended readership of the translations, the answer, as already pointed out, seems to be clear: they were made for Christians, since the texts were written down in Cyrillic and were preserved in Russian Orthodox compilations, kept mainly in monasteries, and not accessible to observant Jews, even assuming they could read Cyrillic (an unlikely possibility).

Moreover, that Christians would be interested in Old Testament figures, especially in Jacob’s descendants, is obvious, since Christendom views itself as the New Israel. Of special interest would of course be the last kings of Judea from the House of David and their offspring (at the time of the exile to Babylon, Jechoniah, and after the exile, Shealtiel and Zerubbabel), since all of them are part of Jesus Christ’s pedigree (Matthew 1:11–13). The Slavic texts consequently show great interest, respect, and even admiration for the Israelites of old.

Nothing of the kind, however, is reserved for Jews of their own time. As we have seen above, the latter are treated as the cursed people who refuse to accept the Christian truth and they are addressed by rude invectives accompanied by explicit calls to repent and embrace the Christian faith.

Such a mixture of familiarity with Jewish sources, as we have seen, together with an anti-Jewish, proselytizing approach, strengthens the suspicion that we are dealing with a rather familiar picture, that of Jews converted to Christianity, using Jewish sources for polemics against their former coreligionists. Despite being formally addressed to a Jew, such texts are nevertheless internal Christian polemical works. We are therefore led to posit a scenario with Jewish converts to Christianity involved in the early group of translations, at least in some of them, translations of polemical texts dealing with the ancient Israelites and with many Old Testament figures of interest to a Christian audience.

We do not have concrete evidence for the existence of such converts before the second half of the fifteenth century, when we encounter in the 1470s the case of an Ashkenazi Jew converted to Orthodox Christianity, after arriving in Moscow from Kyiv—Feodor the Jew (see Zuckerman 1987). This convert left us an epistle to his former brethren, imploring them to follow his example, as well as a collection of prayers purporting to be a “Psalter,” but Feodor (whose Jewish name is not given), who converted around 1470, could not have been the translator of the early group. We are thus, as happens to be the case more often than not, left in the realm of speculation.

A second case of a convert, about whom we know even less, is mentioned by Archbishop Gennadij of Novgorod in a letter from 1490, in which he tells about a newly baptized Jew from Kyiv who took the name of Daniel, and who, on his arrival in Novgorod on his way to Moscow, told his companions at the table of the inn where he was staying about the not very friendly farewell he had received from his Jewish brethren in Kyiv (see below in chapter 3).

Our third and final chapter discusses a different kind of texts, no longer Jewish historical accounts originally written in Hebrew, but scientific and pseudoscientific texts originally written in Arabic or in Judaeo-Arabic, translated into Hebrew, and then from Hebrew into East Slavic. This would require a different kind of translator, with different capabilities and a different motivation.

3

The Heresy of the Judaizers and the Translations from Hebrew in Muscovite Russia in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century

In the first two chapters we dealt with the group of early translations from Hebrew in Rusʹ carried out between the thirteenth and the early fifteenth centuries, translations of accounts about Jewish figures from the Old Testament and somewhat later, all of interest to Christians. All the accounts are preserved in Russian compilations and must have been made with the participation of Jews, perhaps of Jewish converts to Christianity. All the translations are anonymous.

TEXTUAL FINDINGS AND ANALYSES OF THE TRANSLATIONS

Our present topic, the latter group of translations, belonging to the second half of the fifteenth century, is different in its makeup as well as in its language. It consists mainly of scientific and philosophical texts, most of which go back to Arabic works that were translated into Hebrew in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and then, one century later, from Hebrew into Slavic.

The language of the translations is Ruthenian, the written language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Nevertheless, with few exceptions (to be discussed below), these texts, consisting of fifteenth-century Ruthenian translations, are preserved mainly in Russian copies from the sixteenth century and later (up until the eighteenth century) that underwent some Russification and no little corruption by Muscovite copyists.

The emergence of such a corpus of scientific work is quite remarkable, given that “Neither Kievan nor Muscovite Russia had an equivalent of scholasticism or Renaissance; there were no universities, only occasional schools, and no learned professions; there was little knowledge of Greek, effectively none of Latin” (Ryan 1999, 10). And, regarding Orthodox Slavic Christianity in general: “The Orthodox Slavs translated fewer of the scientific and philosophical works available in Byzantium than did the Syrians, Arabs or Latins, and indeed no complete major work of Greek antique philosophy or science was translated and no sophisticated ancient Greek or Byzantine work of history or literature (apart from works of Josephus and George of Pisidia) was available in Slavonic until comparatively modern times” (Ryan 1999, 9–10).

Here is the list of the items in this group, to be presented in detail further below:

a. Immanuel bar Yakov Bonfils’s Shesh kenafajim (Six wings).

b. Johannes de Sacrobosco’s Book of the Sphere.

c. Al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers.

(c1. Logic c2. Metaphysics)

d. Moses Maimonides’s Logical Terminology.

e. Pseudo–Aristotle’s Secret of Secrets, including the following interpolations: Maimonides’s On Coitus;

The second part of Maimonides’s On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs;

chapter 13 of Maimonides’s Book of Asthma;

chapter on physiognomy from Rhazes’s al-Kitāb al-Manṣūri fi l-ṭibb.

f. An eight-line sorites on the soul titled “Laodicean Epistle” whose Hebrew source remains unidentified, probably related to item e.

g. A collection of Old Testament Hagiographa in the sixteenth-century Vilnius Codex, Lithuanian Academy Library, F 19–262, including: the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Job, Proverbs, and Daniel, translated from Hebrew (the latter only partly from Hebrew); the Psalter in this collection was translated from Greek and corrected by comparing it to the Latin.

Items a and b—that is, the Six Wings and the Book of the Sphere, are known only from the excerpts published by Sobolevskij (1903, 409–19) from the single sixteenth-century Ruthenian copy that contained them (Chełm, Museum of the Holy Theotokos Brotherhood), which disappeared without trace after World War I, along with the whole collection of manuscripts and works of art in that Museum.

Item c1—that is, the section on Logic from al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers—is attested in a unique Ruthenian manuscript from 1482, now lost, but fortunately published in 1909 by S. L. Neverov, a student at Kyiv University who was not even able to identify the text and thought it might be a work by al-Farābī.

Items c2 and d—that is, al-Ghazālī’s section on metaphysics (theology) of his Intentions of the Philosophers and Maimonides’s Logical Terminology—were combined (in reverse order) in the Slavic translation to form a single text titled Logika (published in Taube 2016).

Item e—the pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets is attested in Russian copies from the sixteenth century onward (published recently by Ryan and Taube 2019).

Item f—the eight-line sorites “On the Soul” is likewise attested in Russian copies from the sixteenth century onward (published by Ja. S. Lurie in Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 256–76).

Item g—the Vilnius Florilegium containing nine Old Testament books, (eight of them translated from Hebrew), is a unique sixteenth-century copy, parts of which have been edited by my teacher Moshe Altbauer and myself (see Altbauer 1992).

The items a, b, c1 and g are (for the first two, now lost: were) preserved in single Ruthenian copies, and never reached Muscovy.

The language of item c1 consequently served me in the 2016 edition of the Logika as a comparative tool for identifying the instances of Russification in the copies of the other portions of the Logika that did reach Muscovy, and as a frame of reference for choosing among the variant readings the ones that, to my mind, reflected the language of the translator.

For this later group, too, we must assume the participation of Jews in the translation, and for the same reason as with the early group—that is, the absence of Christian Hebraists in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and a fortiori in Muscovy. This time, however, the translators are no longer shrouded in anonymity, since we are fortunate to be able to name the translator of at least two items, and possibly of the whole group of texts. On this—later.

We now proceed to discuss in detail the items of this list.

The Shestokryl (Shesh kenafajim) (Six wings) (item a), whose original was written in Hebrew by the fourteenth-century Provençal Jewish mathematician and astronomer Immanuel bar Yakov Bonfils (1300–77) of Tarascon. It is an important astronomical work with calendric and navigational uses. Bonfils is known mainly as the inventor of decimal fractions, but he was also the translator from Latin into Hebrew of The Book of the Gests of Alexander of Macedon (see Kazis 1962, 40). The Ruthenian translation of the Shesh kenafajim (Six wings), made directly from the Hebrew original, apparently reached Muscovy, since Archbishop Gennadij of Novgorod (on him and his polemics against the Judaizing heresy, see below) mentions it in two of his letters, from 1487 and 1489 (see Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 311, 318–19), as a text that he had read and in which he found heresies. The Six Wings indeed appears in the list of works banned by the Russian church as heretical for being of a divinatory nature.[1]

Actually, the Six Wings is a purely astronomical work (see Solon 1970), without a hint of astrology or of any other kind of mysticism. It comprises six astronomical tables (from which it derives its name, alluding to Isaiah 6:2), in which, inter alia, solar and lunar positions are calculated. The tables are preceded by an introduction (see Taube 1995a, 191ff.) explaining in detail how the numerals in the tables should be used, to which the translator added in Slavic explanations for some basic terms of the Jewish calendar, such as the nineteen-year cycle of the Hebrew lunisolar calendar.[2] The “divinatory” power of the work lies simply in its enabling the user of the tables to figure out ahead of time the day and hour for the appearance of the new moon and for upcoming solar and lunar eclipses, with corrections according to geographical location, whether in Provence, Italy, or even Byzantium. The work was translated from the original Hebrew into Latin in 1405 and from the Latin into Greek in 1435 (see Solon 1970), and its calculations were used by sailors and explorers well into the seventeenth century.

The Latin cosmography titled De sphera (item b, ed. L. Thorndike 1949) by the thirteenth-century English scholar Johannes de Sacrobosco, (ca. 1195—ca. 1256) who taught mathematics at a very early Sorbonne, was a major handbook for students of astronomy all across Europe in the Middle Ages and well into the seventeenth century. By the end of the fourteenth century it had two Hebrew translations, one by Solomon Abigedor, titled Marʾeh ha-ʾofanim (The appearance of the wheels) and one by an anonymous translator, titled Sēfer ha-galgal (The book of the orb) and Sēfer ha-esfēra ha-qatan (The little book of the sphere), and it is this anonymous translation that was rendered into Ruthenian in the second half of the fifteenth century. We have identified (see Taube 1995a, 172ff.) the copy of the Hebrew anonymous translation that served as an exemplar for the Ruthenian version, a Hebrew manuscript of the Russian National Library (Firkovich collection, Evr. I 355), copied in Kyiv on the September 18, 1454, by Zechariah ben Aharon (on him, see in detail below).

A probative argument for the identification of this copy as the Hebrew exemplar of the Ruthenian translation is the unique description of the seventh clime of the Northern Hemisphere, clima diaripheos. This term, usually understood as referring to the Ural Mountains, is rendered in most Hebrew witnesses by nof rifios or nof rifomas. The copy made by Zechariah, however, has here nof rusios hem harej sheleg u-kfor ve-ʾerets ashkenaz (The seventh clime . . . is the clime of Russia, which are the mountains of snow and ice and the land of Ashkenaz). This unique rendering corresponds quite precisely to the Slavic, known to us only from the excerpts of the Chełm copy (now lost) published by Sobolevskij (1903, 412): iklima 7-ja klima i russkaja i nemetskaja (The seventh clime . . . is the clime of both Russia and Germany . . .).

We now turn to items c and d, constituting in Slavic the work called Logika.

The Arabic work titled Maqāṣid al-falāsifah (Intentions of the Philosophers) by the Persian theologian Abū Ḥamid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) expounds Aristotelian philosophy as it was known in the Muslim world through al-Farābī and Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna). It basically borrows, without acknowledgment, whole sections from Avicenna’s Persian work Danish nameh (Book of Knowledge) (see Alónso 1963, xlvi). The Intentions of the Philosophers was meant to be an introductory volume to al-Ghazālī’s second work, the Tahāfut al-falāsifah (Destruction of the Philosophers). The second volume is what won al-Ghazālī his fame in the West, since a century later Ibn Rushd (Averroes) wrote a refutation of this refutation of philosophy, the Tahāfut al-tahāfut (Destruction of the destruction), soon to be translated into Latin as Destructio destructionis, as well as into Hebrew, as Happalat ha-happalah. Judging by the small number of Hebrew manuscript copies of the Destruction of the Philosophers compared with the massive number of copies of the Intentions of the Philosophers, it seems that Jewish readers were not interested in the refutation, but only in the introductory volume, which served as a popular handbook of logic for Jewish readers well into the sixteenth century (see Harvey 2001).

There were no fewer than three Hebrew translations of the Intentions of the Philosophers as well as many commentaries. We have at least seventy-two handwritten copies of the three Hebrew translations taken together, whereas there are few witnesses of this text in Arabic. The three Hebrew translations of the Intentions of the Philosophers were made in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: in Catalonia, by Isaac Albalag; in Provence, by Yehuda Natan (Maestro Bongodo); as well as by an anonymous translator. The anonymous translation, named Kavanot ha-filosofim, served as the basis for the fourteenth-century commentary by the philosopher and physician Moses Narboni (ca. 1295–1362, Perpignan), and it is this version (without the commentary) that was translated into Ruthenian in the second half of the fifteenth century, somewhere between 1458 and 1482 (see Pereswetoff-Morath 2006, 37–41). Out of the three sections of the work—logic, metaphysics, and physics—only the first two, the section on logic (item c1) and the initial chapters on metaphysics (item c2), were translated into Ruthenian. The section on physics apparently was not translated.

The short exposition of logic titled in Arabic Maqālah fi ṣinaʿat al-mantiq (Treatise on the art of logic) and in Hebrew Millot higgajon (Logical Terminology, lit. Vocables of logic [item d]) is traditionally ascribed to Maimonides; and while there have been a few voices doubting his authorship (e.g., Jacob Reifmann [1884, 18ff.] and Herbert A. Davidson [2001]; cf. also Taube 2016, 46–48.), the established view remains unchanged (see Harvey 2016). In any case, for the Jew who translated it from Hebrew this was without a shadow of doubt an authentic Maimonidean work. Of the three extant Hebrew translations of this work, by Moses ben Samuel Ibn Tibbon, by Aḥituv of Palermo, and by Joseph Ibn Vives of Lorca the translator into Ruthenian used the first two—Ibn Tibbon’s and Aḥituv’s—as is borne out both by the doublets and by the contamination of the two versions (see Taube 2016, esp. 48).

Items c2 and d were combined in Slavic, as mentioned above, to form a philosophical miscellany called Logika, of which I published a critical edition in 2016. The editor who combined them replaced al-Ghazālī’s section on logic (c1) with Maimonides’s Logical Terminology (d) and attached to it the first eight chapters from the metaphysics section of al-Ghazālī’s Maqasid (c2). The attribution of authorship in the Slavic translation is of great interest. Thus, Moses Maimonides, the supposed author of the Logical Terminology, who is referred to in the Hebrew translations as ha-rav moshe (“the master Moses”) or simply as ha-rav (“the master”), is called in Slavic Mojsej Egiptjanin (Moses the Egyptian), probably reflecting the fact, known to some learned Jewish and Christian scholars at that time, that Maimonides, a native of Cordoba, spent most of his adult life in Egypt. It is doubtful, however, whether any Slavic reader of the text at the time would have known that.

Even more noteworthy is the attribution of authorship in the Slavic version of al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers. Both in the logic section of the Intentions and in the metaphysics section, Abu-Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī is referred to in the Hebrew version by his teknonym Abū Ḥāmid. In the Slavic translation, however, he is Christened (or rather Judaized) Aviasaf, a clearly fictitious name.[3] Thereby, al-Ghazālī’s work is presented to the Slavic readership as if it were part of Jewish wisdom. This misrepresentation of al-Ghazālī as Aviasaf seems to reflect an ulterior motive, one that we will try to spell out further on, when proposing a possible motivation for the whole enterprise of translations.

Beside the general arguments for the translator being Jewish by default—namely, owing to the absence of Christian Hebraists in Eastern Europe—we have, in the case of the Logika, direct evidence of the translator’s Jewishness. Thus, in chapter 13 of the Logical Terminology, in the discussion of instances of hyponymy, where a general term is used also for a more specific member of that genus, we observe a significant deviation of the Slavic translation from both the Arabic and the Hebrew (see appendix 27).[4] For illustrating this usage, the Arabic and the Hebrew give as examples the general words for “grass” and for “star,” which may also denote “cannabis” and “the planet Mercury,” respectively, whereas the Slavic has as an example the name “Israel,” which “is the name of us all as well as the name of an individual from among us.” There can be no doubt here about the referee of “us.”

The translation of the philosophical works of Maimonides and al-Ghazālī from the heavily arabicized Hebrew versions of the Tibbonide translations was no doubt quite a challenge for the East European Jewish translator who undertook to render them into Ruthenian, of which he may have had practical knowledge sufficient to communicate orally with his neighbors, but hardly more than that. We may also assume that he did not know Arabic. This is suggested by his rendering of the discussion of the four elements and of prime matter in the Logical Terminology chapter 9 (see appendix 28). Our translator apparently ignored the meaning of the Arabic term transliterated as ʿnṣr (hyle, prime matter), since the word is not used in Hebrew. This is probably the reason for its omission in his translation, unlike cases where a word of Arabic origin is current in medieval Hebrew literature—for example, handasa (geometry) or timsaḥ (crocodile), in which cases he either translates or transliterates the familiar Hebrew terms (see Taube 2016, 57).

The translator also ignored the philosophical terminology current in Slavic, not that there was much to ignore. In contradistinction to the West Slavic regions, where, at the universities of Prague (founded 1349) and Cracow (founded 1346), Aristotle was being taught (in Latin), in the East Slavic regions, where there were no universities, we observe little knowledge of Aristotle apart from occasional references and fragmentary quotations (see Ryan 1986). Moreover, no philosophical terminology was available, with the exception of some terms in the Pēgē gnōseōs (Fount of Knowledge), by Saint John of Damascus, the philosophical chapters of which circulated in Russia in translation in a very small number of manuscript copies, under the title Dialektika. Our Jewish translator of course knew nothing about this and had to invent a brand new terminology. His approach was simple: translate literally, if possible. Some examples of this literality are given in Table 1.

TABLE 1

In all the examples in the table above the Slavic renders literally the Hebrew, which is itself usually a literal translation of the Arabic. The only exception, the Slavic term for “sophistic”—namely, zabludshij (misleading)—is the result of interpretation by the translator into Hebrew of Arabic sufisṭāʾī (a calque of the Greek) (sophistic) as maṭʿeh (misleading).

All the Slavic terms are everyday words, but in their scholarly sense they are semantic neologisms, not found anywhere else in Slavic with this meaning.

Sometimes, though, when deemed necessary, we witness in Slavic an attempt of interpretation, or, where appropriate, an added explanation (on the latter, see below p. 50).

From among the terms that the translator interprets, according to the sense they acquired in philosophy, I will focus on tsura (form). This is a central concept in medieval thought, whether Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, adopting the Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism, according to which all substances (except God) are composed of form and matter. The term form in this context does not refer to a thing’s “shape,” but to its definition or essence—for example, “human form,” denoting what it is to be a human being. A statue may be human-shaped, but it is not a human, because it cannot perform the functions characteristic of humans: thinking, perceiving, moving, desiring, eating, growing, and so on. (See “Matter vs. Form,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last revised March 25, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/form-matter/.)

In the Slavic translation of the Logika, the Hebrew term tsura (form), when employed in its Aristotelian meaning of eidos (form), in opposition to hulē (matter), is rendered by a Slavic word containing the semantic component “soul” (dushevenstvo, lit. “animacy,” see appendix 29). This choice is motivated by the Jewish translator’s awareness that, within Aristotle’s hylomorphic framework, the rational soul is the form ( = essence) of man, a view echoed in Maimonides’s writings (see appendix 30). Such rendering, without an explanatory addition, undoubtedly makes the text hard to understand for a reader lacking access to the Hebrew, as evidenced by the faulty glosses of this term in several manuscripts of the Logika (see Taube 2016, 59).

Beyond the particularities of terminology, an important characteristic of the Slavic version of the Intentions of the Philosophers is that it displays several instances of additions, modifications, and omissions by the translator that should be seen as a conscious attempt to adapt the text for a Christian readership.

Thus, Aristotle’s pagan teaching is legitimated by naming some of the Jewish prophets as contemporary sources of his thinking—indeed, as his mentors. In a paragraph added at the end of the metaphysics (theology) section of al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers in Slavic, Aristotle is said to have learned the natural sciences from the Jewish prophets (see appendix 31).

Furthermore, formulas that might raise questions about the differences in the understanding of God’s unity in Judaism (and Islam), as opposed to their understanding in Christianity, are omitted.

A significant instance of changes made in the Slavic, apparently in order to accommodate a Christian readership, is found in the Logical section of al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers, where the discussion of the types of negation in Slavic radically deviates from the Hebrew. The Hebrew here, closely following the Arabic, explains that the negation of a constituent (namely, the subject), called “privation,” is different from negative predication; indeed, it is positive (lit., negative digressing into the positive), since its truth-value remains intact even when predicated of a nonexistent subject. The Arabic and the Hebrew, respectively, give as examples of such a nonexistent subject shariq allah and shutaf ha-ʾel (God’s associate).

Given that God’s unity is so deeply entrenched in their respective faiths, a Jewish or Muslim reader would immediately grasp the notion of “God’s associate” as absurd or fictitious. However, the Jewish translator apparently considered it too dangerous a notion for an Orthodox Christian readership familiar with the concept of the divine trinity. As a consequence, “associate” was dropped from the text, and since the subject of the example in the “corrected” Slavic version is now “God”, the dropping of his “associate” inevitably leads to leaving out the affirmation that “the demonstration thereof is that the negation is true (even) when applied to the non-existent.” What remains, then (see appendix 32), is a garbled, corrupt passage, without even the little comforting assertion (found in Arabic and Hebrew) that the distinction of the two types of negation is clearer in Persian.

Similarly indicative of the translator’s sensitivity regarding fine points of distinction between the Jewish and the Christian views of God’s unique oneness is the example from the third chapter of the theological section of the Intentions of the Philosophers, where the Arabic and the Hebrew give as examples of true unity “the point, and the essence of the Creator,” whereas the Slavic has only the latter (see appendix 33). Since God’s absolute and unparalleled unity is one of the basic articles of the Jewish religion,[5] the Jewish translator into Slavic could not or would not allow his Christian readership to learn that anything else, even the point, could share with God in “real” unity, and therefore preferred to leave out “the point” altogether, although this sharing is stipulated by al-Ghazālī and by his unacknowledged source, Avicenna, and is maintained in the Hebrew translation.

Whether translating literally, interpreting the less transparent terms, or adapting the text to the non-Jewish readership, there can be no doubt that the translator was a learned Jew from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where, in contrast to Muscovy, there was a considerable Jewish population. He displays in his translations an impressive knowledge of medieval Jewish philosophy, manifested by his adding, in many places in the Logika, explanatory notes and examples to clarify the text.

Thus, in chapter 2 of the logical part of the Intentions of the Philosophers, we are apprised that man’s true definition can only be supplied by giving his essential quality as a rational animal, while accidental qualities, such as laughing and erectness, may distinguish him from other animals, but are merely descriptive. The translator into Slavic adds here (see appendix 34) a qualifying phrase about using such accidental qualities: “but [thereby] you do not express his quiddity [sc., his true essence]”. Man’s “quiddity”—that is, his essence or true definition—as the translator correctly emphasizes, is his being a rational animal.

Even more impressive is the example (see appendix 35) from the discussion of the figures of syllogisms found in chapter 7 of the Logical Terminology, which, in addition to several omissions, contains a long explanatory addition in Slavic.

The whole Hebrew passage summarizing the syllogistic figures is actually not a translation of Maimonides’s words, but of an “explanation not from the discourse”—bēʾur she-lo min ha-maʾamar—interpolated into Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew version of the Logical Terminology. The explanation is ascribed by Efros (1938, 13) to the thirteenth-century scholar and physician Jacob Anatoli, and is preserved in four manuscripts of Ibn Tibbon’s translation.

In the Slavic version of this passage, we observe in the final two sentences further additions to this interpolation, made by the Jewish translator into Slavic:

And both these figures, the second and the third, revert to the first [i.e., in order to yield a conclusion], while the first [need] not revert to them, and it yields the four aforementioned quantifiers. And the three figures are equal in that there is no syllogism from two particular premises, nor from two negative ones, nor from a negative minor and a particular major.

The translator thus displays his mastery of logic by adding to the text a similar summary deriving from the logical section of al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers (see Taube 2016, 504–6). He also adds a reference to an otherwise unknown work that he calls “Long logic,” where all the characteristics of valid and invalid syllogisms are given: “And for more [details] look in the Long logic.”

The reference to the mysterious “Long logic” here (as well as in five more cases in the Logika), absent in all instances from the Hebrew and from the Arabic, probably points to Jacob Anatoli’s Hebrew translation of Averroes’s Middle Commentary (edited by Herbert A. Davidson, 1969) on the logical books of the Organon (Categories, Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics), containing the longest discussion available at that time of valid and invalid syllogisms and of demonstrative proof.

In contrast to his familiarity with the subject matter, the translator reveals some difficulties when struggling with the heavily arabicized phraseology and terminology of the Hebrew translations from Arabic. In the discussion of the parts of speech in the logical section of the Intentions of the Philosophers (Taube 2016, 452–53), going back all the way to Aristotle’s On Interpretation, we witness (see appendix 36) the translator bravely tackle the difficult terminological comparison of linguistic and philosophical terms for “verb,” “noun,” and “particle”/“function word,” clinging to literality as much as possible but also consulting similar texts.

Thus, the rendering (in the final phrase) in Slavic of ʾot (particle, lit., letter) by slovo (word) and not by sudno (vessel/tool), as in the first instance, is probably owing to the translator having consulted the parallel discussion of terminology in the first chapter of the Logical Terminology, where both ibn Tibbon and Aḥituv render Arabic ḥarf (particle) by milla (word) (cf. Taube 2016, 154–55).[6]

A different example, testifying to the difficulties facing the translator into Slavic in dealing with the arabicized Hebrew, especially when the Hebrew turns out to be a faulty rendering of the Arabic, is attested in the opening sentences of the introduction to the theology section of the Intentions of the Philosophers (see Taube 2016, 262–63). Al-Ghazālī states in his introduction that “they [sc., the philosophers] usually put the exposition of Natural Science before Theology,” but he chooses to invert the order of presentation, since theology is the core and primary intent of all science, and its placement at the end is owing only to its being deeper and more difficult to comprehend before mastering the natural sciences.

The author announces nevertheless that he will occasionally discuss physical matters inasmuch as they are vital for the exposition of theology (see appendix 37). His statement in the Arabic original is: “But we shall quote in the course of the discussion from the natural sciences what the comprehension of the intended [point] depends upon.” The anonymous translator from Arabic into Hebrew took khalal in its alternate sense of harm, injury, imperfection, yielding a mistranslation,[7] so that in the Hebrew version, the Arabic phrase, “in the course of the discussion,” was erroneously rendered “in the deficiency/weakness of matters/words.”[8] The translator into Slavic, in his turn, sensing that the Hebrew was somehow wrong, but lacking the means to check or correct it, simply omitted the phrase, “in the course of the discussion.”

Since the translator presumably did not know Arabic, his only recourse in case of difficulty was to commentaries on the works he was translating or to other Hebrew works dealing with similar subjects (cf. n. 6 above). Traces of such consultation can be found in the Slavic Logika (see list in Taube 2016, 50n44).

One such trace is the rendering in Slavic by магмуда (mahmuda) of the Hebrew plant name ēśev ha-iśqamonija (the herb of scammony), a transliteration of the Arabic suqmūnījā, ultimately from Greek skammōnia. The form mahmuda, not attested in any Slavic dictionary, derives from Arabic maḥmuda (commendable, praiseworthy), a word also known in Persian and Turkish (in Romanized script: mahmude). It apparently was unfamiliar to the Muscovite scribes, since most of them corrupted it. This, however, does not necessarily indicate that our translator knew Arabic, Persian, or Turkish; he more likely knew this word from a Hebrew medical text. Thus, in a fifteenth-century Hebrew Glossary of Medical Terms (Saint Petersburg, RNB, MS Evr. IIa 321, f. 46), we find:

saqmonijaʾ hu be-ʿarvi qaruy be-shēm aḥēr maḥmudah u-be-yevani saqmonija ve-khēn be-laʿaz niqrēt kakh.

Saqmoniya is called in Arabic by another name maḥmuda, and in Greek scammony, and likewise in Romance.

The Slavic translations appear to be the result of collaboration between the learned Jew and a Christian Slavic scribe who wrote it down in Cyrillic. Such collaboration is by no means a unique phenomenon. Similar collaborative enterprises, involving translators and scribes of different faiths and with differing knowledge of languages, are recorded throughout the Middle Ages—for example, in Spain and southern France in the eleventh- and twelfth-century translations from Arabic into Latin (see Alverny 1986; Freudenthal and Glasner 2014). In our case, the translations seem to have been produced as follows: the Jewish translator, who had before him a Hebrew version, and sometimes several Hebrew versions, dictated his literal rendering into a vernacular, heavily polonized Ruthenian, presumably the only variety of Slavic with which he was familiar. His Slavic collaborator put it down in writing, occasionally “correcting” it in accordance with the scribal conventions of the written language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the bookish “chancery language” to which he was accustomed.

This collaboration between an erudite Jew, whose mastery of the local variety of Slavic vernacular must have been rather limited and his knowledge of the written language practically nonexistent,[9] and a Slav not acquainted with the subject matter, produced a heterogeneous, at times impenetrable text that reflects the input as well as the shortcomings of both collaborators.

There is evidence for such a joint effort in the translation of the Logika (as well as of the Secret of Secrets, to be discussed below). It comes in the form of doublets, not just any kind of doublets, not of single words written twice as happens with scribal doublets (see list in Taube 2016, 51n45), but of whole clauses, reflecting self-corrections by the Jewish translator that were noted down by the Christian scribe in both wordings. This second variety of doublets in the Logika is found only in the logical section of Al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers (c1), the part that did not undergo any further editing and, consequently, any linguistic or textual correction.

Of the many examples (see Taube 2016, 51n46), we will present one that is especially revealing about the method of oral dictation. It appears in the discussion of the difference between the designation of proper names as opposed to their literal meaning (see appendix 38). Here we encounter the following rendering (additions in Slavic marked by italics): “And when we say, ‘God’s servant’ as a sobriquet/nickname, then it would be [considered] simple, since you do not intend by it anything more than what you intend by saying, properly speaking, it will be: for you do not intend anything more than if you had said ‘Jesse’, ‘David.’”

The reformulated clause marked by italics, as written down by the scribe, includes here the translator’s aside zovomo samostiju (properly speaking), which the scribe obviously failed to understand as metatext, including it in the text.

The next item (e) on the list of the late fifteenth-century translations (see p. 39 above) is pseudo-Aristotle’s Secret of Secrets (in Hebrew Sod ha-sodot). This is a tenth-century Arabic work, a “mirror of princes” probably connected with the circle of the “Brethren of Purity” (ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ) in Baṣra, but pretending to be Aristotle’s book of political advice, titled in Arabic sirr al-asrār (see Ryan and Taube 2019).

The Secret of Secrets purports to be a series of letters from Aristotle addressed to Alexander the Great, a fiction enhanced in the Slavic version by the epistolary nature of the long interpolations from Rhazes and Maimonides that were also addressed to a ruler or person of high rank. These “letters” are claimed in the introduction by the supposititious translator into Arabic, Yaḥya ibn Bitriq, to be the work of Aristotle and to have been translated from Greek into Rumi, supposedly Syriac (the language of most Middle Eastern Christians and the common medium for the transmission of Greek scholarly texts into Arabic in the Abbasid caliphate), and from Rumi into Arabic. However, there is no known Greek version of any part of the text.

The preface of this suppositious “translator” of the Secret of Secrets explains that Aristotle was aged and infirm and therefore unable to accompany his pupil Alexander on the latter’s military campaign into Asia and instead acceded to Alexander’s request for advice by letter. In these letters Aristotle offers Alexander moral and practical advice on a wide variety of topics deemed to be of importance to a ruler. These include advice on ethics and kingship, sometimes benevolent and sometimes Machiavellian; on the selection and management of court and state officials and military officers; on the purchase and treatment of slaves; on the conduct of diplomacy, on the strategy, tactics, and weapons of war; and on health and diet.

Aristotle warns Alexander to beware the wiles of women, and to avoid taking into his service men whose bodily features predict bad character, such as blond hair and blue eyes. From among his potential enemies (apart from his close relatives who are always prime suspects), he warns him in particular against the Persians, the Indians, and the Turks (!). Aristotle advocates astrology and alchemy; he describes the use of magic talismans, of poison, of a magic ring; he lists the virtues of precious stones; he includes a manual of physiognomy, seasonal dietary advice, and an onomantic table for predicting the outcome of battles from calculating the numerical value of the names of the opposing commanders.

The Slavic translation of the Secret of Secrets adds numerous small remarks reflecting ideas found in the works by Maimonides (see Ryan and Taube 2019, 46ff.), mainly in his Guide of the Perplexed, but it also includes four major interpolations, three of them from medical works by Maimonides, supplementing chapters of similar content within the Secret of Secrets itself.

1. Maimonides’s On Coitus (Maʾamar ha-mishgal); in Arabic Maqāla fī l-jimāʿ (see chapter on Slavic version by Ryan and Taube in Bos 2018).

This treatise was written by Maimonides for an unnamed, high-ranking official, who inherited from his father a large harem with pretty maidens, and needs advice from his physician on how to maintain, sustain, and entertain his harem without ruining his health. Maimonides supplies his client with practical advice concerning nutrition and physical exercise, naming types of food and drink, including recipes considered to be propitious for enhancing the sexual drive and capacity, of which the most potent is wine (for those not prohibited from it by their religion), and emphasizing the importance of a favorable atmosphere for indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, induced by such activities as listening to fine music and poetry, contemplating beautiful faces, and so on.

2. Maimonides’s On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs (Hebrew: Samej ha-mavet ve-ha-refuʾot negdam); (Arabic: Kitāb al-sumūm wa-l-taḥarruz min al-adwiya al-qattāla) (see Bos 2009).

This is a treatise composed by Maimonides in 1199 CE at the request of ʿAbd al-Raḥim bin ʿAli al-Baysāni, called al-Qāḍi al-Fāḍil, counselor to Saladin. It aroused great interest among Jews and Muslims alike. There are seven manuscript copies of the work in Arabic characters, and two Hebrew translations, one by Moses Ibn Tibbon, preserved in fourteen manuscripts, and one anonymous, probably by Zeraḥyah ben Isaac ben Sheʾaltiel Ḥen, which survives in only two fragmentary manuscripts. What we have in Slavic is a translation of only the second part of Maimonides’s text in Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation, devoted to vegetable and mineral poisons and their antidotes, while the first part, dealing with poisonous snakes and scorpions was not translated for obvious reasons—it wasn’t relevant to East European readers.

3. Maimonides’s On Asthma (Hebrew: Sēfer ha-qatseret); (Arabic: Maqāla fi-l-rabw) (see Bos 2002; Bos and McVaugh 2008).

This treatise, written for an unnamed, high-ranking official, was translated three times into Hebrew and twice into Latin. The Slavic version reflects the Hebrew translation made by the fourteenth-century physician Samuel Benveniste, who served in the house of Don Manuel, brother of King Pedro IV of Aragon. Only chapter 13 of the treatise was translated into Slavic. It deals with general hygienic and ecological advice, such as the importance of fresh air and clean water, and warns against the behavior of patients such as that observed by Maimonides in Egypt, of someone consulting a physician, getting a diagnosis, then going to another physician for a second opinion without telling him about the first, thus making the patient the one who decides by himself which physician to follow. The correct way, says Maimonides, for those who can afford it of course, is to do what kings and rich people do—that is, to call a consultation of several physicians simultaneously.

4. A chapter on physiognomy from the work of the Persian physician and philosopher Muḥammad ibn Zakariya al-Rāzī (854–925). In Arabic the title of the work is Kitāb almanṣūrī fī-l-tibb; in Hebrew it is Sēfer almanṣuri.

The chapter titled ʿal ḥokhmat ha-partsuf (On physiognomy, lit., On the wisdom of the face) describes various traits of the body and what they say about a person’s character. This constitutes a more detailed supplement to the chapter on physiognomy already present in the Secret of Secrets itself.

Beyond the additions from other Jewish sources, the Secret of Secrets in Slavic contains several additions apparently of non-Jewish origin (see Ryan and Taube 2019, 48ff.), additions that should hence be ascribed to the Slavic collaborator. For example, in chapter 2, which is on the conduct of kings, we encounter additions on provisioning and manning the defenses of towns, on not taxing landowners too heavily, on appointing inspectors to tour estates, on the necessity of having maps of the king’s lands, and on the necessity for provincial governors to have maps and censuses of the population, to provide written reports of all their decisions, and, if inadequate, to have them replaced. In chapter 7, which is on the conduct of war, we observe additions on the necessity for the king to have a special regiment of brave and experienced guards who have been in foreign lands, to accustom his horses to the sound of cannon and wild animals, and to let every spearman have a hand cannon at the end of his spear to terrify the horses of the enemy. The sources for these additions remain unknown.[10]

We now turn from the enumeration of the components of the Slavic Secret of Secrets to an analysis of its textual and linguistic particularities and its affinities with other Slavic translations.

The Slavic text survives in some twenty-five copies from the sixteenth century onward. The earliest witness, nowadays preserved at the National Library of Belarus in Minsk (MS 096/276K; see Ryan and Taube 2019, 69), shows characteristics of Belarusian and was made ca. 1560. The other surviving witnesses (see Ryan and Taube 2019, 70–77), ranging from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, were made by Muscovite copyists. Mikhail Speranskij, who in 1908 published the Secret of Secrets, based his edition on the earliest copy and characterized the language of the translation (1908. 117–18) as “West Russian” (sc., Ruthenian), but then went on (1908, 119) to conclude that the translator was a “Belorussian,”[11] basing his claim on the earliest manuscripts. In other sections of his edition—thus, for example, on p. 66 and elsewhere—he speaks of “the Russian text.” On the other hand, A. Krymskij (1910, 229), in his recension of Speranskij’s edition, states that the translator was a “Jew, speaking Little-Russian [sc., Ukrainian]—specifically the dialect of Kyiv,” and that the earliest witness used by Speranskij was only a sixteenth-century Belarusian copy of an earlier Kyivan translation, in which many glaring Ukrainian features were observable.

And indeed, supporting Krymskij’s claim, the Secret of Secrets in Slavic demonstrates several indications of affinity with another text translated by a Kyivan Jew—namely, the Logika—strengthening the probability that both texts were translated by the same person. Thus, both texts share the following innovative terms, not attested at that time outside our corpus of translations from Hebrew:

samost′ (essence/substance, lit., selfness) for Hebrew ‘eṣem.

vsjachestvo (genus/species, lit., generality) for Hebrew kolel/sug.

razdrobenstvo/razdrobnyj (individuality/individual, lit., fragmentation/fragmented) for Hebrew ʾish/ʾishi.

ravnanie/rovnanie (syllogism/deduction/analogical reasoning, lit., comparison) for Hebrew heqēsh/ḥibbur.

hijul′/hijul′nyj (hyle/material) for Hebrew hijuli (a transliteration of Greek [hulē] through Arabic [hajūlā]).

svētskij (political , lit., worldly) for Hebrew medini.

The Secret of Secrets, like the Logika (cf. above p. 51–52), shows traces of oral dictation. Thus, in chapter 2 of the Secret of Secrets, Aristotle is said (see appendix 39) to give the following advice to Alexander (additions in the Slavic marked by italics):

Alexander, people obey the king only for four reasons [lit., by four things]: 1. for (your?] being steadfast in (God’s?) Law 2. for your love for them 3. for ambition 4. for awe. And by redressing their wrongs you will induce in them all four aforementioned things, ‹. . .› and if they dare speak ill of you they will also dare to act. Therefore do not let them talk about you lest you also let them act, otherwise [said], you shall not prevent their deeds unless you prevent their words.

The last sentence has a doublet, a rewording of the phrase, preceded by the metatextual expression “otherwise [said],” a clear indication of the method of oral dictation, when the Jewish translator apparently proposed two alternatives for the Hebrew sentence, and his Slavic collaborator noted them both down in writing, including the metatext.

From the numerous instances of corruption and faulty glossing that the Slavic text, in its primary Ruthenian (specifically Kyivan) form, suffered at the hands of the Muscovite copyists, the following examples are quite characteristic.

The Ruthenian word porobnik (lecher, womanizer, debauchee, fornicator) appears four times in the Secret of Secrets.[12] When it occurs in a passage speaking of the qualities required of the king’s first minister, it appears in the Muscovite copies without comment or gloss, allowing the possibility that, in a series of traits preceded by a negation, the meaning was somehow guessed by the copyists (TT 4.5.23; see Ryan and Taube 2019, 136).

chto by ne byl opoj ni ozhirja ni porobnik.

He should not be a drunkard or glutton or lecher.

On the other hand, in the lists of physical traits and their significations from Rhazes’s Physiognomy (RM) interpolated into the Secret of Secrets, where it is not always obvious whether a specific physical trait signifies something good or bad, the copyists had to make a guess about the meaning of the unfamiliar word; as is to be expected, the results are mixed. The word is either replaced by a wrong equivalent or glossed by a wrong gloss (or both).[13]

RM 7.30.14 (Ryan and Taube 2019, 228): porobnik (lecher), variants A: posobnik (helper) and gloss pomoshch (help); Q: pobornik (supporter).

RM 7.32.4 (Ryan and Taube 2019, 230): porobnik (lecher), variants A: poborʹnik (supporter) and gloss zastupnik (defender, intercessor).

Another example of a Ruthenian word misunderstood and wrongly glossed by a Muscovite scribe is rechi frievny (flirtatious conversation). It appears (see Ryan and Taube 2019, 264) in Maimonides’s treatise On Coitus interpolated into the Slavic Secret of Secrets, in a discussion of the kind of atmosphere propitious for sex, and Maimonides, in the best tradition of physicians, recommends, among other things, gaiety, laughter, coquetry, and so on. The expression rechi frievny for “flirtatious conversation” is maintained (with minor spelling differences) by the Muscovite copyists, but whether they understood the meaning is questionable, since one of them, the copyist of manuscript A, adds an erroneous gloss: slova poleznyje (helpful words).[14]

We now turn to the two remaining items, f and g, in the list of fifteenth-century translations from Hebrew (see p. 36).

Item f is an eight-line sorites where each line begins with the word ending the previous line, or put simply, a cyclical chain of maxims “on the soul,” which, as we shall show below, was most probably part of the previous item, the Secret of Secrets, but is now preserved in Slavic as part of a miscellany named the Laodicean Epistle.[15]

Actually, the Slavic miscellany is not an epistle at all, but a heterogeneous text that in one of its parts mentions the Laodicean Epistle. It is attested in Russian manuscripts from the sixteenth century onward, and it contains three principal parts (see Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 256–76): (1) a treatise named litoreja v kvadratekh (Cipher in squares), which is of obscure content (in each square figure there are letters of the Slavic alphabet, with commentaries like sila [power], stolp [pillar], etc.); (2) a sorites in eight lines on the sovereignty of the soul (and it is this part that interests us); and (3) a riddle that begins with the words ashche kto khoshchet povedati imja prevedshago Laodikijskoe Poslanie (if anyone wants to discover the name of the translator of the Laodicean Epistle), followed by a series of simple numerical combinations that have been deciphered as Feodor Kuritsyn diak—that is, the name of the leader of the Moscow Judaizing heretics (see discussion below, p. 63ff.), the Muscovite secretary of state Feodor Kuritsyn.[16]

It is clear, then, why the entire text was traditionally named Laodicean Epistle as a pars pro toto, and why its link to the Muscovite Judaizing heresy could be important, for we may learn from it something about the ideology of the heretics, given that the text is considered by Russian scholars to be an original work of the Judaizers. The oldest version of the sorites is found in two sixteenth-century manuscripts, given together with translations reflecting my understanding of the text (see appendix 40).

When I began investigating this text some thirty years ago, a discussion was in progress, mainly in the pages of Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, about the interpretation of this sorites, with various opinions, all of them starting from the assumption that it was an original text of the Judaizing heretics, all of them emphasizing the freethinking reflected in the first line, “the soul is sovereign,” and all of them focusing on the problematical point (from a Christian perspective) in the fifth line, of the seemingly positive depiction of “the pharisaic way of life.” Some scholars (e.g., Fine 1966; Kämpfer 1968; Maier 1969) pointed to the Jewish provenance of some expressions, including the positive viewing of “the pharisaic way of life” as reflecting ḥajēj prishut, which in Hebrew signifies a “life of abstinence.”

By a happy chance, I recalled a passage promising a sorites in eight lines that I had come across when reading W. F. Ryan’s 1978 paper on the Secret of Secrets (see appendix 41):

And I am drawing for you a gnomic philosophic divine figure divided in eight parts . . .

In Hebrew, like in the Arabic original, the promise of the figure is indeed followed by a circle divided in eight parts, as can be seen in Figures 3 and 4.

FIGURE 3. Circle in Eight Parts, Dublin, Chester Beatty Library MS Ar 4183, f. 12r pseudo-Aristotle Sirr al-Asrār, copied in Herat (Afghanistan) by Ja‘far al-Bāysunghuri, 829 AH/1425–26 CE. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Chester Beatty Library.

FIGURE 4. Circle in Eight Parts, Hebrew MS London, British Library Or. 2396, f. 126v pseudo-Aristotle Sod ha-Sodot, copied 1382 CE, Italy. Reproduced with the kind permission of the British Library.

The circle contains the following sorites in eight parts (see appendix 42):

1. The world is a garden, hedged in by the kingdom.

2. The kingdom is a power exalted by law.

3. Law is a custom administered by the king.

4. The king is a shepherd supported by the army.

5. The army are helpers nourished by money.

6. Money is sustenance gathered by the people.

7. The people are servants subjected to justice.

8. Justice is bliss and the basis of social order (lit., reparation of the world).

As noted by Ryan (1978, 252), in Slavic, unlike in Hebrew (and Arabic), we encounter a rather different text (see appendix 43).

The first surprise: two circles are promised instead of one (Ryan and Taube 2019, 126–27; portions added in Slavic are marked by italics):

And therefore I wish to inscribe for you two circles, one worldly and the other spiritual. And I will begin the worldly one with “world” and the spiritual with “soul,” and each of them [has] eight parts and in them I shall draw together for you all the requirements for their attainment, and had I written for you only these two circles, that would suffice you, for it is not possible for a king to master worldly matters without mastering spiritual matters except by learned discourse, and without this not even his planet shall help him, and all that is discussed at length in this book is contained in concise manner in these circles, Amen.

The second surprise: the two promised circles are missing from all Slavic manuscripts.

Two questions have to be asked, then: (1) Where does the second promised circle, unattested in Hebrew or Arabic, come from? (2) Where and why have both circles vanished?

For the first question, one has to assume that it is an addition by the translator from Hebrew. It remains unclear, however, whether he took the second circle from an unknown Hebrew version of the Secret of Secrets, from another unidentified Hebrew work, or he made it up himself, since no similar Hebrew text has been unearthed so far.

In Arabic, to be sure, there is a whole work influenced by the Secret of Secrets, destined to serve as a spiritual mirror of princes. This is the Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom written in the early thirteenth century by Muḥyiddin Ibn al-ʿArabi (Nyberg 1919), which I was thrilled to discover and placed high hopes on for finding the second circle. To my great disappointment, despite the many parallelisms between the two texts, it did not contain the circle beginning with “soul” parallel to the one beginning with “world” in the Secret of Secrets. Hence, until shown otherwise, one has to assume that the second circle is the work of the Jewish translator.

As for the second question, we have only a partial answer. The worldly circle has not been traced so far in Slavic, but the spiritual circle beginning with “soul” is undoubtedly the sorites in the Laodicean Epistle. And since we know now that it contains eight sections, this allows us to better choose among the variants in order to arrive at the following reconstruction of the Slavic (see appendix 44).

1. “Soul” is a separate substance whose constraint is religion.

2. “Religion” is a [set of] commandments established by a prophet.

3. “Prophet” is a leader authenticated by working miracles.

4. “Miracle working” is a gift strengthened by wisdom.

5. “Wisdom”—its power is in a temperate (“pharisee”) way of life.

6. “Temperate” (“Pharisee”) way of life—its goal is learning.

7. “Learning” is most blessed—through it we attain the fear of God.

8. “The fear of God” is the incipience of the virtues—by it is edified the soul.

On the basis of this reconstructed text, we may attempt a retroversion into Hebrew (see appendix 45).

The importance of this text lies in its content, which is undoubtedly heretical from the perspective of the Russian church that persecuted the Muscovite heretics (see below p. 65ff.). The “Pharisee way of life,” viewed as being positive, certainly raised objections among Christians versed in the New Testament, where the Pharisees are depicted as the “bad guys” who opposed Jesus and his teachings. According to the Jewish interpretation of the term, however, ḥajēj prishut is a life of temperance, of abstention from excess, from worldly pleasures (but distinct from Christian asceticism), a life whose goal is learning, in order for one to understand, each according to his ability, the greatness of God manifest in the creation of the world.

The definition of religion (lit., faith) in the second line as “a law established by a prophet” must also be considered heretical from the point of view of the church. In contrast to its being perfectly acceptable to Jews and Muslims, representing prophetic monotheism, this definition does not at all fit Christian dogma, where instead of the prophet we have Christ the son of God. By establishing the link between this sorites, formerly considered an original text of the Muscovite heretics, and the translations from Hebrew, specifically the Secret of Secrets, the Jewish provenance of this text is clearly validated. However, a Hebrew text similar to the one reconstructed on the basis of the Slavic has not yet been found.

The final item in the list of fifteenth-century translations to be discussed is (item g), a collection of nine Old Testament Hagiographa (Ketubim) preserved in a unique manuscript written between 1517 and 1530 (see Temchin 2008), now in the Academy Library in Vilnius. The text, written down by a Christian, is clearly a copy of a translation that must be somewhat earlier, probably the late fifteenth century (see Thomson 1998, 876). With the exception of the Psalms, adapted from the extant Russian Church Slavonic version (see Taube 2004), the remaining eight books were translated from Hebrew, either entirely—thus Proverbs (see Taube 2015), Job (see Taube 2005b), Ecclesiastes (see Altbauer 1992), Esther (see Peretts 1915; Altbauer 1992), Ruth (see Altbauer 1992), Lamentations (see Altbauer 1992), Song of Songs[17] (see Altbauer 1992)—or partly also on the basis of earlier translations: thus Daniel (see Evseev 1902; Arkhipov 1995, 147–240).

In the translation of Daniel, whose Masoretic text is bilingual, with some parts in Hebrew (1:1–2:4a and 8:1–12:13) and the rest in Aramaic, the translator made a surprising choice: in order to show the bilingual nature of the book, the translator rendered the Hebrew into Ruthenian, whereas for the Aramaic part, except for chapter 3, he took the pre-Symeonic version (i.e., the earliest, perhaps tenth-century Old Church Slavonic translation) as his basis and revised it from the Aramaic (see Thomson 1998, 878–79). This attempt at preserving the bilingualism of the source version evidently required a collaboration between the Jew who translated it and a Slavic Christian partner who would have had knowledge of and access to the Church Slavonic texts.

Тhis choice of rendering the Hebrew portions in the Ruthenian vernacular, while rendering the Aramaic portions in the bookish Russian variety of Old Church Slavonic, may sound counterintuitive to modern linguists who think of Hebrew as the sacred written language, as opposed to spoken Aramaic, the lingua franca of the ancient Middle East. However, from the perspective of a medieval Jew, Aramaic was the supersacred language, only available to the erudite few, the language of the most holy books, the Talmud and the Zohar, and of the most holy prayers, Kol Nidrej and Kaddish.

The biblical texts in this group (namely, item g), most of which, as has been said, were translated from Hebrew, may after all turn out not to belong to “the Literature of the Judaizers,” though their time of translation coincides with the other items of the list. In any case, there is no positive proof for such a link. Some scholars (see Peretts 1908, 25–26) suggested that the translation of the biblical books was made for Christians in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who wanted to read the biblical text in its original form, while others (see Sobolevskij 1903, 399–400; see also Alekseev 1999a, 134) proposed that they were made for Jews who knew no Hebrew. Both suggestions seem highly improbable, and both remain unproven. Recent research (see Grishchenko 2018) on late fifteenth-century Russian-Slavonic Pentateuch manuscripts corrected according to the Masoretic tradition and containing glosses traceable to a Turkic Targum, as well as to Jewish exegetic and Midrashic sources, constitute a promising new direction (the author links both the Pentateuch and the Vilnius collection of the biblical texts to the “Literature of the Judaizers”) that may yield new insights into this problem.

To sum up our discussion of the latter group of translations, we observe that it consists of Ruthenian texts, reflecting the language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, though some of them underwent a certain degree of Russification when being copied and glossed in Muscovy. In terms of content, it is made up (except for the biblical translations in item g) of medieval scholarly, scientific, and philosophical texts, mostly of Arabic-Muslim provenance, which have nothing specifically Jewish about them, although in some cases they are falsely presented in Slavic as Jewish works—for example in the Logika, where the name of al-Ghazālī, who is called Abu Ḥāmid in both the Arabic and Hebrew, is modified in Slavic to Aviasaf. This group of translations is traditionally called “the Literature of the Judaizers,” following Sobolevskij’s 1903 appellation.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE TRANSLATIONS AND THEIR LINK TO THE JUDAIZERS

In order to be able to address the question why the translations called “the Literature of Judaizers” were made at all, and why the specific texts discussed above were chosen for translation, I will first draw a picture of the historical circumstances in which the translations of the second group emerged, and of the Jewish figures from Eastern Europe who, I suggest, participated in producing them.

The two major polities of Eastern Europe in the fifteenth century were Muscovy, a conservative Christian Orthodox principality that had recently begun to rise to the status of a major power, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Both claimed to be the successors to the Rusʹ principality of Kyiv, whose autonomous existence ceased after the Mongol conquests of the mid-thirteenth century and that afterward found itself incorporated into the Grand Duchy.

As regards a Jewish presence, however, there is a radical difference between the two. Muscovy did not have Jews living within its borders, whereas the Grand Duchy of Lithuania did. Yet in the fifteenth century the Grand Duchy was still recovering from the Tatar occupation and was not known as a center of learning, either Jewish or Christian. By the middle of that century, as pointed out in the first part, we are still unable to name a single Jewish author living there.

But in the second half of the fifteenth century we do finally encounter two figures, both from Kyiv, whose scholarly activities bore fruit that subsist to this day. They were Rabbanite Jews, certainly, but apparently not Ashkenazi. In the last moment, before being totally overrun and absorbed without trace by the Ashkenazi newcomers from the West, the original Jewry of Eastern Europe had finally two names to bear witness to its scholarly tradition, a tradition that, like that of the Karaites in this area, is intellectually oriented southward to Constantinople and Byzantium, and, after 1453, to Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire. In the conventional typological division of European Jewry into north and south, Kyivan Jewry is clearly part of the South.

First among these figures (see Taube 2010) is, finally, the first Jewish author from Eastern Europe whose works subsist and whose name is known to us, R. Moses son of Jacob (1449–1520), called R. Moses the Exile (rabbi moshe ha-gole), R. Moses the Russian (rabbi moshe ha-rusi), or R. Moses the Second (rabbi moshe ha-shēni), in order to distinguish him from the twelfth-century rabbi, Moses of Kyiv, student of Rabbenu Tam, mentioned in chapter 1.

Rabbi Moses the Exile applied himself to biblical exegesis, poetry, grammar, astronomy, and, last but not least, as we shall see, to kabbalah. We are relatively well informed about his life, since he furnished us with many details in colophons to his writings. He studied in his youth in Constantinople, both with Rabbanite teachers such as the author of Birkat Abraham, the Talmudist R. Abraham Sarfati, and Karaite teachers like Elijah Bashyatsi. In later years, after returning to Kyiv, he engaged in polemics against the Karaites, and inevitably attracted virulent attacks on the part of the Karaite leaders in Constantinople, including his former Karaite teacher Bashyatsi and his disciple Caleb Efendopulo.

Rabbi Moses is the author of several works that have reached us either in print or in manuscript form.[18] These include:

1. Otsar neḥmad (Coveted treasure), a supercommentary on R. Abraham Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Torah, in which he displays an acquaintance not only with the most important Jewish exegetes and thinkers (e.g., Rashi, Maimonides, Nahmanides, Gersonides, Joseph Ibn Kaspi, Moses Narboni) but also with lesser known figures, such as Joseph ben Eliezer Bonfils and Samuel Ibn Motot, as well as with rarely cited ones, such as Abraham of Crimea. He also mentions Muslim thinkers, including Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, and Averroes.

2. Jesod ʿibbur (Principles of intercalation), a work on the Jewish calendar.

3. Pērush shēsh kenafajim, a commentary on the Shesh kenafajim by Immanuel bar Yakov Bonfils (see above, p. 40).

And, significantly, two kabbalistic works:

4. Pērush sēfer jetsira, a commentary on the early esoteric work, Book of Creation.

5. Shoshan sodot, (Lily of secrets), a kabbalistic work so named since it contains שוש״ן— that is, in numerical value, 656 secrets.

Rabbi Moses the Exile’s exegetical and astronomical works seem to have had little impact. The first three items in his list of works remain unpublished and are preserved in manuscript form only—the first in five copies (two of them Karaite), and the second and third in single copies.

His kabbalistic works, on the other hand, seem to have had a somewhat greater impact: his commentary on Sēfer Yetsira was first printed in 1779 as Otsar Hashēm—(The treasure of the name), and has since been included in printed editions of Sēfer Yetsira.

His work Shoshan Sodot (Lily of secrets) was first printed in 1874 and has been reprinted twice since then—in 1970 and in 1995.

Rabbi Moses is remembered chiefly as the initiator of the liturgical rite common to the variegated Jewry of Crimea, the rite known as nusaḥ Kaffa (version of Kaffa) or minhag Kaffa (custom of Kaffa). Only a few years after being definitively exiled from Kyiv in 1495 and settling in Kaffa (Theodosia) in Crimea, he became head of the community there, and introduced for it a new, commonly accepted canon of prayer (see, however, Shapira 2012, 71), which constituted a compromise between the various components of the Jewish community there, the Romaniote, the Sephardi, the Ashkenazi, the autochthonous Krimchak, and the Iranian (Tat). Undoubtedly, the establishing of such a commonly agreed on canon of prayer is quite a remarkable achievement, as anyone who ever went to a synagogue could testify.

Rabbi Moses, I suggest, is also linked to the second group of translations from Hebrew into Slavic. Before elaborating on his possible role, however, I wish to introduce a second Jewish figure from fifteenth-century Kyiv known by name, and in this case not only from Hebrew testimonies, but also from Christian sources.

This other figure is Zechariah ben Aharon ha-Kohen, copyist and annotator of scientific and philosophical texts copied between 1454 and 1485. He also, I submit, participated in rendering into Slavic the second group of translations.

Following is the list, in chronological order, of the Hebrew manuscripts copied and annotated by Zechariah, as evident from the explicit marking of his name in the colophon:[19]

1. Sēfer ha-galgal. Johannes de Sacrobosco’s cosmographical work On the Sphere (see above p. 39), ms. RNB Firkovich Evr. I 355. Copy completed by Zechariah on September 18, 1454, in Kyiv.

2. Mesharet Moshe (Moses’s servant), a commentary on (and defense of) Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, attributed to Qalonymos of Provence and attested in many manuscripts from the thirteenth century onward. Zechariah’s copy is ms RNB Firkovich Evr. I 502. Copy completed on September 2, 1455.

3. Ruaḥ ḥēn (Spirit of grace), ms. RNB Firkovich Evr. I 494. Copy completed on October 31, 1456. This anonymous thirteenth-century philosophic encyclopedia, in the Maimonidean vein, has been variously ascribed to Samuel Ibn Tibbon, to Jacob Anatoli, and to Zeraḥiah ha-Levi Anatoli.

4. Sēfer alfargani (Book of al-Farghānī). Aḥmad al-Farghānī, Elements of astronomy. Ms. Vienna Imperial Library, codex hebr. 60 II (Schwarz 1925, no. 183). Copy completed by Zechariah on 14.1.1468 in Kyiv.

FIGURE 5. Zechariah’s 1468 colophon, Vienna, Austrian National Library MS 60 II (183), f. 40r. Al-Farghāni: Elements of Astronomy. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Austrian National Library.

This compendium of Ptolemy’s Almagest, prepared in in the ninth century by the Persian astronomer Aḥmad al-Farghānī (ca. 800–70), was translated into Hebrew by Jacob Anatoli in Naples in the thirteenth century, on the basis of both Arabic and Latin versions. Above is a photocopy of Zechariah’s colophon.

5. Two missing pages from the third chapter of Be-‘etsem ha-galgal, Solomon ben Joseph Ibn Ayyub’s Hebrew translation of Averroes’s On the Substance of the Celestial Sphere, ms RNB Firkovich Evr. I 436 (the rest of the manuscript is written in a different hand). The missing pages (f. 69v.–70r) were copied by Zechariah on the 27.5.1485 in Damascus, and in the colophon he calls himself “man of Jerusalem,” which indicates that in the meantime—that is, sometime between 1468 when he was still in Kyiv, and 1485 when he reemerged in Damascus—he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Below is a photocopy of the final page the text, with the colophon on the two bottom lines reading:

Completed by Zechariah man of Jerusalem son of the honorable Rabbi Aharon, Kohen Tsedek [just priest] of blessed memory

in Damascus, 13 of Sivan of the year [5]245.

Zechariah’s name came down to us not only in the colophons of the five surviving manuscripts he copied between 1454 and 1485, but also from Russian sources depicting the upheaval surrounding the rise and eventual demise of “the Heresy of the Judaizers” movement that threatened to take Muscovy by storm, or so at least it is depicted on recent nationalistic Russian Orthodox websites celebrating “five hundred years since the victory over the Judaizers” (see below, p. 75–76).

FIGURE 6. Zechariah’s 1485 colophon, Saint Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS Firkovich Evr I 436, f. 70r. Averroes’s On the Substance of the Celestial Sphere. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Russian National Library.

Here are the few details outlining what we know about this movement, deriving from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources and, as usual, limited to testimonies stemming from the camp of their detractors, in this case the Russian Orthodox Church (the sources are presented extensively in Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 256–523).

According to the two main representatives of the Russian church who persecuted them, Archbishop Gennadij of Novgorod and Iosif Sanin, also known as Saint Iosif Volotskij, founder and abbot of Volokolamsk Monastery, the Judaizing movement started in Novgorod in 1470, shortly before the annexation of Great Novgorod by Ivan III, grand prince of Moscow. It was in that year that Prince Mikhailo Olelkovich of Kyiv visited the city-republic of Novgorod in the company of several nobles and merchants, among them a Jew named Scharia, a man “knowledgeable in matters of astrology, astronomy, necromancy, and magic,” according to Saint Iosif Volotskij in his Prosvetitelʹ (Enlightener)—written several years after the heresy had been crushed, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century (see appendix 46).

On his arrival in Novgorod, according to the Prosvetitelʹ, Scharia succeeded (Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 469), in first enticing a Novgorod priest by the name of Denis and leading him astray into Judaism (i toj prezhe prelʹsti popa Denisa i v zhidovstvo otvede, “after which Denis brought to him another priest by the name of Aleksej”). With the arrival of a few more Jews from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, their activity expanded and more names were added to the list of heretics, up to some two dozen.

The Novgorod group of heretics included diaks (clerks, scribes), merchants, and priests of the lower white clergy (the nonmonastic clergy). Two of the heretics (the aforementioned Denis and Aleksej) were later invited—surprisingly enough, by Ivan III himself during his visit to Novgorod in 1480—to come to Moscow, where they were appointed by Ivan to major churches in the Kremlin. There they went on with their efforts to expand the heretical movement, obtaining protection and support from within Ivan’s court—namely, from Fedor Kuritsyn, chief diplomat of Ivan III, as well from Ivan’s daughter-in-law, the Moldavian princess Elena, whose son Dmitrij was the destined heir to the throne of Russia.

In 1487, Gennadij, the newly appointed archbishop of Novgorod, discovered the heresy in his city and began persecuting the heretics, though without strong backing from either the secular power—Ivan III, who had appointed him archbishop—or the ecclesiastical authorities in Moscow. This lack of cooperation is reflected and complained about in Archbishop Gennadij’s letters to other archbishops, bishops and abbots written between 1487 and 1490 (see Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 309ff.).

The church lacked the conceptual and institutional tools to carry on a serious discussion with the heretics, which might have resulted in its either eliminating or assimilating their ideas, whatever those might be. It therefore chose the juridical path and accused them of being “Judaizing apostates,” by which accusation they hoped to eradicate the heretics along with the heresy.

After several delays, the heretics were finally brought to trial and punished severely. This was done in two phases. In the 1490 trial, the reforming Novgorod clerics were sentenced and punished. Then, in 1502, Princess Elena and her son, the heir-designate Dmitrij, were imprisoned by Ivan, who for reason of state shifted his support to his son of his second marriage, Vassilij III. Only a year later, in 1503, were the Muscovite functionaries and clerics accused of heresy finally tried and heavily punished in their turn, although some of the more powerful ones, first and foremost their leader Feodor Kuritsyn, escaped persecution. By 1504, the heresy had been crushed.

While there is general agreement regarding this chain of events, the nature of the heresy, its ideology, and especially its affinity to Judaism are subjects of ongoing controversy. The specific accusations made in the chapters o novojavishejsja jeresi (on the newly appeared heresy) by Iosif Volotskij that were incorporated into the Prosvetitelʹ, written many years after the events, are seen by most scholars (the most influential being Jakov S. Lurie [see Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 109ff., 146ff.]) as unreliable calumnious fabrications.

Such is the very detailed yet hardly believable claim in the Prosvetitelʹ (see Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 469) that Denis and Aleksej were so strongly attracted to the Jewish faith (zhidovskuju veru), that they continuously socialized with the Jews, ate and drank with them and learned Judaism [zhidovstvo] from them. Not only that; they also taught their wives and children Judaism. They even wanted to undergo circumcision, but the Jews advised them not to do so and to keep their Judaism secret, while outwardly pretending to be Christians. They (sc., the Jews) changed Aleksej’s name to Abraham and called his wife Sarah.

The accusations made by Archbishop Gennadij of Novgorod in his letters to his colleagues, although they were written during the actual time of the heresy, the 1480s and 1490s (Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 309ff.), are rather unspecific and are also considered unreliable. The few specific details in the accusations, obtained either through denunciation or forced by interrogation, such as denying the divinity of the Holy Trinity, desecrating holy icons, and using heretical psalms for praying in the manner of the Jews, are also considered by most scholars unreliable or at least fuzzy (see Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 130).

No wonder, therefore, that different scholars have described the Judaizers variously as Anti-Trinitarians, Arians, Bogomils, proto-Reformers, Freethinkers, Humanists, Rationalists, Hussites, or even Waldensians.

The most convincing reading of the heresy is that given by the German philosopher Thomas M. Seebohm, to whose interpretation, as given in his Habilitationsschrift “Ratio und Charisma” (1977, 530ff.), I subscribe.

According to Seebohm, the heresy was an original, sui generis Russian phenomenon, for which only very partial analogies, and certainly no affiliate influences, can be traced in the West. It started in Novgorod as a movement within the white clergy to reform the church from within. After its transfer to Moscow, however, it became a Bildungsbewegung (educational movement), espoused mainly by the newly emerging class of educated lay functionaries serving in the administration of the Muscovite state. Their keen interest in worldly-scientific literature was greater than their interest in religious issues. However, the underlying ontological concepts of the translated literature, echoed in the original literature of the heretics, reflected a strict prophetic monotheism incompatible with central concepts of Christian dogma, such as the Trinity, incarnation, and resurrection. The heretics assigned sovereignty to reason, which was posited as the foundation of any religion, and claimed legitimacy for exploiting every possible source in the search for truth, including the Hellenic pagan Aristotle, who is compared in their literature to a prophet. The church justifiably saw this as a threat to its monopoly on determining the literary canon. Since the translated texts were of Jewish origin and displayed a pronounced monotheistic conception, which can easily and with good cause be interpreted as anti-Trinitarian, the Russian church had every reason to suspect the heretics of “Judaizing.” Thus far Seebohm.

We are not sure how much these heretics were interested in Judaism as a religion, but they, or at least some of them, certainly were interested in the scientific and philosophical texts that the Jews possessed, and that at the time were completely unknown in Muscovy; nor were there any similar texts of non-Jewish provenance available anywhere in the Slavia Orthodoxa.

For whom, then, were Scharia’s translations intended? Was it for the Judaizers in Muscovy just mentioned or for a Christian readership in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as suggested by Romanchuk in 2005? Or perhaps, as some have claimed (e.g., Florovskij 1937, 13), for “internal usage among Jews without sufficient knowledge of Hebrew”?

The “internal” hypothesis can be dismissed right away. Generally, Jews in all their places of dispersion acquired the local tongue and spoke it. There is a great distance, however, between speaking and writing. Regarding the translations of the biblical texts in the Vilnius Codex, Altbauer (1992, 20) resolutely states: “it is highly unlikely that Jews in Belorussia in that period generally were able to read texts not in Hebrew characters.”

As for the nonbiblical texts, whether on astronomy, logic, theology, or medicine, these do not belong to the kind of literature likely to have been translated for Jewish men or women undereducated in Hebrew. Such texts were known to and read by only a few highly cultivated Jewish scholars who, ipso facto, were fluent in Hebrew (and Aramaic) and consequently did not need a translation, certainly not into Ruthenian. In short, in the fifteenth century, Slavic of any variety cannot be considered a cultural language for Jews.

Were, then, the translations made for the Judaizing heretics in Muscovy or for Christians in the Grand Duchy?

While the question of the intended readership does not have a clear-cut answer, the evidence regarding the actual readership points to Muscovy, given that the overwhelming majority of witnesses comes from Russian copies made in Muscovy. Nevertheless, a small number of copies suggest that the translations were also read in their place of translation, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Thus, as mentioned above (p. 36), two of the translations, Immanuel bar Yakov’s Six Wings and Sacrobosco’s On the Sphere (items a and b), were preserved in a single Ruthenian copy, kept at the library of the Greek Orthodox Brotherhood of the Holy Theotokos in Chełm, a manuscript that disappeared after World War I, of which only small excerpts had been published by Sobolevskij (1903, 409–19). Of the component texts of the Slavic Logika only one Kyivan manuscript of item c1 in the list is known, a Ruthenian translation of the section on Logic from al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers that did not reach Muscovy (see above p. 36). All the other translated texts are preserved in Russian copies only.

The second piece of evidence substantiating the affirmation that the readership (perhaps not the primarily intended, but certainly the overwhelming majority of the actual readership) is to be looked for in Muscovy is the fact that some of the translations called “the Literature of the Judaizers” are explicitly mentioned in Archbishop Gennadij’s letters with reference to the Judaizing heretics:

Thus, the Six Wings (item a) is mentioned (see Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 315–20) by Gennadij as being used by the Judaizers in a letter from 1489 CE ( = 6997 from Creation, according to the Orthodox Christian calendar), where he quotes one of the heretics, Aleksey, claiming the following: “Three years will pass and the seventh millennium will end, and then, he says, we [sc., the heretics] will be needed.” And Gennadij continues: “I have therefore studied the Six Wings and found in it heresy.” The heresy consists, according to Gennadij, in the different calculation of the years elapsed since Creation, whereby the heretics “have stolen years from us”—украли у нас лет (ukrali u nas let)—by using the data of the Six Wings, according to which “only 276 complete nineteen-year cycles have elapsed since Adam,” yielding, according to Gennadij, the number 5228 (actually it should be 5244; see discussion in Taube 1995b, 177). They (that is, the heretics using the Hebrew calendar) claim that the year 7000 from Creation (the year of the expected Second Coming), was still far away—i potomu ino u nikh eshche prishestvija Khristova net, ino to oni zhdut antikhrista (“and therefore, according to them, there is yet no Second Coming of Christ, and thus they are awaiting the Аntichrist”).

Likewise, another translation, the Logika, corresponding to items c and d, appears (see Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 320) in a list of desiderata in the same letter from Gennadij to a colleague, enquiring whether in his monastery there might be found, among other works, a copy of the Logika, since, he writes, “u jeretikov vsjo jest” (the heretics have everything).

The firm link between the translations and the Judaizing heretics is thus clearly established. Nevertheless, the question remains: were they the originally intended readership of this corpus of translations? We do not have definite proof for that.

In 2005, Robert Romanchuk suggested that the translations were commissioned by and destined for a Kyivan readership, most likely for the princely court of the Olelkovichi. This suggestion was embraced by a number of scholars (e.g., Temchin 2017; Grishchenko 2018; Shapira 2018), but it should, as of now, be considered unproven.[20]

As for the identity of the Jewish translator, we have several clues strengthening our claim that this was the Kyivan Jew Zechariah ben Aharon (see above, p. 62ff.). For example, there is some overlapping between the list of translations from Hebrew into Slavic and the list of texts copied by Zechariah ben Aharon, and this is hardly by chance. Thus, Zechariah is the copyist of Sacrobosco’s On the Sphere in a Vienna MS, which turns out to be (see Taube 1995a) the Hebrew version closest to its Slavic translation (item b, see above). One may add also that the Vienna MS copied by Zechariah is part of a codex having belonged to Rabbi Moses the Exile.

Beyond these clues, we have explicit evidence pointing to Zechariah as being the translator of the Logika (items c1, c2 and d). The evidence comes from an overlooked manuscript, (Kyiv, Vernadsʹkyj Library, no. 117п, published by V. N. Peretts in 1906) where in a preface to the Psalter we find two lists of the seven sciences.[21] In one of these lists, the names of the sciences are attributed to Scharia (Схарїа), while the other list has names of Byzantine origin attributed to a certain Thomas the Greek, probably the thirteenth-century Byzantine scholar Thomas Magister. In Table 2, we added for the purpose of comparison the names of the sciences in the Logika.

TABLE 2

It appears clearly from the table that the names attributed to Scharia are identical with the names found in the translation of the Logika.

Scharia is thus undoubtedly identified as the translator of the Logika, and hence, using Occam’s razor, this attribution is extended to the whole corpus of late fifteenth-century translations from Hebrew (perhaps with the exception of the biblical texts, item g., see above p. 59).

Now that we have a name for the translator, as well as a probable identification of the intended (though perhaps not primarily) audience and ample evidence of the actual readership, it is time to return to the question: Why and for what purpose were the translations made at all?

In order to try and understand the tendencies and aims of these translations, we need to look at the large addition in the Slavic Logika, placed at the very end of Maimonides’s Logical Terminology, just before al-Ghazālī’s section on theology in his Intentions of the philosophers. This addition has to be ascribed to the Jewish translator. It constitutes a rationalist manifesto, reflecting views found in the writings of Maimonides’s followers (see appendix 47).

The first words, “And this Wisdom was perfected by Aristotle,” are from the final chapter of Maimonides’s Logical Terminology, but the remainder (marked by italics in the English translation) is an addition by the translator.

And this Wisdom was perfected by Aristotle, chief of all Philosophers, both ancient and recent in accord with the view of the wise men of Israel, since after the exile they did not find their books, so they relied on his wisdom, which is equal in its foundations to that of the prophets. For it is inconceivable that a prophet be incomplete in the seven wisdoms, and especially in Logic ‹and in› the Mathematical sciences. And he completed it in the aforementioned eight books, for it guides everyone in those wisdoms, and it is like a weight and a measure and like a touchstone for gold.

The Slavic then resumes with several sentences from Maimonides’s chapter 14 on the division of the sciences, until we arrive at the seventh science, theology, where another long addition appears:

And he completed it in the aforementioned eight books, for it guides everyone in those wisdoms, and it is [for them] like a weight and measure and like a touchstone for gold. And art is [a term by which] sometimes is designated the theoretical science and sometimes the practical [craftsmanship]. The first among the seven wisdoms is Arithmetic, second Geometry, third Music, fourth Astronomy. The fifth is Politics, which divides into four: (1) self-governance (ethics), (2) household governance (economics), (3) the conduct of a great lord, (4) governance of a land and its rules. ‹ . . . › The sixth is Physics, and the books thereof are ten, under which is also Medicine. The seventh wisdom is Theology, which is the crowning of all seven as well as the core of their purpose. For through it will the human soul survive in eternity. And this a man of any creed will admit, that he who is ignorant, cannot be with the Lord. For this is as if one were to say: I serve the prince, but who that prince is I do not know; or: I go to church, but where that church is I do not know. And these seven wisdoms are not in accordance with any [particular] religion, but rather in accordance with humanity. And a man of any creed can embrace them. As we see that in all creeds it is asserted that the jurist resembles the keeper of the treasury, whereas the wise man resembles him who adds to it. And to whichever thing one fails to add according to it(s nature), that thing perishes. Said Alexander [Aphrodisiensis]: The reasons for ignorance of the truth are four. (1) Its depth for the shallow mind, (2) the weakness of the intellect, (3) striving to overpower and dominate, (4) cherishing that to which one is accustomed. And this is a greater hindrance than any other. And these accomplishments cannot be [achieved] but in combination with the political science by shedding all vices. As King David said [Psalms 145:8]: The Lord is near unto all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.

The passages in italics, which, as said, do not come from Maimonides’s Logical Terminology, seem most revealing about the ideology and perspective of the Jewish translator.

Basically, the ideas exposed here draw on the traditional sources of reference, ultimately the Bible and the Talmud, using in a skillful manner citations that have served in the past in discussions about wisdom and faith.

Thus, the acknowledgment of Aristotle as “chief of the Philosophers” is paralleled, for example, in Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed (1, 5), and the insistence that Aristotle’s views accord with those of Jewish law is commonplace in the Guide (e.g., 2, 6). Maimonides compares Aristotle’s wisdom to that of the prophets in his 1199 letter in Arabic (see Forte 2016, 51) to Samuel Ibn Tibbon, regarding the translation of the Guide: “Aristotle’s intellect manifests the highest possible perfection except for those who, having received divine inspiration, became prophets.”

The right to add to the divine law, reserved exclusively for the sage, is also stipulated by Maimonides—for example, in the introduction to his Commentary on the Mishna, in al-Ḥarizi’s translation from Arabic (see appendix 48).

For there is no Torah given after the first prophet [sc., Moses] and one must not add to or subtract from it, as it is said [Deuteronomy 30:12] “it is not in heaven,” and God has not allowed us to learn [the Law] from the prophets, but [only] from the sages, masters of logical argumentation and knowledge.

The statement associating stagnation with demise—“And to whichever thing one fails to add according to it[s nature], that thing perishes”—derives from the Babylonian Talmud (see appendix 49).

The universality of wisdom is a frequent theme in the writings of the Maimonideans. Thus, Shem Tob Ibn Falaquera, the thirteenth-century follower of Maimonides, in his Book of Grades (Venetianer, 75), remarks (see appendix 50):

For all nations have a part in the Wisdoms, and they are not the particular [property] of any given nation.

The notion that scientific wisdom was in the possession of the ancient sages of Israel and was lost with the exile of the Jews appears in the Guide of the Perplexed (1, 71), and is also mentioned in Falaquera: “Undoubtedly Solomon of blessed memory composed books in the Wisdom of Nature and Divinity, only that these books were lost in exile” (Book of Grades, ed. Venetianer, p. 12).

The incompatibility of ignorance with true worship of God is stipulated by Falaquera (see appendix 51).

And Plato said that no one can worship God in true manner, except for a prophet or a sage full of wisdom.

The four reasons of discord attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias appear twice in Maimonides’s writings: once in chapter 13 of his Book on Asthma, interpolated into the Slavic translation of the Secret of Secrets, as the reasons for the ignorance of truth (see appendix 52), and once in Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed (1, 31) as the reasons of disagreement (translation from the Judaeo-Arabic by S. Pines):

Alexander of Aphrodisias says that there are three causes of disagreement about things. One of them is love of domination and love of strife, both of which turn man aside from the apprehension of truth as it is. The second cause is the subtlety and the obscurity of the object of apprehension in itself and the difficulty of apprehending it. And the third cause is the ignorance of him who apprehends and his inability to grasp things that it is possible to apprehend. That is what Alexander mentioned. However, in our times there is a fourth cause that he did not mention because it did not exist among them. It is habit and upbringing. For man has in his nature a love of, and an inclination for, that to which he is habituated. (Maimonides 1963, 66)

The additions by the translator of the Logika in the afterword thus evidently represent an ideological manifesto of a progressive and universalist, indeed cosmopolitan, nature. These ideas are typical of the Jewish rationalists, disciples and followers of Maimonides, who for three centuries had been waging a hopeless, retreating battle against fundamentalist and mystical tendencies that were gaining ground in mainstream Judaism, marginalizing and delegitimizing rationalism as alien to orthodox Jewish thought. Intended for a Christian readership, these ideas are meant to present a progressive, attractive image of Judaism, an image hardly representative of Judaism at that time and place.

What could be the motivation on the part of these Jews for undertaking such an enterprise of translations? Why would a Jew from the Great Duchy of Lithuania take on himself the difficult task of translating the heavily arabicized Hebrew versions of al-Ghazāli and Maimonides into Ruthenian? Why would he go to such lengths in order to disguise the Arabic origin of many of these works and misrepresent the Islamic theologian Abu Ḥamid al-Ghazāli as Aviasaf? Money? Fame? Hardly, if we were to extrapolate evidence from any other time and place about one’s chances of becoming rich and famous, or even of earning a decent living by translating philosophical texts.

The idea that a supposedly rationalist Jew such as Zechariah ben Aharon from Kyiv, the erudite annotator of philosophical texts, would collaborate with Christians thirsty for wisdom out of sheerly altruistic motives, for the promotion of science and knowledge in a spirit of solidarity between freethinkers, sounds farfetched, though it cannot be absolutely excluded. That is actually what I thought when I started working on these translations some thirty years ago, but I was never satisfied with this hypothesis. The answer, definitely, has to be sought elsewhere.

The key to the answer could be the approaching year 1492 CE, since both Orthodox Christians and some Jews were expecting the End of Times to come about at close to that time.

The movement of the Judaizers in Muscovy, the most noticeable (though perhaps not the primarily targeted) readership for this corpus of scientific texts, thrived in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, a time of high excitement and of eschatological fervor, as the Muscovites were expecting the world to end on September 1 of the year 7000 from Creation, which, according to the Christian Orthodox calendar, corresponds to 1492 CE. Indeed, the Russian church authorities had a real Y7K problem on their hands, given that the Paschal Tables, the cycle of mobile feasts in the calendar that have to be calculated every year on the basis of the date of Easter, were not carried beyond 1492, since, with the Second Coming and the end of the world expected in that year, the End of Time would come about as well.

The archbishop of Novgorod Gennadij relates in his letters, written between 1487 and 1490 (Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 309–20), that the heretics were mocking the Orthodox believers, using the tables in Immanuel bar Yakov’s Six Wings to the effect that according to the Jewish calendar only 5228 years have elapsed since Creation (see above p. 67), and the end was not to be expected any time soon. Some of them, according to Gennadij, even dared to challenge their opponents and claim that the Grand-Prince of Moscow was on their side, claims which, at that time, were apparently correct.

Thus, Gennadij (see appendix 53) writes in 1490 to Zosima, metropolitan of Moscow, who was deposed in 1494 after being accused of secretly sympathizing with the heretics, as follows:

A newly baptized Jew has arrived here [i.e., in Novgorod], by the name of Daniel, presently a Christian, and told me at the table, in front of everyone: “I set out for Moscow from Kyiv, and then,” he says, “the Jews began to insult me”: “You dog, they say, where are you headed for? The great prince in Moscow, they say, has swept all the churches out of the city.”

Тhe final detail of the account turned out not to be exact (some wooden churches had indeed been moved out of the city walls to prevent fires), but the great prince Ivan III did protect his chief diplomat Fedor Kuritsyn, head of the Moscow heretics, even as the other heretics were being tried and punished.

Are we, then, in this crucial period of high eschatological fever, as the Moscow heretics, apparently protected by the grand prince, seemed to be gaining the upper hand by offering a Jewish-based alternative to the Orthodox Christian calendar and casting doubts on the imminency of the Second Coming, actually looking at an attempt to proselytize Muscovy from the top down? An attempt that almost succeeded? Possibly yes. In order to supply some corroboration for this hypothesis we have to return to R. Moses the Exile and his views on proselytes.

There is a long-standing myth that Jews shy away from proselytizing,[22] but in our case we seem to have some evidence to the contrary. I am indebted for the lead toward that evidence to the late Michael Schneider, who in 1999 delivered a talk in Jerusalem about R. Moses and the Judaizers, a talk that remained unpublished until 2014.

Following a hint by Shmuel Ettinger, who wondered (1961, 236n39), “Perhaps it is no coincidence that Jewish ‘calculators of the end’ [meḥashvej ha-qitsin] also predicted the End for the year 252 [i.e., 5252 from Creation = 1492 CE],” Schneider (2014) pointed to the influential Kyivan figure of R. Moses the Exile and his views on the coming of the Messiah—the Geʾulah (Redemption)—as well as on the importance of proselytes for bringing it about.

These views, expressed in his work Shoshan sodot, derive from a cabalistic work written in Byzantium in the 14th century—Sēfer ha-qanah. In that work, too, the Redemption (Geula) is predicted for 1490, or 1492, depending on whether one counts the numerical value of the preposition be- in the word beron—referring to the famous verse in the book of Job (38:7): “When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (beron jaḥad kokhvēj boker va-jariʿu kol bnēj elohim). Without the initial be- (with), the Hebrew characters of the first word, ברן (beron), have a numerical value of 250, taken as a reference to the year 5250 ( = 1490 CE), whereas adding the preposition would yield 5252 ( = 1492 CE). Here is the relevant passage from Sēfer ha-qanah (see appendix 54).

And in the twilight of the seventh millennium the world will stop and the coming of the Messiah [is] when 5250 [years] have elapsed, which is half of the five-hundred-year reign of the Sefirah of Keter, then will the Messiah come, that is “when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” And that man [i.e., Jesus] called the subjugation of the nations under the hand of Israel the Destruction of the World for he was afraid to announce their demise lest they persecute him.

However, since the writing of Shoshan sodot took R. Moses many years and was achieved only in 1509, long after the expected date of redemption, he no longer quotes the exact date of 5250 as in Sēfer ha-qanah, but allows some latitude, reaffirming nevertheless that the Redemption shall come sometime in the five hundred years of the reign of Sefirat keter, which began in the year 5000 from creation [ = 1240 CE]—that is, at some unspecified date between 1240 and 1740 CE (see appendix 55).

And here we are today in the [year] 269 of the sixth millennium [ = 5269 ( = 1509 CE)] in the five hundred years of [the sefirah of] Keter during the reign of which the Redeemer will come. For gaʾal [redeem] in a"tba"sh [cipher mapping the alphabet to its reverse] is keter.

Rabbi Moses also refers in a hint to the passage in Sēfer ha-qanah asserting that Jesus, [“that man” (oto ha-ʾish)], knew this prediction, and that when he announced the end of the world—doomsday—he was referring to the demise of the nations and their subjugation to Israel, but he was afraid to say so, lest he be persecuted.

In this context, R. Moses quotes another passage going back to the ninth-century Midrash Tanhuma, lekh lekha 6, where it is said that proselytes are of a higher value than those born Jewish, adding the reason “since the proselyte shed his garment of impurity and donned a skin of purity,” while the Jews, who were present at Mount Sinai, made the golden calf and thus “shed the garment of God’s law and donned a skin of impurity.”

Rabbi Moses adds the kabbalistic explanation that the proselytes are essential for the Geulah, since those who made the golden calf had “destroyed the saplings” (qitsetsu ba-neṭiʿot)—a mystical metaphor for disturbing the harmony of creation, while the proselytes would bring about “the union of Ecclesia Israel with its partner” ( ḥibbur kneset israʾel be zugo)—that is, they would enable the mystical union necessary for the redemption (see appendix 56).

The secret of the Midrash that says: proselytes at this time are greater than the Israelites who stood at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. And this is a strange statement that the mind refuses to accept, that somebody who indulged in idolatry all his life will now, once he turned into a Jew, be preferable to an Israelite who got to perceive by voice the giving of the Torah. And it seems that the reason lies in the following secret: since those who had stood at Mount Sinai, they themselves made the [golden] calf “While the king is at his table, my spikenard sends forth its fragrance” [Song of Songs 1:12] they polluted and destroyed the saplings and were soiled with impurity, whereas the proselyte has shed off his garment of impurity and brought about ‘the union of Ecclesia Israel with its partner.

This testimony about the views of the Kyivan Jewish leader and scholar R. Moses the Exile seems to point to a theological motive for a Jewish “mission to the Slavs,” in the context of the eschatological fervor around the year 1492. Here, I suggest, lies the missing link connecting the Muscovite heretics with the Ruthenian translations of scientific texts from Hebrew.

The scenario I propose is a hypothesis, and one hard to prove in the present state of the evidence, but it offers an explanation, the only plausible explanation in my view, for the nature of the chosen corpus of translations and for the modifications made in them: Zechariah, a learned Jew, versed in scholarly and scientific literature, translated, at the instigation of R. Moses the Exile, a variety of works of rationalist tenor for Slavs eager to gain access to such scholarly treasures.

He was careful to mix these purely scientific rationalist works with more practical works of applied science that were quite removed from the rationalism of the Maimonidean type, in order to enhance the attractiveness of the mixture. Thus, the Secret of Secrets has medical and magicomedical elements such as a “regimen of health,” a section on the curative and talismanic properties of precious stones, onomantic tables, and so on.

As pointed out by Seebohm (1977, 216), the great authority of all these writings is Aristotle, and specifically not the original Greek Aristotle referred to by the humanists, but the Aristotle of Islamic scholastics—that is, a figure under whose ample cloak enter, also in the Kyivan translated literature, Neoplatonic and Platonic ideas in the domains of theology and ethics, such as Neopythagorean numerology, natural magic, astrology, and alchemy. A positive view of astrology and other relics of this kind can hardly be reconciled with the rationalism and scientism of a thinker such as Maimonides.

It seems, therefore, that the true agenda of the Jews involved in the translation movement might well have been to attract their Slavic readers to Judaism, for mystical motives that they were very careful to hide from the recipients of the translations.

I must admit that I feel somewhat uncomfortable in proposing the possibility of a “Jewish plot” to proselytize the Muscovite state from the top down, since I may thereby have been supplying ammunition to people searching for the historical antecedents of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and unwillingly find myself in the company of some of the most venomous antisemitic Russian historians.

Some of these historians have tried to minimize the possible impact of the heretical movement and the “Literature of the Judaizers,” either by discarding the translated texts as “obsolete pseudo-science” (e.g., Golenishchev-Kutuzov 1963) or by denying any link between the translations and the heresy (e.g., Lurie in Kazakova and Lurie 1955),[23] while nationalistic figures in the post-Soviet Russian political and social domain usually linked to the church, accorded great importance to the Jewish danger of the distant past, leaving no doubts about the contemporary analogies that may be drawn from this curious episode, as can be seen in postings from 2004 and 2005 celebrating the five-hundred-year anniversary of the defeat of the Judaizers (see appendix 57).

General Conclusion

In our concluding thoughts about the three lectures that have resulted in the present monograph, we are left, I believe, with only a few certainties, and with many more hypotheses and questions. The poorly attested testimonies about the early Jewish population in Eastern Europe offer us only a very partial glimpse of their intellectual activity or their cultural tradition. The only traces remaining are the translations from Hebrew into the local Slavic vernacular that make up the pieces of the historical puzzle I have been trying to assemble here. The cultural impact of the pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe may not have been very significant within Judaism itself. In fact, whatever intellectual achievements there may have existed, were completely obliterated with and by the arrival of the Ashkenazic Jews. The only noticeable impact seems to have been the external one—namely, that of the effort apparently directed at their Christian neighbors, an effort that may not have achieved its purportedly desired results, but has left a strong impression in Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian memory, an impression lasting to this day.

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX 1

Excerpt from the Kyivan letter.

Ms. Cambridge, T–S 12.122, lines 6–30 (Golb and Pritsak 1982, 10ff.):

[6]קהילות קדושות הפזורים בכל פינות, יהי רצון מפני

[7],אדון השלום, להושיבם כנזר שלום. ועתה אלופינו ורבותינו

[8]מודיעים אנו לכם קהל של קייוב' עסק מר יעקב בר

[9]חנוכה זה, שהוא מבני טובים, והוא מן הנותנים ולא מן

[10][הלוקחים, אלא שנגזרה גזרה עליו, שהלך אחיו ולקח ממו[ן

[11]מן גוים, וזה יעקב היה ערב. והלך אחיו של זה בדרך, ובאו

[12]ל]סטים והרגו אתו ולקחו את ממונו. ובאו בעלי חובים]

[13]ול]קחו את זה יעקב, ונתנו שלשלאות של ברזל בצוארו]

[14][וברזיליים ברגליו, ועשה שם שנה שלימה. [. . . ואחר

[15][. . .] כך לקחנו אתו בערבות, ופרענו ששים זקוקים, ועוד

[16]נשארו ארבעים זקוקים, ושגרנו אתו בקהילות הקדושות

[17],כדי שירחמו עליו. ועתה רבותינו שאו עיניכם לשמים

[18]ועשו כמנהגכם הטו{ב}שאתם יודעים כמה גדולה מדת

[19][. . .] .הצדקה, שצדקה תציל ממות

. . .

[25]אברהם הפרנס, [. . .]אל בר מנס, ראובן בר

[26]גוסטטא בר כיבר כהן, שמשון

[27],בר] יהודה המכונה סורטה, חנוכה בר משה]

[28],קופין בר יוסף, מנר בר שמואל כהן

[29],יהודה בר יצחק לוי, סיני בר שמואל

[30].יצחק הפרנס

[6] [To] the holy communities scattered all across the corners [of the world]: may it be the will of the

[7] Master of Peace to settle them as a crown of peace. And now, our masters and teachers,

[8] [we], the community of Kyiv, inform you of the case of this [man] Mr Jacob bar

[9] Hanukkah, from a good family, of those who give, not of those who

[10] take, but a disaster befell him, when his brother went and took money

[11] from gentiles, and this Jacob was guarantor. And his brother was traveling on the road, and there came

[12] robbers and killed him and took his money. Then came the creditors

[13] and took this Jacob and put iron chains on his neck

[14] and shackles on his legs, and he stayed there an entire year, [. . . and after]

[15] that we bailed him out, and paid off sixty zequqim [silver ingots (see Zuckerman 2011, 19ff.)] and still there

[16] remained forty zequqim, so we sent him out to the holy communities

[17] that they might take pity on him. So now, our masters, lift up your eyes to Heaven

[18] and do according to your good custom, for you know how great is the virtue

[19] of charity. For charity saves from death. [. . .]

. . .

[25] [Signatories:] Avraham, elder of the community, [. . .] el bar Manas, Reuven bar

[26] Gostyata bar Kibar Kohen, Shimshon

[27] [bar] Yehudah called Surtah [for more transliterations see Kulik 2014, 112–13], Hanukkah bar Moshe,

[28] Kupin bar Yosef, Manar bar Shmuel Kohen,

[29] Yehudah bar Yitshak Levi, Sinai bar Shmuel,

[30] Yitshak, elder of the community.

APPENDIX 2

The 986 contest about the “true religion.”

The Account of Bygone Years, sub anno 6494 AM (=986CE):

В лѣто 6494. Приидоша болгаре вѣры бохъмичи . . .

In the year 6494 there came the Bulgars of the Mohammedan faith . . .

По семъ же придоша нѣмци от Рима.

Then came the Germans from Rome . . . [i.e., representatives of the Holy Roman Empire, called here nēmtsi [Germans; lit., dumb people, a generic term for foreigners].

Се слышавше, жидове козарьстии приидоша рекуще . . .

Having heard this, the Khazar Jews came and said . . .

а мы вѣруемъ единому Б҃у аврамову исакову и ꙗковлю.

whereas we believe in the one God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

и рече Володимеръ что есть законъ вашь.

Then Volodimer said: What is your law?

ѡни же рѣша ѡбрѣзати сѧ. свинины не ꙗсти ни заꙗчины. суботу хранити.

And they said: Тo be circumcised, not to eat pork or hare, and to observe the Sabbath.

ѡн же рече то гдѣ есть землѧ ваша.

He then said: So where is your land?

ѡни же рѣша въ ерс҃лмѣ.

And they said: in Jerusalem.

ѡн же рече то тамо ли есте

And he then said: So are you [still] there?

ѡни же рѣша разгнѣва сѧ Бъ҃ на ѡц҃и наши и расточи ны по странамъ грѣхъ ради нашихъ и предана бысть землѧ наша хс҃еяномъ.

And they said: God became angry at our fathers and scattered us among the nations on account of our sins, and our land was given to Christians.

ѡн же рече то како вы инѣх ѹчите а сами ѿвержени ѿ Ба҃ и расточени.

And he then said: So how do you teach others, while you yourselves are rejected by God and scattered? . . .

APPENDIX 3

Canaan = Slavs.

The term Canaan with reference to Slavic reflects a medieval Jewish interpretation based on the semantic expansion in medieval Latin of the ethnonym Sclavus (Slav) to denote also “slave” (beside the original denomination for slaves in Latin: servus), since Slavs were often forced into slavery in Medieval Europe.

This semantic development is paralleled by the Jewish medieval tradition of associating the term Knaan with Genesis 9:25: וַיֹּאמֶר אָרוּר כְּנָעַן עֶבֶד עֲבָדִים יִהְיֶה לְאֶחָיו

(“And he said: Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”) This interpretation is first encountered in the tenth-century work Josippon:

מוראוא וכרואטי וסורבין ולוצנין ולייכין וכראקר ובוימין מבני דודנים ייחשבו. . . הם הנקראים סקלאבי .אחרים כי הם מבני כנען, אך הם מתייחסים לבני דודנים

The Moravians, Croatians, Sorbians, Lusatians, Lechians, Cracovians, and Bohemians are considered sons of Dodanim. These are those called Slavs [sqlʾby= sqlavi], while others say that they are of the sons of Canaan, yet they are descended from the Dodanim. (Flusser 1981, 1:8–9)

The twelfth-century traveler Benjamin of Tudela echoes this interpretation (Adler 1907, 72 [עמוד עב in the Hebrew pagination]):

ומשם והלאה ארץ בהם והיא הנקראת פרגא היא תחילת ארץ אשכלבונייא. וקוראים אותה היהודים הדרים שם כנען בשביל שאנשי הארץ ההיא מוכרים בניהם ובנותיהם לכל אומה הם אנשי רוסיה .והיא מלכות גדולה משער פרגה ועד שערי כיו העיר הגדולה

From there on is the land of Bohemia, and it is the one called Prague, which is the beginning of the land of the Slavs [ʾsklbwnyyʾ=esklavoniya]. And the Jews living there call it Canaan, because the people of that land sell their sons and daughters to every nation, and these are the people of Rusʹ [rwsyh=rusya]. And it is a great kingdom from the gates of Prague to the gates of Kyiv the great city.

APPENDIX 4

A monolingual Jew speaking only Russian.

J. Mann 1920, 165–66; 1922, 192:

היצרכנו הודיעכם עסק מ׳ פל׳ בן פל׳ שהוא מקהל רוסיאה ונתארח אצלינו בקהל סלוניקי צעירי הצאן, ומצא את קרובו ר׳ פל׳ בא מירושלים עיר הקודש, וסיפר לו כל הדרת ארץ ישראל, ונדבה רוחו אותו ללכת גם הוא להשתחוות אל מקום הקודש וביקש ממנו שתי שורות הללו להיות לו לפה ולמליץ יושר פני כבוד הדרתכם להתיר לו פיסת יד ולהדריכו בדרך הטוב מעיר לעיר ומאי אל אי כי .אינו יודע לא לשון הקודש ולא לשון יוני גם לא ערבי כי אם שפת כנען מדברים אנשי ארץ מולדתו

We have been required to inform you of the matter of Mr. so-and-so, who is from the community of Rusʹ [rwsyʾh=rusiya] and was welcomed as guest by us, the community of Salonica, young among the sheep [expression of humility], and found his relative Rabbi so-and-so, who had come from Jerusalem the Holy City, and told him the whole splendor of the Land of Israel, which awakened his spirit to go, he too, to prostrate himself at the holy place, and he asked us for these two lines, in order to be a mouth and intercessor before your honorable presence, and to open your hand to guide him on the good road from town to town and from island to island, since he does not know either the Holy Tongue, or Greek, nor Arabic but only the language of Canaan spoken by the people of his native land.

APPENDIX 5

R. Isaac of Chernigov on yabem in Slavic.

Klar 1947, 142:

'יבם. חזק. בא אל אשת אחיך ויבם אתה. אמ' לי ה''ר יצח' מסרנגוב כי בל' תירס הוא רושיאה קו .ליבום בעילה, ויבם אותה ובעול אותה

Yabem. Strong [verb]. “Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her” [Genesis 38:8]. Rabbi Yitshak of Chernigov told me that in the language of Tiras, which is Rusʹ, they call yebum copulation, and yabem her = “and sleep with her.”

The name Tiras for Rusʹ is based on Genesis 10:2:

בְּנֵ֣י יֶ֔פֶת גֹּ֣מֶר וּמָגֹ֔וג וּמָדַ֖י וְיָוָ֣ן וְתֻבָ֑ל וּמֶ֖שֶׁךְ וְתִירָֽס

(“The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech and Tiras.”)

It first appears as referring to Rusʹ in the Josippon:

.תירס הם רוסי. . . רוסי חונים על נהר כיוא

Tiras are the Rusi [rwsy] . . . The Rusi are stationed on the river of Kyiv [kyw’]. (Flusser 1981, 1:5)

APPENDIX 6

R. Eliezer of Bohemia on the poor state of learning in Rusʹ.

R. Isaac of Vienna, Or Zarua‘ part I, para. 113.

רבי יצחק בן משה מווינה, ספר אור זרוע חלק א - הלכות שליח ציבור סימן קי"ג . . . תשובה מהרב רבי אליעזר מביהם להרב רבי יהודה חסיד זצ"ל, בדבר שכירות החזנים ונתינת חוקם הנה ברוב מקומות שבפולין ורוסייא ואונגרין שאין שם לומדי תורה מתוך דוחקם ושוכרים להם אדם מבין .מאשר ימצאו והוא להם שליח צבור ומורה צדק ומלמד בניהם

Thus in most locations in Poland [polin], Rusʹ [rusiya], and Hungary [ve-ungarin] where there are no Torah scholars, due to their poverty, they hire an educated man wherever they can find one, and he serves them as cantor and rabbi and schoolteacher for their sons.

APPENDIX 7

Esther in the Masoretic Text and in the Septuagint.

The Hebrew Masoretic Text begins as follows:

ויהי בימי אחשורוש הוא אחשורוש המולך מהדו ועד כוש שבע ועשרים ומאה מדינה

בימים ההם כשבת המלך אחשורוש על כסא מלכותו אשר בשושן הבירה

בשנת שלש למלכו עשה משתה לכל שריו ועבדיו חיל פרס ומדי הפרתמים ושרי המדינות לפניו

1.1 It happened in the days of Ahasuerus [ʾaḥashverosh] that Ahasuerus [ʾaḥashverosh] who reigned over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India [hodu] to Ethiopia [kush].

1.2 In those days, when King Ahasuerus [ʾaḥashverosh] occupied the royal throne in the fortress of Susan [shushan],

1.3 in the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all the officials and courtiers—the administration of Persia [paras] and Media [maday], the nobles and the governors of the provinces in his service.

The Greek Septuagint begins with an addition: a dream that Mordecai had, followed by the text corresponding to the Hebrew:

῎Ετους δευτέρου βασιλεύοντος ᾽Αρταξέρξου τοῦ μεγάλου τῇ / μιᾷ τοῦ Νισα ἐνύπνιον εἶδεν Μαρδοχαῖος ὁ τοῦ Ιαϊρου τοῦ Σεμεϊου / τοῦ Κισαιου ἐκ ϕυλῆς Βενιαμιν, ἄνϑρωπος Ιουδαῖος οἰκῶν ἐν / Σούσοις τῇ πόλει, ἄνϑρωπος μέγας ϑεραπεύων ἐν τῇ αὐλῇ τοῦ / βασιλέως·. . .

1.1 Καὶ ἐγένετο μετὰ τοὺς λόγους τούτους ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ᾽Αρταξέρξου / οὗτος ὁ ᾽Αρταξέρξης ἀπὸ τῆς ᾽Ινδικῆς ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι / ἑπτὰ χωρῶν ἐκράτησεν

1.2 ἐν αὐταῖς ταῖς ἡμέραις, ὅτε ἐϑρονίσϑη / ὁ βασιλεὺς ᾽Αρταξέρξης ἐν Σούσοις τῇ πόλει,

1.3 ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ ἔτει / βασιλεύοντος αὐτοῦ δοχὴν ἐποίησεν τοῖς ϕίλοις καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς / ἔϑνεσιν καὶ τοῖς Περσῶν καὶ Μήδων ἐνδόξοις καὶ τοῖς ἄρχουσιν / τῶν σατραπῶν.

In the second year of the reign of Artaxerxes the great king, on the first day of Nisan, Mardochaeus the son of Jairus, the son of Semeias, the son of Kisaus, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Jew dwelling in the city Susa, a great man, serving in the king’s palace, saw a vision . . .

1:1 And it came to pass after these things in the days of Artaxerxes, this Artaxerxes ruled over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India—

1.2 in those days, when king Artaxerxes was on the throne in the city of Susa,

1.3 in the third year of his reign, he made a feast to his friends, and the other nations, and to the nobles of the Persians and Medes, and the chiefs of the satraps.

APPENDIX 8

Esther in the Slavic translation (Lunt and Taube 1998, 24):

1.1 Бысть въ дни Ахасъверосовы иже царствоваше от Одоу даже и до Хоусъ, седмью и двѣма десятьма и р҃–мь властии

1.2 Въ дни ты, егда сѣде царь Ахасъверосъ на столѣ царства своего иже въ Соусанѣ градѣ

1.3 Въ лѣто <г҃–е> царства своего створи пиръ <всемъ> велможамъ своимъ и рабомъ своимъ, силѣ Фарисѣистѣи и Мадѣистѣи, странамъ и боляромъ земнымъ.

Literal translation of the Slavic:

1:1 And it happened in the days of Achasveros, who reigned from Odu to Chous, over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces

1.2 in those days, when king Achasveros sat on the throne of his kingdom in the city of Susan,

1.3 in the <third> year of his reign, he made a feast to <all> his nobles and servants, the forces the Phariseans and Madeans, the countries [corrupted from “satraps”] and the boyars of the land.

Ruthenian translation from Hebrew in Vilnius 262 (Altbauer 1992, 151):

1.1 И было въ дн҃ехъ Ахашверошовых тотъ то Ахашверошь иж црс҃твовал҃ от Индіи даже и до Мꙋриновъ седмь и к҃ и р҃ земль.

1.2 Въ дн҃ ехъ ѡных егда ѡсѣдшꙋ цс҃рю Ахашверошꙋ на столци цс҃рства своего иж въ Шꙋшане град

1.3 В лѣто третее цс҃рствꙋючи емꙋ вчинил пиръ всим бояром своимъ и холопьи своеи воискꙋ Перⸯскомꙋ и Мадаискомꙋ столечником и бояром земьским перед собою.

Literal translation of the Ruthenian:

1:1 And it happened in the days of Achashverosh, who reigned from India even to [the land of the] Moors [over] 127 provinces

1.2 in those days, king Achashverosh sitting down on the throne of his kingdom in the city of Shushan

1.3 in the third year of his reign, he made a feast to all his nobles and servants, the forces the Persians and Madayans, the princes the boyars of the lands before him.

APPENDIX 9

Phraseological Hellenism 5.12:

אַ֣ף לֹא־הֵבִיאָה֩ אֶסְתֵּ֨ר הַמַּלְכָּ֧ה עִם־הַמֶּ֛לֶךְ אֶל־הַמִּשְׁתֶּ֥ה אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֖תָה כִּ֣י אִם־אֹותִ֑י

Also, queen Esther has not brought with the king to the feast that she prepared [anyone] except [lit., if not] me .

LXX: οὐ κέκληκεν ἡ βασίλισσα μετὰ τοῦ βασιλέως οὐδένα εἰς τὴν δοχὴν ἀλλ᾿ ἢ ἐμέ.

The queen has called no one to the feast with the king but [lit., other than] me.

Slavic (Lunt and Taube 1998, 38): пакы не приведе ⟦ли мѧ⟧ Есфирь царица съ царемь на пиръ иже створила бѣ аще не мене.

Moreover, the queen has brought no one [lit., has not brought] to the feast with the king that she had prepared except [lit., if not] me.

Ruthenian translation from Hebrew in Vilnius 262 (Altbauer 1992, 163):

такѣжь не привела Естерь цр҃ца съ цр҃мъ к' пирꙋ што вчинила нижли мене

Also, Queen Esther has not brought with the king to the feast that she had prepared [anyone] but [lit., unless] me.

APPENDIX 10

Phraseological Hellenism 2.13:

5.12:אַף לאֹ־הֵבִיאָה֩ אֶסְתֵּ֨ר הַמַּלְכָּ֧ה עִם־הַמֶּ֛לֶךְ אֶל־הַמִּשְׁתֶּ֥ה אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֖תָה כִּ֣י אִם־אֹותִ֑י

And in this the maiden would come in to the king, everything whatsoever she says would be given her to come with her . . .

Slavic (Lunt and Taube 1998, 30): и в томь дѣвая дѣва придѧшє къ царєви и всє єжє ащє рєчашє дадѧшє єи прити с нєю . . .

And in this the virgin maiden would come in to the king and everything whatsoever [lit., all which if] she said he would give her to come with her . . .

LXX: καὶ τότε εἰσπορεύεται πρὸς τὸν βασιλέα καὶ ᾧ ἐὰν εἴπῃ, παραδώσει αὐτὴν συνεισέρχεσθαι αὐτῷ

And then the damsel goes in to the king; and the officer to whomsoever he shall give the command, will bring her to come in with him. (Brenton’s translation of LXX)

Ruthenian translation from Hebrew in Vilnius 262 (Altbauer 1992, 163):

и в тои мѣре тая молодица приходила к цр҃ю все иж речет маеть быти дано еи приити с нею . . .

and in this manner the maiden would come to the king and everything that she says has to be given her to come with her . . .

APPENDIX 11

Semantic Hellenism 1.20:

וְכָל־הַנָּשִׁ֗ים יִתְּנ֤וּ יְקָר֙ לְבַעְלֵיהֶ֔ן

And all the women will give honor to their husbands.

Slavic (Lunt and Taube 1998, 28): и всѧ жены възложать срамотоу на мужь свои

And all the women will put shame on their husbands.

LXX: καὶ οὕτως πᾶσαι αἱ γυναῖκες περιθήσουσιν τιμὴν τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἑαυτῶν

And so shall all the women give honor to their husbands. (Brenton’s translation of LXX)

Ruthenian translation from Hebrew in Vilnius 262 (Altbauer 1992, 153):

и вси жонкы ѹздадꙋть честь мꙋжом своимъ

And all the women will pay honor to their husbands.

APPENDIX 12

The account from Josippon (Flusser 1981, 1:54–57) followed by the entry for 1110 in the Hypatian redaction of the Account of Bygone Years. The Old Rusian text is given according to the 1908 edition, now available online (https://www.lrc-lib.ru/rus_letopisi/Ipatius /contents.htm).

Hebrew text of the Alexander episode in Josippon as established by Flusser (the Hebrew portions missing in Russian are marked by italics in the Hebrew text and in its English translation):

ויהי בהתעורר גוי מקדון על מלכות פרס ויצא אלכסנדרוס ממקדוניא בחיל כבד ויבא על דריוש למלחמה ויך את כל הגוים אשר היה להם ברית עם דריוש, ויך את ארץ מצרים ואת ארץ ארם ויבא בחוף הים ויך את עכו ואת אשקלון ואת עזה, וישם פניו לעלות ירושלם להכותה תחת אשר היה להם ברית עם דריוש. ויסע מעזה עם כל מחנהו הלוך ובוא עד אשר בא בדרך במלון ויחן שם עם כל מחנהו. ויהי בלילה ההוא והוא שוכב על מטתו בתוך האוהל, וישא עיניו והנה איש עומד עליו לבוש בדים וחרבו שלופה בידו ומראה החרב כמראה דמות ברק אשר יבריק ביום הגשם, וירם חרבו על ראש המלך. ויירא המלך מאד ויאמר: למה אדוני יכה את עבדו? ויאמר האיש: כי שלחני אלהים לכבוש לפניך מלכים גדולים וגוים רבים ואני ההולך לפניך לעזרך. ועתה דע כי מות תמות על אשר מלאך לבך לעלות ירושלם להרע לכהני ה׳ ולעמו. ויאמר המלך: אנא שא פשע עבדך בי אדוני. אם רע בעיניך אשובה לי. ויאמר לו האיש: אל תירא נשאתי פניך. לך לדרכך ירושלם והיה בבואך לפני השער אשר בירושלם וראית איש לבוש מדים כמוני, והאיש כתוארי וכדמותי, מהר נפול על פניך והשתחוויתה לאיש וכל אשר .ידבר אליך עשה ועל תעבור את פיו, כי ביום עברך את פיו מות תמות. ויקם המלך וילך לדרכו ירושלם

ויהי כשמוע הכהן כי בא אלכסנדרוס המלך על ירושלם בחרון אף, ויירא הכהן מאד וכל עם ירושלם, ויצעקו אל ה׳ ויקראו צום. ויהי אחרי הצום ויצאו היהודים לקראתו להתחנן לו לבלתי הכות את העיר. ויצא הכהן מן השער הוא וכל העם וכל הכהנים, והיה הכהן הגדול עומד לפניהם לבוש הבדים. וירא אלכסנדרוס את הכהן, וימהר ויד מעל הרכב ויפול על פניו וישתחוו אל הכהן וישאל לו לשלום. וירגזו המלכים עבדי אלכסנדרוס ויאמרו אליו: מדוע השתחוויתה לאיש אשר אין לו כח למלחמה? ויאמר המלך אל עבדיו .המלכים כי האיש אשר ילך לפני להכניע לפני כל הגוים דמותו ותוארו לאיש הזה דומה אשר השתחוויתי לו

ויהי אחרי כן ויבא הכהן והמלך אלכסנדרוס אל מקדש אלהינו, ויראהו הכהן את ההיכל ואת בית ה׳ ואת חציריו ואת גנסכיו ואת אולמיו ואת מקום קדש הקדשים ואת מקום הזבח ואת מקום העולה. ויאמר המלך: ברוך ה׳ אלהי הבית הזה כי מאז ידעתי כי הוא אדון הכל וממשלתו על כל ונפש כל חי בידו להמית ולהחיות ואשריכם עבדיו המשרתים לפניו במקום הזה. ועתה אעשה לי זכר הנה ואתן זה לרוב לאומנים ויבנו את צלמי ויקימו אותה בין קדש הקדשים ובין הבית ויהי גולמי לזכרון בבית אלהים הגדוך הזה. ויאמר הכהן אל המלך: הזהב אשר נדבו שפתיך תנהו למחיית כהני ה׳ ועניי עמו הבאים להשתחוות אליו בבית הזה. ואעשה לך זכר טוב מאשר דברת: כל ילידי הכהנים אשר יוולדו בשנה הזאת בכל ארץ יהודה ובכל ארץ ירושלם יקראון בשמך אלכסנדרוס, ויהיה לך לזכרון כאשר יבאו לעבוד עבודתם בבית הזה, כי אין לנו .לקבל בבית אלהינו כל פסל וכ תונה. וישמע אליו המלך ויתן זהב לרוב לבית ה׳ ולכהן נתן מתנות גדולות

וישאל המלך את הכהן לדרוש אלהים אם ילך למלחמה על דריוש ואם יחדל. ויאמר לו הכהן: לך כי נתון ינתן בידך. ויבא לפניו א ספר דניאל ויראהו את הכתב אשר כתוב בו על דבר האיל המנגח לכל רוח ועל דבר צפיר העזים אשר רץ אל האיל וירמסהו ארצה. ויאמר: אתה הוא צפיר העזים ודריוש הוא האיל, ואתה תרמסהו ותקח מלכותו מידו. ויחזקהו הכהן ללכת על דריוש. ויכתוב ספרים אלכסנדרוס

.כחזיו אשר ראה ואשר אמר לו הכהן וישלח למקדוניא ולרומא

[. . .] ויצא אלכסנדרוס מירושלם ללכת על דריוש למלחמה

And it came to be when the people of Macedon rose against the kingdom of Persia, that Alexander left Macedonia with a heavy army and went to war against Darius. He defeated all the peoples that were in alliance with Darius, he defeated the land of Egypt and the land of Aram and proceeded to the seashore and defeated Akko and Ashkelon and Gaza and turned his face to go up to Jerusalem to conquer it, since it had been in alliance with Darius. He went from Gaza with all his camp moving along until he reached the place of encampment and camped there, he and his whole army. And it came to pass at that night, as he was lying on his bed in his tent, he raised his eyes and saw a man standing above him, clothed with linen, and his sword drawn in his hand, and the form of the sword was as the appearance of lightning on a rainy day. And he raised his sword over the king’s head, and the king was greatly afraid and said: Why does my Lord smite thy servant? Then the man said: for God has sent me to conquer before you great kings and many nations, and it is I who goes before you to help you. And now know that you will surely die for having dared to go up against Jerusalem and to harm the Lord’s priests and His people. Then the king said: Please forgive the trespass of thy servant, I pray thee my Lord, if it displease thee, I will turn back. Then the man said: do not be afraid for I grant your request. Go on your way to Jerusalem, and when you arrive before the gate of Jerusalem you will see a man clothed with linen like me, and the man will be in my image and likeness, then fall quickly to the earth upon your face and bow to that man, and do whatever he tells you, do not disobey anything he tells you, for on the very day when you disobey his words you shall die. And the king rose and went on his way to Jerusalem.

And when the Priest heard that Alexander was going against Jerusalem full of anger, the Priest was greatly afraid and thus also all the people of Jerusalem, and they cried to God and declared a fast. And it came to pass after the fast, the Jews came out toward him to beg him not to smite the city. And the High priest came out of the gate, he and all the people and all the priests, and the High Priest standing before them clothed with linen. And King Alexander saw the Priest and hastened to get off his chariot and fell upon his face and bowed to the Priest and greeted him with peace. Then the kings, Alexander’s servants, became angry and said to him: Why do you bow to a man without military power? Then the king said to his servants: for the man who will be going before me to defeat before me all the nations is of the same image and likeness as the man to whom I have bowed.

And afterward the High Priest and Alexander came to our Lord’s temple and the priest showed him the temple, its courts and its treasures and its halls and the place of the holy of holies and the place of sacrifice and the place of the burnt offering. Then the king said: Blessed is the Lord, God of this house for I have always known that He is the master of all and His reign is over all and the soul of every living creature is in His hand to put to death or to preserve, and blessed are you, his servants serving before him at this place. And now I will make for myself a monument here and will give much gold to the artisans and let them construct my image and put it up between the Holy of Holies and the temple and my sculpture will be a memorial in the house of this great God. Then the priest said to the king: the gold that your lips have pledged, give it rather for the support of the Lord’s priests and for the poor from among His people who come to bow before Him at this house. And I will make you a better monument than the one you spoke about: all the sons of priests that will be born this year in all of Judea and in the whole land of Jerusalem will be called Alexander in your name, and it will be a memorial when they come to perform their worship in this house, for we must not accept in our Lord’s house any graven image or likeness. And the king listened to him and gave much gold to the Lord’s house, and the priest he gave great presents.

And the king asked the priest to inquire of God on his behalf whether he should go to war against Darius or desist. And the priest said: Go, for he shall be given into your hands. And he brought before him the book of Daniel and he showed him what is written [in Daniel 8:5–8] about the ram charging in all directions and about the he-goat who ran unto the ram and trampled him to the ground. And he said: you are the he-goat and Darius is the ram, and you will trample him and take his kingdom from him. And the priest encouraged him to go to war against Darius . . .

The entry for the year 1110 in the Hypatian redaction of the Account of Bygone Years:

B лѣт̑. ҂ss҃.х҃.и҃ı. Идоша веснѣ на Половцѣ. Ст҃ополкъ и Володимеръ. Дв҃дъ . . . В то же лѣто бы знаменье в Печерьскомъ манастыри. февралѧ въ .а҃ı. дн҃ь. ꙗвисѧ столпъ ѡгненъ ѿ землѧ до нбс҃е. а молньꙗ ѡсвитиша всю землю и на нбс҃и погремѣ в часъ .а҃. нощи. весь миръ видѣ. сесь же столпъ ста на трѧпезници камѧнѣи. ꙗко не видити хрста бѧше. и стоꙗ мало ступи на црк҃вь. и ста надъ гробомъ Федосьевомъ. и птомъ надъ верхъ съступи . аки ко въстоку лицемъ . и потомъ невидимо быс̑ . се же бѧше не ѡгнь. но видъ ан҃гльскыи. ан҃глъ бо сице ꙗвлѧеть сѧ ѡво столпомъ ѡгненомъ. ѡво же пламеномь. ꙗкоже рче Дв҃дъ творѧ ан҃глы своꙗ дх҃ы . и слугы своꙗ ѡгнь пламѧнъ. и слеми суть повеленьемь Б•̑жьимъ . аможе хощеть влдка всихъ творець. ан҃гломъ и чл҃вкомъ. ан҃глъ бо приходить кдѣ бл҃гаꙗ мѣста. и молитвении домове. и ту показають нѣчто мало видиньꙗ своего . ѡво бо ѡгнемь. ѡво столпомъ. ѡво инако ꙗко мощно зрѣти имъ. аЖ не мощно бо зрѣти члв҃комъ. ества ан҃гльскаго видити. аще и Моиси великıи не возможе видѣти. ан·̑гльскаго естьства. водѧшеть бо ꙗ во дк҃е столпъ ѡблаченъ. а в нощи столпъ ѡгненъ . то се не столпъ водѧше ихъ по ан҃глъ Бж҃ии. идѧше пред нимь. в нощи и во дн҃е. тако и сѧ ѧвленье которое показываше. емуже быти хотѧше. еже бо и быс̑ на второе лѣто. не сии ли ан҃глъ. вожь бъı на иноплеменникы супостатъ бысть. ꙗкоже рече ан҃глъ предъ тобою предъидет. и пакы ан҃глъ твои буди с тобою.

[Here ends the entry for the year 1110 in the 1377 Laurentian manuscript of the Primary Chronicle, with a colophon made by Abbot Sylvester in 1116. The Laurentian then goes on with the entry for 1111, whereas the Hypatian continues with the discourse on angels that follows and the account of Alexander.]

ꙗкоже пр.̑ ркъ Двдъ гл҃еть. ꙗко ан҃гломъ своимъ заповѣсть ѿ тебе схранить тѧ. ꙗкоже пишеть премудрыи Епифании. къ коеиже твари ан҃глъ приставленъ. ан҃глъ ѡблакомъ и мъгламъ. и снѣгу и граду. и мразу. ан҃глъ гласомъ и громомъ. ан҃глъ зимы и зноеви. и осени и весны. и лѣта. всему дх҃у твари его на земли и таиныꙗ бездны и сут скровенъı подъ землею. и преисподьнии тьмъı и сущи во безны бывшиꙗ древле верху землѧ. ѿ неꙗже тмы вечеръ и нощь. и свѣтъ и дн҃ь. ко всимъ тваремъ ан҃гли приставлени. тако же ан҃глъ приставленъ къ которои оубо земли да соблюдають. куюжьдо землю. аще суть и погани. аще Бж҃ни гнѣвъ будеть. на кую оубо землю. на кую оубо землю бранью ити. то ѡнои землѣ ан҃глъ не вопротивитсѧ повелѣнью Бж҃ью. ꙗко и се бѧше и на ны навелъ Бъ҃ грѣхъ ради нашихъ иноплеменникы поганыꙗ. и побѣжахуть ны повелѣньемъ Бж҃ьимъ. ѡни бо бѧху водими аньеломъ. по повелѣнью Бж҃ью. аще ли кто речеть ꙗко аньела нѣсть оу поганыхъ. да слышить ꙗко [Beginning of Story from Josippon] Ѡлександру Макидоньскому. ѡполчившю сѧ на Дарьꙗ . и пошедшю ему и повинувшю землю всю. ѿ въстокъ и до западъ. и поби землю Егупетьскую. и поби Арама. и приде в островы морьскыꙗ. и врати лице свое взыти въ Ерс̑лмъ побидити Жиды. занеже бѧху мирни со Дарьемь. и поиде со вси вои его. и ста на товарищи и почи. и приспѣ ночь. и лежа на ложи своемь посредѣ шатра. ѿверзъ ѡчи свои види мужа стоꙗща над нимь. и мѣчь нагъ в руцѣ его. и ѡбличенье меча его ꙗко молонии. и запрѧже мечемь своимъ на главу цр҃ву. и оужасесѧ цс̑рь велми. и рече не бии мене. и рече ему ан҃глъ посла мѧ Бъ҃ оуимати цс̑рѣ великии предъ тобою. и люди многи. азъ же хожю предъ тобою помагаꙗ ти. а нынѣ вѣдаи ꙗко оумьрьши. понеже помыслилъ еси взити въ Ерс̑лмъ. зло створити ерѣемъ Бж҃ьимъ и к людемъ его. и реч̑ цр҃ь молю тѧ ѡ Гс̑и ѿпустı нынѣ грѣхъ раба твоего. аче не любо ти а ворочюсѧ дому моему. и рече ан҃глъ не боисѧ. иди путемъ твоимъ къ Иерс̑лму. и оузриши ту въ Ерс̑лми. мужа въ бличеньѥ мое и борзо пади на лици своемь. и поклонисѧ мужу тому. и все еже речеть к тобѣ створи не прѣступи рѣчи ему. воньже дн҃ь приступиши рѣчь его и оумерши. и въставъ цс̑рь иде въ Ерс̑лмъ. и пришедъ въспроси ерѣевъ. иду ли на Дарьꙗ. и показаша ему книги Данила прр҃ка и рекоша ему ты еси козелъ. а ѡнъ ѡвенъ. и потолчеши и возмеши црс̑тво его. [End of Story from Josippon] сеИ оубо не ан҃глъ ли вожаше Ѡлексаньдра. не поганъ ли побѣжаше. и вси Елини кумирослужебници. тако и сı погании попущени грѣхъ ради нашихъ . . .

In the year 6618 [=1110 CE] Svjatopolk, Volodimer, and David went in the spring to fight against the Polovtsians . . . That year there was a sign at the Caves Monastery [in Kyiv]. On February 12 appeared a pillar of fire [extending] from Earth to Heaven, lightnings illuminated the whole land, and there were thunders in heaven in the first hour of the night, the whole world saw it. That same pillar stood over the stone-built refectory so that the cross became invisible, and after halting a little while moved over the church, and stood over the grave of Feodosij [the founder of the monastery] then moved away from the top as if heading eastward, and then disappeared. This was not fire but an apparition of an angel. For thus does an angel appear: sometimes as a pillar of fire, sometimes as a flame, as David says: “Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire” [Psalms 104:4] and they are dispatched by God’s command wherever the Lord of all [beings] the Creator of men and angels wishes. For angels appear in whatever place there is good and in houses of prayer, and there they show a little of their appearance, sometimes as fire, sometimes as a pillar, sometimes otherwise, so they may be observed, for it is impossible for men to see an angelic being, as even the great Moses could not see it. “There lead them by day a pillar of cloud and by night a pillar of fire” [Exodus 13:21]: this indeed was not a pillar that lead them but an Angel of God that was walking before them night and day. Thus also was this appearance an indication of what was about to happen, and which indeed did happen the following summer. Wasn’t this the one leading [them?] against their heathen opponents, as it is said: “my angel shall go before you” [Exodus 23:23], and again “may your angel be with you” [End of entry for 1110 in the Laurentian Chronicle. From here on it appears only in the Hypatian Chronicle] as the prophet David says: “for He will command his angels concerning you to protect you” [Psalms 91:11]. As Epiphanius the Wise [of Salamis] says: to all things created there is assigned an angel: an angel to clouds and mists, to snow and hail and frost . . . to every land there is an angel assigned to protect whichever land, even if they are pagans. If God’s wrath be to go to war on any land, the angel of that land will not stand up against God’s command. As it happened also when God, due to our sins, brought upon us the pagan foreigners, and they defeated us by God’s command.

And if anyone should say that the pagans have no angels, let him hear how [Beginning of the account from Josippon] Alexander of Macedon, when going to war against Darius, conquered all lands from East to West, he defeated the land of Egypt and the land of Aram and proceeded to the isles [Hebrew: “shore”] of the sea and turned his face to go up to Jerusalem to subjugate the Jews, since they had been at peace with Darius. He went with all his armies moving along until he reached the place of encampment and camped there. And when night came, as he was lying on his bed in his tent, he opened his eyes and saw a man standing above him, with his sword drawn in his hand, and the appearance of the sword as that of lightning, and he raised his sword over the king’s head. And the king was greatly afraid and said: Do not smite me! Then the angel [Hebrew: “man”] said: God has sent me to conquer before you great kings and many nations, and it is I who go before you to help you. And now know that you will surely die for having dared to go up against Jerusalem and to harm the Lord’s priests and His people. Then the king said: I pray thee my Lord, please forgive the trespass of thy servant, if it displease thee, I will return to my home. Then the angel said: do not be afraid. Go your way to Jerusalem, and you will see there in Jerusalem a man in my likeness, fall quickly upon your face and bow to that man, and do whatever he tells you, do not disobey anything of his words, for on the same day when you disobey his words you shall die.

And the king rose and went on his way to Jerusalem, and asked the priests [Hebrew: “priest”]: “should I go to war against Darius?” And they showed him the book of the prophet Daniel and said to him: “you are the he-goat and he is the ram, and you will trample him and take his kingdom.” [End of the account from Josippon] Was it not then an angel who guided Alexander? Was it not a pagan who triumphed, since all the Hellenes are idolaters. Thus also these pagans are sent, due to our sins . . .

APPENDIX 13

“Like a bride fornicating in front of her wedding-canopy” in the Commented Palaea of 1406.

и ємъ обѣ дъсцѣ повєргохъ из руку моєю и скрушихъ ѥ прєдъ вами судивъ ѡ васъ яко нє достоини єсте людіе ѥстьствєнаго законоположєнья. якожє бо нєвѣста прєжє чєртога своѥго съблудивши.

“And I took the two tablets, and cast them out of my hands, and broke them before your eyes” (Deuteronomy 9:17). Judging that you are not a people worthy of the deposition of the true Law, like a bride having fornicated in front of her wedding canopy.

APPENDIX 14

The editor boasts of his knowledge.

Commented Palaea of 1406.

Ты жє ѹбо жидовинє скажи намъ. како взѧша кости иѡсифлѧ, или коєи мудростьи наидоша ꙗ грѧзѧща в мори за .у҃. лѣт҃. ащє ли ты нє вѣси мы ѹкажєм ти.

But you, Jew, tell us, how did they take Joseph’s bones, or what wisdom did they use to find them, being sunk in the sea for four hundred years? If you do not know we will tell you.

APPENDIX 15

The account of the finding of Joseph’s remains as narrated in the 1477 Commented Palaea.

Толковая Палея 1477 г. Син. 210, f. 205vff.

и въставъ мѡѷсїи начат҄ сочити кто повѣдѣ иꙗковѹ иѡсифа въ єгиптѣ жива . и начать сочити ѡ костѣх иѡсифовѣх како ꙗ ѡбрѣсти . иѡсифа повѣда дщи іаковлѧ жива сѹщи . ѡнаж возпи къ ѡц҃ю и рєч҄ . ѡч҃є иѡсифъ живъ єс҄ . ѡнжє възложи рѹк҄ на главꙋ єа и рєч҄ жива бѹди и ты въ вѣк҄ и та єс҄ была жива .у҃. лѣт҄. и та повѣда мѡѷсєѡви . гдѣ сѹт҄ кости иѡсиѳ҄ . єсть рѣка въ єгиптѣ имєнємь воилда . тѹ сѹт҄ погрꙋжєни кости иѡсифли въ ѡловѧнѣ рацѣ . єгдажє рєч҄ гс҄ь мѡѷсиѡви извєди люди моꙗ изъ єгипта съ всѣмь имѣниемь ихъ . и створи ємѹ бъ҃ .з҃. нощєи въ єдинꙋ нощь и нач҄ мѡѷсїи въпрашати их . хотѧ кости іѡсифови съ свѣщами искати и срѣтє и дщи іаковлѧ и рєч҄ ємѹ в рѣцѣ сѹт҄ кости иѡсифови въ воилдаи мѡѷсїи жє вѕємь свѣща . поимь с собою .л҃. мꙋж и вшєд на горѹ и рєч҄ возми сѧ воилдаю . и даждь кости іѡсифови . и нє быс҄ ꙗвлєнїа . и пак҄ рєч҄ второє и нє быс҄ ꙗвлєниѧ . трєтиєє жє написа на хорьтью . и рєч҄ воилдаю возмис҄ и положи на вод . и възъстѹпи рака иѡсифова . мѡѷсїи жє рад быс҄ и взѧ ракꙋ . хортїи жє нє взѧ но пристѹпивъ єдинъ жидовинъ жєстосєрдъ взѧтъ ю.

And Moses got up and began to inquire who told Jacob that Joseph was alive in Egypt, and began to inquire about Joseph’s bones, and how to find them. It was Jacob’s daughter who said that Joseph was alive, she cried out and said: father, Joseph is alive. Then he put his hand on her head and said: May you too live for eternity, and she lived four hundred years and it is she who told Moses where the bones of Joseph are. There is a river in Egypt named Voilda [v.l. Vol “Bull”]. This is where the bones of Joseph are submerged in a leaden casket. When God said to Moses: lead my people out of Egypt with all their belongings, God also turned seven nights into a single night for him, and Moses began asking them, wanting to search for Joseph’s bones with candles, and Jacob’s daughter encountered him and said to him: It is in the river that Joseph’s bones are, in the Voilda. Then Moses, having taken candles, took with him thirty men and went up a hill and said: Rise Voilda [v.l. Vol “Bull”] and give up Joseph’s bones. And there was no apparition. Then he said again for the second time and there was no apparition. For the third [time] he wrote down on a parchment and said: Voilda [v.l. Vol “Bull”] rise, and put [it] on the water, and Joseph’s casket emerged. And Moses rejoiced and took the casket, the parchment, however, he did not take, but a certain hard-hearted Jew approached and took it.

APPENDIX 16

The account of the finding of Joseph’s remains in the Talmud, Soṭah 13a:

ת''ר בא וראה כמה חביבות מצות על משה רבינו שכל ישראל כולן נתעסקו בביזה והוא נתעסק במצות . . . ומנין היה יודע משה רבינו היכן יוסף קבור אמרו סרח בת אשר נשתיירה מאותו הדור הלך משה אצלה אמר לה כלום את יודעת היכן יוסף קבור אמרה לו ארון של מתכת עשו לו מצרים וקבעוהו בנילוס הנהר כדי שיתברכו מימיו הלך משה ועמד על שפת נילוס אמר לו יוסף יוסף הגיע העת שנשבע הקב”ה שאני גואל אתכם והגיעה השבועה שהשבעת את ישראל אם אתה מראה עצמך מוטב אם לאו

.הרי אנו מנוקין משבועתך מיד צף ארונו של יוסף

Our Rabbis have taught: Come and see how beloved were the commandments by Moses our teacher; for whereas all the Israelites occupied themselves with the spoil, he occupied himself with the commandments . . . But whence did Moses know the place where Joseph was buried? —It is related that Serah, daughter of Asher, was a survivor of that generation. Moses went to her and asked: “Do you know where Joseph was buried?” She answered him, “The Egyptians made a metal coffin for him which they placed in the river Nile so that its waters should be blessed.” Moses went and stood on the bank of the Nile and exclaimed: “Joseph, Joseph! the time has arrived which the Holy One, blessed be He, swore, ‘I will deliver you,’ and the oath which you did impose upon the Israelites has reached [the time of fulfillment]; if you will show thyself, well and good; otherwise, behold, we are free of your oath.” Immediately Joseph’s coffin emerged.

APPENDIX 17

The account of the finding of Joseph’s remains in the Midrash.

Genesis Rabbati: בראשית רבתי פרשת ויחי

ויחנטו אותו וגו׳. ר׳ נתן אומר חנטוהו כדרך המלכים וקברוהו בקפיטולין של מצרים בין המלכים. וי״א (ויש אומרים) עשו לו ארון של מתכת ושקעוהו בנילוס . . . כדי שלא יבא עליהם רעב. ור׳ אמרין בשעה ששמעו מצרים שכך השביע יוסף לאחיו שלא יוכלו לעלות ממצרים אלא עד שיעלוהו עמהם, אמרו החרטומים אל פרעה רצונך שלא תעלה אומה זו מכאן לעולם, מיד עשו לו ארון של עופרת של ה׳ [מאות ככרים] והשליכוהו בתוך נילוס. כשראו ישראל כן אמרו ווי אין אנו נגאלין לעולם. . . וכיצד מצאו משה, ר׳ יהודה אומר בתוך פלטרין של מלכים היה יוסף קבור בקבורת המלכים והוציאו משם . . .ורבנן אמרי הלך משה ועמד על קברי המלכים ואמר יוסף יוסף הגיעה השעה שהקב״ה גואל את ישראל והשכינה וישראל מעוכבין בשבילך וענני כבוד, אם אתה מודיע את עצמך מוטב, ואם לאו אנו נקיים משבועתך. מיד נזדעזע ארונו של יוסף ונטלו משה. ועל דעתיה דמ״ד (דמאן דאמר) בנילוס נשקע ארונו, היה משה מסבב את העיר למצא ארונו של יוסף ולא היה מוצאו. אמרו סרח בת אשר נשתיירה מאותו הדור ופגעה במשעה ואמרה לו אדוני משה למה אתה עיף ויגע. אמר לה ג׳ ימים וג׳ לילות סבבתי את העיר למצא ארונו של יוסף ואיני מוצאו. אמרה לו בא ואראך היכן הוא. הוליכה אותו לנילוס, אמרה לו במקום הזה השליכוהו המצריים במים כדי שלא יוכל אדם להוציאו משם לעולם ולא יגאלו לעולם. מיד עמד משה על שפת הנהר ואמר יוסף יוסף, אתה יודע היאך השבעת את אחיך תן כבוד לאלהי ישראל ולא תעכב גאולתן של ישראל מעשים יש לך בקש רחמים לפני בוראך ועלה מן התהומות. מיד התחיל ארונו של יוסף להיות מפעפע ועלה מן התהומות כקנה. נטלו משה על כתפיו ונשאו. וי״א (ויש אומרים) נטל משה צרור וזרק לתוכו וצעק ואמר יוסף יוסף הגיעה השבועה שנשבע הקב״ה לאברהם שהוא גואל את בניו, נקיים אנו משבועתך אם אין אתה מעלה את עצמך. מיד צף ארונו של יוסף ונטלו משה. . . וי״א (ויש אומרים) טס של זהב נטל וכתב שם המפורש וחקק בו צורת שור על שם יוסף שנקרא שור, .בכור שורו (דברים ל״ג י״ז), וצעק ואמר עלה שור עלה שור. מיד צף ארונו של יוסף ונטלו משה

אמרו מיכה היה שם ונטל את הטס, וכשעשה אהרן אותו מעשה נטל מיכה אותו טס והשליכו . . . לאש ואמר עלה שור עלה שור, ויצא אותו עגל מן האש . . . מכח שם המפורש שחקק בו

”And they embalmed him, etc.” [“and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt,” Genesis 50:26]. R. Nathan says: they embalmed him as is customary for kings and they buried him in the capitol of Egypt among the kings.

And some say, they made a metal coffin for him and immersed it in the Nile . . . so that they may avoid hunger.

And the Rabbis say: when the Egyptians heard that Joseph had made his brethren swear, that they could not leave Egypt unless they take him with them, the magicians said to Pharaoh: Do you wish that this nation should never get out of here? and they immediately made a leaden coffin weighing five [hundred talents] and threw it into the Nile. When the Israelites saw this they said: Woe! We will never be delivered . . .

And how did Moses find him? R. Yehudah says: in the palace of kings, Joseph was buried in the burial place of the kings and he took him out of there . . . And the Rabbis say: Moses went and stood on the burial site of the kings and said: Joseph, Joseph, the time has come for God to deliver the Israelites, and the Shekhinah and Israel are hindered on your account, as well as the Clouds of Glory, if you announce yourself, —that is good, and if not, we are no longer bound by your oath. Immediately Joseph’s coffin started upwards and Moses took it.

And according to those who say that his coffin was immersed in the Nile, Moses had been walking around the city to look for Joseph’s coffin and could not find it. They say that Serah, Asher’s daughter, remained of that generation and she encountered Moses and said to him: Master Moses, why are you tired and weary? He said to her: for three days and three nights I have been walking around the city to look for Joseph’s coffin and I cannot find it. She said to him: come and I shall show you where it is. She walked with him to the Nile and said to him: at this place the Egyptians threw it into the water so that no man can ever take it out, and so they would not be delivered. Immediately Moses stood on the bank of the river and said: Joseph, Joseph, you know how you made your brethren swear, pay respect to the God of Israel and you will not hinder the deliverance of the children of Israel, you have deeds [to your credit], ask your Creator for mercy and rise up from the depths. And immediately Joseph’s coffin began rising and rose up from the depths like a reed. Then Moses took him/it on his shoulders and carried him/it away.

And some say, Moses took a pebble and threw it into it [sc., the river] and cried out and said: Joseph, Joseph, the time has come for [the fulfillment of] the oath that God gave to Abraham that he would deliver his children, we are released from your oath if you do not raise yourself. Immediately Joseph’s coffin rose up and Moses took it . . .

And some say that he took a golden foil and wrote thereon the ineffable name and engraved in it the shape of a bull, [standing for the name of Joseph who is called bull, “In majesty he is like a first-born bull” (Deuteronomy 33:17)], and cried out and said: “Rise bull, rise bull.” Immediately Joseph’s coffin rose up and Moses took it.

They say that Micah was there and took the foil, and when Aaron did what he did, Micah took that foil and threw it into the fire and said: “rise bull, rise bull,” and that calf came out of the fire . . . by the force of the ineffable name engraved in it . . .

APPENDIX 18

Addressing a contemporary Jew in an effort of proselytization.

Commented Palaea (Milkov 2002) from 1406 copy.

Палея Толковая, Москва: Согласие 2002; с. 320:

Ты же ѹбо дьнєсь сѹщии жидовине. почто не рєвнѹєши дрєвлє бывшимъ израильтомъ. ихъ жє ради показание египта. ты жє дьнєсь наказанъ и въ работу прєданъ єси подъ рꙋкы языкомъ. ихъ жє дрєвлє прослави господь богъ. ты жє дьнєсь порꙋганию и покорꙋ въ языцѣхъ. ижє дрєвлє чєрмнаго моря прєидоша бєзднꙋ ты жє дьнєсь по градомъ язычьскымъ калъ и гноища сбираєши. акы свинья пыща и въ мотылѣхъ прєбываєши. почто ѹбо нє разꙋмѣєши. почто ли нє въспрѧнєши ѿ жєстосєрдиꙗ фараонѧ. ꙗкожє бо и онъ жєстосєрдиє имѣꙗ противꙋ людємъ божиимъ погыбє. тако жє и вы ожєсточающє противꙋ законꙋ избраномꙋ богомъ погыбающє погыбнєтє. исповєргъшє злѣ животъ свои. огнію вѣчномꙋ прєдани бꙋдєтє. но възникъни. въздъхни и възпи къ господу. повєрзи прєлєсть и одєжисѧ въ новꙋю одєжю. єжє єсть свѧтоє крєщєніе. ꙗкожє и змиꙗ. когда състарѣєть сѧ и и ослѣпнєта очи єї. и алчєть м҃ дьни и м҃ нощи. дондєжє ослабѣєть єи сила тєлєси. тогда абіє съвлєчєть съ собє вєтшанꙋю кожү и бꙋдєть обновившисѧ. такожє и ты жидовинє нє бꙋди нєсмыслєнъ и бесловєсєнъ ꙗко змии. пророчьства почитаєши. бытьи врємѧ вєдаєши. обнови своє тѣло. прозри своима очима. свєрзи вєтшанꙋю одєжю. єжє єсть нєвѣрьство. и обновисѧ свѧтымъ крєщєніємъ. и притєци къ христꙋ и бꙋди єдиногласникъ съ нами.

But you, Jew living today, why are you not you jealous of the Israelites of old, on whose account Egypt was punished? You are today punished and delivered into servitude under the hand of the gentiles. They were once glorified by God, whereas you have now become profaned and subjugated among the nations. They crossed the abyss of the Red Sea, whereas you collect excrement and filth, panting like a swine and living in the manure. Why do you not understand, why do you not wake up from the Pharaonic hard-heartedness? For just as he, being hard-hearted towards the people of God, perished, so will you, hardening yourselves against the Law chosen by God, surely perish; vomiting miserably your lives, you will be committed to the eternal fire. But rise, sigh and cry to the Lord, throw off the spell and put on a new garment, which is the Holy Baptism. Just like a snake, when it grows old and its eyes darken, fasts for forty days and forty nights, until its corporeal force weakens, and then it sheds its decayed skin and becomes renewed. So also you, Jew, do not be insensate and irrational like the snakes. The prophecies you have read, the time of Creation you know. Renovate your body, regain the sight of your eyes, throw off the decayed garment which is incredulity, become renewed through the Holy Baptism, rush to Christ and become one with us.

APPENDIX 19

Persecution of Jews under Antiochus.

Academy Chronograph (Istrin 1905, 326):

И повєлѣша Изл҄ю да всѧкъ ѹ нєгожє єсть волъ да напишєть на розѣ єго да нє бѹдєть ємѹ части въ бѕ҄ѣ изл҄вѣ. и изрѣзаша Изл҄ьтѧнє волы своѩ. И пакы повєлѣша нє ходити дщєрємъ Изл҄вымъ кѹпатисѧ на рѣкѹ. и слышаша Изл҄ьтѧнє лишишасѧ жєнь своихъ и быша поганїи вєсєлїи рєкꙋщє. сє да прїидꙋть к намъ жєны ихъ. и єгда ѹслышаша Изл҄ьтѧнє словєса ихъ рєкоша. приидєм к жєнамъ своимъ бєс кꙋпанїѩ да нє скончаєтсѧ сємѧ Изл҄во. и створисѧ имъ чюдо. и показасѧ источникъ водныи комꙋждо посрѣдє домꙋ своєго и прихожахꙋ кѹпатсѧ тщєры иєрслимовы каѩждо в домꙋ своємъ. и прихожахѹ к мꙋжємъ своимъ кꙋпавшєсѧ.

And they ordered Israel that everyone who has an ox should write on its horns that he has no stake in the God of Israel. So the Israelites slaughtered their oxen. And then they ordered that the daughters of Israel should not go to bathe in the river. And when the Israelites heard this they withheld themselves from their women, and the heathens rejoiced saying: now their women will come to us. And when the Israelites heard this, they said: let us come to our women without a bath so that the seed of Israel would not perish. And a miracle happened to them and a water source appeared to each one of them in his house, and the daughters of Jerusalem went to bathe each one in her house, and they came to their men having bathed.

Midrash Ma‘aśeh Ḥanukka (Eisenstein 1915, 189–92).

מדרש מעשה חנוכה

כיוון שראו יוונים שעמדו ישראל בגזירה, ולא נכשל אחד מהם בשום דבר רע, עמדו וגזרו עליהם גזירה אחרת, והעבירו קול: כל אדם מישראל שיש לו שור או שה יחקק על קרניו שאין לו חלק באלהי ..ישראל, . . . כיון ששמעו ישראל כך, . . . אמרו: חס ושלום שנכפור באלהינו! עמדו ומכרו בהמתן

וכיון שראו היוונים שעמדו ישראל בגזירה זו, עמדו וגזרו כל מי שאשתו הולכת לטבילה ידקר בחרב, וכל הרואה אותה הרי היא לו לאשה ובניה לעבדים, כיון שראו ישראל כך מנעו עצמם מלשמש, וכיון ששמעו יונים. אמרו: הואיל ואין ישראל משמשין מטותיהם אנו נזקקין להן. כיון שראו ישראל כך, חזרו על נשיהן בלא טבילה בעל כורחן . . . אמר להם הקב"ה: הואיל ועשיתם בלא כוונה . . . אני אטהר אתכם. ופתח לכל אחד ואחד מהן מעיין בתוך ביתו והיו נשיהם טובלות בתוך בתיהם

And when the Hellenes saw that Israel withstood this decree, and not one of them failed in any evil deed, they went and ordered them that anyone from Israel who has an ox or a lamb should write on its horns that he has no stake in the God of Israel. When the Israelites heard this, . . . they said: Heaven forbid that we should deny our God, and they went and sold their cattle . . . And then they ordered that anyone whose wife goes to bathe will be smitten by a sword. When the Israelites heard this they withheld themselves from approaching their wives. When the Hellenes heard this, they said: Since [the men of] Israel are not performing their marital duties towards their wives, we will approach them. And when the Israelites heard this, they perforce came to their wives without a bath . . . Then God said to them: Since you have acted without [evil] intention, I will purify you, and He opened to each one of them a fountain in his home, and their wives went to bathe in their homes.

APPENDIX 20

The miraculous conception in prison of Jechoniah’s son Salathiel.

Academy Chronograph (Istrin 1905, 325):

Трєтїєє приходи Навходносоръ на Ієрꙋсалимъ и полони Ієхонѣю єгожє всади в тємницꙋ. Чєтвєртоє приходи на Сєдєкїю на вєс Ієрꙋсалимъ и полони и ввєдє в Вавилонъ и постави въ зємли Сєнарскѣ въ Вавилонѣ. Видѣ вєс Іи҄ль ꙗко нє осталосѧ ѿ плємєнє Дв҃два развѣ єдинъ Ехонѣѧ ижє бѣ всажєнъ в тємницю и нє пꙋстѧхѹ жєны єго къ нємѹ. И нє бѣ ѹ Ехонѣѧ сн҃а. Идоша старѣишины жидовскїа к жєнѣ Навходносоровѣ и даша єи дары дабы пꙋстила жєнꙋ Ехонѣєвꙋ в тємницꙋ к Ехонїю. И нє повєлѣ Навходносоръ цр҄ь створити сєго. и ѹмоли єго жєна єго. И пꙋстиша жєнꙋ єго къ нємꙋ, и сташа старѣишины домѹ Іи҄лєва молѧщєсѧ прєдъ Бг҄омъ, дабы ѹтѣшилсѧ Бг҄ъ ѿ заклѧтїи, имжє бѣ клѧлсѧ нє быти плємєни ѿ нєго. И приꙗтъ Бг҄ъ молбѹ ихъ и нє погꙋби сємєни Дв҄два, и породи Ехонѣѧ сн҄ъ въ тємници и нарєчє имѧ ємꙋ Салаѳїилъ и роди Салаѳаилъ Зоровавєлѧ.

A third time Nauchodnosor went against Jerusalem and captured Jechoniah and put him in prison. A fourth time he went against Sedekiah and against all of Jerusalem and captured [them] and deported [them] to Babylon and settled [them] in the land of Senar in Babylon. And all Israel saw that there was no one left of David’s family except Jechoniah who had been put in prison and they would not allow his wife to see him. And Jechoniah had no son. So the elders of Israel went to Nauchodnosor’s wife and gave her gifts that she may allow Jechoniah’s wife to join Jechoniah in prison. And the elders of Israel stood far off praying before God, so that God would regret His oath which He had sworn that there would be no offspring from him. And God accepted their prayer and did not destroy the seed of David, and Jechoniah begot a son in prison and called his name Salathiel, and Salathiel begot Zorovavel.

APPENDIX 21

The miraculous conception of Shealtiel in the Talmud and Midrash.

Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 37b–38a:

אמר רב יהודה גלות מכפרת שלשה דברים שנאמר (ירמיהו כא ט) ״כה אמר ה' וגו' היושב בעיר הזאת .ימות בחרב ברעב ובדבר והיוצא ונפל אל הכשדים הצרים עליכם יחיה והיתה לו נפשו לשלל״

ר' יוחנן אמר גלות מכפרת על הכל שנאמר (ירמיהו כב ל) ״כה אמר ה' כתבו את האיש הזה ערירי .גבר לא יצלח בימיו כי לא יצלח מזרעו איש יושב על כסא דוד ומושל עוד ביהודה״

ובתר דגלה כתיב (דברי הימים א, ג יז) ״ובני יכניה אסיר שלתיאל בנו״. אסיר שעיברתו אמו בבית האסורין שלתיאל ששתלו אל שלא כדרך הנשתלין גמירי שאין האשה מתעברת מעומד והיא נתעברה .מעומד

R. Judah said: Exile makes remission for three things, for it is written (Jeremiah 21:8–9): Thus says the Lord, etc. He who stays in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence, but he who goes out and surrenders to the Chaldeans who are besieging you shall live and shall have his life as a prize of war.

R. Joḥanan said: Exile atones for everything, for it is written (Jeremiah 22:30): Thus says the Lord, “Write this man down childless, a man who will not prosper in his days; For no man of his descendants will prosper sitting on the throne of David or ruling again in Judah.” Whereas after he [the king] was exiled, it is written (1 Chronicles 3:17): And the sons of Jechoniah, Assir [“prisoner”], Shealtiel his son etc. [He was called] Assir, because his mother conceived him in prison. Shealtiel, because God did not plant him in the way that others are planted. It is well known that a woman cannot conceive in a standing position, yet she did conceive standing.

Midrash Leviticus Rabbah 19:

מדרש רבה לחומש ויקרא - פרשת מצורע

ואשה כי יזוב זוב דמה ימים רבים (ויקרא טו כה). מי מקיים מצוות זיבה, יכניהו בן יהויקים מלך יהודה קיים מצות זיבה. אמרו כיון שעלה נבוכדנצר להחריב את ירושלם עלה וישב לו בדפני של אנטיוכיא. ירדה סנהדרין גדולה לקראתו אמרו לו הגיע זמנו של בית הזה ליחרב, אמ׳ להן לאו, אלא יהויקים מלך יהודה מרד בי תנו אותו לי ואני הולך לי. . . כיון שהרגו המליך את יכניהו בנו תחתיו וירד לו לבבל. . . חזר וישב לו בדפני של אנטיוכיאה. ירדה סנהדרין גדולה לקראתו אמרו לו הגיע זמנו של בית הזה ליחרב, אמ׳ להן לאו, אלא תנו לי את יכניה בן יהויקים ואני הולך לי. אזלון ואמ׳ ליכניה נבוכדנצר בעי לך. . . מה עשה נבוכדנצר? נטלו וחבשו בבית האסורים וכל מי שהיה נחבש בימיו לא היה יוצא משם לעולם . . . גלה יהויכין וגלתה סנהדרין גדולה עמו. . . באותה שעה ישבה סנהדרין גדולה על דעתה ואמרו: בימינו מלכות בית דוד פוסקת, אותו שכתוב בו (תהלים פט לז): וכסאו כשמש נגדי. מה נעשה? נלך ונפייס לגדלת, וגדלת למלכה, ומלכה למלך. הלכו ופייסו לגדלת, וגדלת למלכה, ומלכה למלך. . . כיון שבא נבוכדנצר להזקק לה א"ל: את מלך ויכניה אינו מלך!? אתה מבקש תפקידך ויכניה אינו מבקש תפקידו!? מיד גזר ונתנו לו אשתו? וכיצד שלשלוה לו? ' שבתי אמר: דרך קנקלין שלשלוה לו. ורבנן אמרי: פתחו המעזיבה ושלשלוה לו. כיון שבא להזקק לה, אמרה: כשושנה אדומה ראיתי פרש ממנה מיד. הלכה וספרה וטהרה וטבלה. אמר לו הקב"ה: בירושלים לא ,קיימתם מצות זיבה ועתה אתם מקיימין, שנאמר: (זכריה ט יא): גם את בדם בריתך שלחתי אסיריך מבור

. . . נזכרתם אותו הדם שבסיני בשביל כן שלחתי אסיריך. . . ונעשה לו נס ונתעברה אשתו מעומד

“And if a woman has a discharge of her blood many days” (Leviticus 15:25).

Who keeps the commandment of [abstinence during] menstruation? Jechoniah son of Jehoiakim kept the commandment of menstruation. They say that when Nebuchadnezzar came to destroy Jerusalem he took up position at Daphne of Antiochia. The great Sanhedrin went out to him and said to him: is it time for this temple to be destroyed? He said: no, but Jehoiakim, king of Judea, revolted against me, deliver him to me and I shall leave . . . After he had him executed he made his son Jechoniah king in his place and left for Babylon . . . [thereafter] he came back and stopped at Daphne of Antiochia. The great Sanhedrin went out to him and said to him: is it time for this temple to be destroyed? He said: no, but give me Jechoniah son of Jehoiakim and I shall leave. They went and said to Jechoniah: Nebuchadnezzar is asking for you . . . What did Nebuchadnezzar do? He took him and put him in prison. And anyone imprisoned in the times of this wicked man would never get out . . . Jechoniah went into exile and the great Sanhedrin went into exile with him . . . At that time the great Sanhedrin sat and debated, and said: in our times the royal house of David is about to end . . . What shall we do? Let us win the favor of the [queen’s] hairdresser [or: governess], and the hairdresser will win the queen, and the queen the king. And they went and persuaded the hairdresser, and the hairdresser the queen and the queen the king . . . When Nebuchadnezzar came to make love to her, she said: You are king and is not Jechoniah a king? You have sexual desires, and has Jechoniah none? He then immediately gave the order and they gave him his wife. And how did they let her down to him? R. Shabtai says: they let her down to him through the bars. And the Rabbis say: they opened the ceiling and let her down to him. When he came to make love to her, she said to him: I saw something like a red lily [a euphemism for menstruation], and he immediately withdrew from her. And she went and counted [the necessary days] and bathed. Then God said to them: In Jerusalem you did not observe the commandment of menstruation and here you do? As it is said, “As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit” (Zechariah 9:11), since you remembered that blood [of the covenant] at Sinai, I therefore set free your prisoners from the waterless pit . . . And a miracle occurred to him and his wife became pregnant in a standing position.

APPENDIX 22

Differences between the Latin pseudo-Hegesippus and the Hebrew Josippon.

Pseudo-Hegesippus (Christian text, clearly tainted by Christological bias; Ussani 1932, 394):

Urbem quoque ipsam cum templo uestustis etiam litteris scriptum erat tunc perituram, cum tetragonum templum factum fuisset. itaque siue obliti siue obstupefacti ingruentium malorum necessitate, ubi occupata est Antonia, tetragonum circuitum templi fecerunt. inter quae illud (395) praecellentissimum, quod in litteris aeque uetustis, quas sacras uocabant, manebat impressum quod secundum illud tempus futurus esset uir, qui de regione eorum imperium adsumeret in orbem terrarum. quae res eos in tanto furore posuit, ut sibi non solum libertatem sed etiam regnum pollicerentur. id alii ad Vespasianum referendum putarunt, prudentiores ad dominum Iesum, qui eorum in terris secundum carnem genitus ex Maria regnum suum per uniuersa terrarum diffudit spatia. tantis itaque rebus monentibus non potuerunt cauere quod diuinitus decernebatur.

And it was inscribed also in ancient letters that the city itself with the temple would perish at the time, when the temple will have been made quadrangular. And so, whether forgetful or dazed by the inevitability of the threatening evils, when the Antonia [tower] was seized, they made the circuit of the temple quadrangular. The most outstanding of which [omens], also in the ancient letters, which they called sacred, there remained impressed that following that time there would be a man from their region who would take up rule over the whole world. Which thing put them in a great frenzy, as not only freedom but even dominion was being promised to them. This, some thought to make reference to Vespasian, but the wiser thought it made reference to the Lord Jesus who, born in the flesh in their lands of Maria, will spread his kingdom over the entire space of the world. And so even with so many things foretelling this they were not able to avoid what was divinely decreed.

The Josippon (Flusser 1980, 1: 415, section 87, lines 74–83):

בימים ההם נמצא מכתב כתוב על הצור מימים הראשונים ויקראו אותו והנה כתוב בו לאמר: בעת אשר ימלא בניין ההיכל ויהיה מרובע, אז יהרס. וכאשר נלכדה אנטוניא ויהרסוה חיל רומנים ויפרצו את פאת ההיכל וימהרו היהודים לבנות את פריצת ההיכל, ויהי ככלותם לבנות והנה היכל מרובע. והם לא זכרו את דברי המכתב אשר היה על הצור, על כן נאמנו דברי המכתב ההוא. וגם נמצא כתוב בקיר קודש הקדשים לאמר: כאשר יהיה בניין ההיכל מרובע, אז ימלוך מלך על ישראל, מלך המולך ומושל בכל הארץ, על כן אמרו מקצת העם כי הוא מלך ישראל, וחכמי ירושלם והכהנים אמרו

.כי מלך רומנים הוא

In those days, an ancient inscription was found on a rock, and they read it and lo, it was written therein as follows: At the time when the building of the Temple will be accomplished and it will be quadrangular, then it will be destroyed. And when Antonia was captured and the Roman army destroyed it and breached the corner of the Temple, the Jews hurried to build the broken part of the Temple, and when they finished building, there was the Temple, quadrangular. And they did not remember the words of the inscription that was on the rock, therefore the words of that inscription came true. There was also an inscription found on the wall of the Holy of Holies, saying: when the edifice of the Temple will be quadrangular, then there will reign a king over Israel, a king who reigns and rules over the whole earth. Hence a part of the people said that it is the king of Israel, whereas the wise men of Jerusalem and the priests said that it is the king of the Romans.

APPENDIX 23

Prophecy written on the wall of the temple as quoted by Meshcherskij.

Meshcherskij 1958, 146:

О пророчестве сказано, что оно כתוב בקיר בית קדש הקדשן (написано на стене сватого святых); о истолковании ועם הארצ מקצתם אמרו כי והכהנים אמור כי הוא מלך הרומיים (все простые люди говорили, что это царь израильский, священники же говорили, что это царь римский).

About the prophecy it is said that it “is written on the wall of the holy of holies”; on the interpretation: “all the simple folk said that this is ]the king of Israel[, whereas the priests said that it is the king of the Romans.”

APPENDIX 24

Phrase left out by Meshcherskij about the Temple lasting 420 years.

The Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus:

31.2 и прїидоша римлѧни въ .ѳ҃. дн҃ь ‹и› сѣкоша сѧ въ дворѣ. и прїидоша посрєдѣ полаты. и сє ст҃аа ст҃ыхъ замчєна. 31.3 и ѹзрѣша жидовє знамєнїє на стѣнѣ написано. єгда жє исполнитсѧ домү сємү .ук҇. лѣт. тогда цр҃ьствовати начнєть над ієрс҃лмомъ ижє црс҃твѹєть над всєю зємлєю. 31.4 и рькоша мѹдрєци. то єсть цр҃ь римскыи. а дрѹѕїи рѣша то єсть цр҃ь іил҃ьтєскыи.

And the Romans came on the ninth day [of the month of Ab] and fought in the court, and they came inside the Temple, and lo, the Holy of Holies is locked. And the Jews saw a sign written on the wall: when this house will be 420 years old, then there will begin to reign over Jerusalem the one who reigns over the whole earth. And the wise men said: this is the king of the Romans, while others said: this is the king of Israel.

APPENDIX 25

The Temple lasting 420 years in the Talmud.

Babylonian Talmud, tractate Yoma, 9a:

תלמוד בבלי, יומא ט׳ א: שנות רשעים תִּקְצֹרְנָה (משלי י כז) זה מקדש שני שעמד ד׳ מאות ועשרים .שנה ושמשו בו יותר משלש מאות כהנים

“The years of the wicked shall be shortened” (Proverbs 10:27)—that is the second temple, which stood for four hundred and twenty years, and more then three hundred priests served in it.

APPENDIX 26

Extra details in the Huntington Hebrew reworking of Josippon.

Portions missing in Slavic are marked by italics. References to pages in Flusser’s 1980 edition of Josippon where some of these portions do appear, albeit in a different order, are given in parentheses:

ויבואו רומיים ביום התשיעי בחצר העזרה ויערכו מלחמה וישמטו את מגדל ההיכל וימהרו היהודים ויבנוהו בלילה ההוא. ויהי ממחרת וינגחוהו רומיים ויבואו בתוך ההיכל והנה קדש הקדשים סגור ויריעו רומיים את ההמון שאון עצום מאד ויריעו תרועה גדולה ותרעש העיר ביום ההוא כרעש אשר היה בימי אורודוס וירעם בעם עצום מאד ויפלו הבתים ביום ההוא עד קם אחד מעמי הארץ ויתנבא לאמר חזקו והלחמו כי הרעד והרעש הזה לעזרתם הם עתה יבנה הבית מאיליו. ויתחזקו על דברי נביא השקר ולא שמו

(לבם אל האותות אשר נראו בשנה ההיא בירושלים. (פלוסר 413

בשנה ההיא נראה בירושלים על קדש הקדשים דמות אדם אשר לא נראה כיופיו מעולם רגלי נערי אדם (בקדש הקדשים קוראים ואומרים לכו ונעלה לכו מן הבית הזה. (פלוסר 414

בימים ההם מצאו בצור אחד חקוק בקיר חוץ לחומה כאשר יבנה מרובע כן יהרס וכאשר הרסו רומיים את מגדל הבית ויבנוהו היהודים במהירות. ויהי בבקר וימצאו מרובע. ועוד מצאו חקוק בקיר קדש הקדשים כאשר ימלא ארבע מאות ועשרים אז ימלוך מלך המולך על כל הארץ ויאמרו החכמים הוא מלך רומיים והעם היו אומ׳ הוא מלך ישראל (פלוסר 415) ועוד נראה מופת בחצר העזרה ויביאו

.(פרה לשחטה לעולה ויהי בהפילם אותה והנה ילדה כבש (פלוסר 414

And the Romans came on the ninth [of the month of Ab] into the courtyard, and waged war and toppled the tower of the Temple, and the Jews rushed to build it on the same night. And the next day the Romans battered it and came inside the Temple and lo, the Holy of Holies is locked. And the Romans with the crowd gave a very loud shout and raised a great war cry, and the city shook on that day as in the quake that was on the days of Herod, and there was a huge thundering and houses tumbled on that day, until someone, of the simple folk [lit., peoples of the land], stood up and prophesied saying: be strong and fight, for this shake and quake is in their favor, for now the Temple will be built by itself. And they were fortified by the words of the false prophet, and did not heed the omens which had been observed that year in Jerusalem.

In that year there appeared above the Holy of Holies a human figure of a beauty the likes of which had never been seen <lacuna?> the footsteps of young men in the Holy of Holies calling and saying: let us go away from this house. In those days they found inscribed in a stone in the exterior wall of the bulwark: when it will be built quadrangular, then it will be destroyed. And when the Romans destroyed the tower of the Temple, and the Jews [re]built it in a hurry, in the morning it appeared to be quadrangular. And they found inscribed on the wall of the Holy of Holies: when it will be 420 years old, then there will reign a king who reigns over the whole earth. And the wise men said: this is the king of the Romans, while the people said: this is the king of Israel. And still another sign was observed in the courtyard [of the Temple] they brought a cow for slaughtering as a holocaust offering, and when they were bringing her down, lo, she gave birth to a lamb.

APPENDIX 27

Discussion of hyponymy in Maimonides’s Logical Terminology.

Maimonides’s text in Arabic script (Türker 1960, 60; 1961, 106):

والإسم المقول بعموم وخصوص هو أنْ يسمى نوع من الأنواع باسم جنسه كقولنا النجم المقول على كلّ كوكب من كواكب السماء على العموم وهو اسم للثريّا خاصة وكإسم الخشيشة المقول على أنوعاع الخشائش كلّها وعلى هذا الزهر الأصفر الذى يصبغ به. الصباغون

Maimonides’s text in Judaeo-Arabic (Efros 1966: לו-לז Hebrew pagination)

ואלאסם אלמקול בעמום וכ˙צוץ הו אן יסמי נוע מן אלאנואע באסם גנסה כקולנא אלנגם אלמקול עלי כל כוכב מן כואכב אלסמאء עלי אלעמום והו אסם ללתריّא כ˙אצה¨ וכאסם אלחשישה אלמקול עלי

.אנואע אלחשאיٔש כלّהא ועלי הד˙א אלזהר אלצאפר אלד˙י יצבג˙ בה אלצבאג˙ון

Moses Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation (Efros 1938: נח Hebrew pagination):

והשם הנאמר בכלל וייחוד הוא אשר יקרא מין מן המינים בשם סוגו, כאמרנו כוכב הנאמר על כל כוכב מכוכבי השמים בכלל והוא שם לאחד מז' כוכבי לכת. וכשם חשישא בערב הנאמר על כל מיני .העשבים ועל הפרח הצהוב אשר יצבעו בו הצבעים

English translation (Efros 1938, 60):

A term used in general and in a particular is one that designates any species by the name of its genus, e.g., the word kôkab applied to any star of heaven, though it is the name of one of the seven planets [sc., Mercury], and the word ḥashish in Arabic given to all kinds of grass as well as to the yellow flower used for dyeing.

Slavic translation (Taube 2016, 242):

а имѧ рєчєноє всєм и єдинє то ижє нарєчєсѧ сѹщєство всѧчєством. яко рєчєм Ізраиль вѣмъ намъ имѧ и одному мєжу нами.

And a name applied to [both] a universal and a particular, is when a species is referred to by the genus, e.g., “Israel” is the name of us all, as well as of an individual among us.

APPENDIX 28

The discussion of “prime matter” in the Logical Terminology.

Maimonides’s text in Arabic script (Türker 1960, 52; 1961, 98):

اذ قد تبرهن ان هذه الاستقصات الأربعة يستحيل بعضها لبعض ويتكون بعضها من بعض فلها بلا محالة شىء مشترك هو مادّها وهذا الشىء المشترك للأستقصات الأربعة الذى يعقله ضرورة هو الذى نسميه المادة الأولى واسمه فى اللغة اليونانية الهيولى وكثيرا ما يسميه الأطباء والفلاسفة العنصر

Judaeo-Arabic transliteration (Efros 1966: כה Hebrew pagination):

אד˙ קד תברהן אן הד˙ה אלאסתקצאת אלארבעה¨ יסתחיל בעצ˙הא לבעץ˙ ויתכוّן בעצ˙הא מן בעץ˙ פלהא בלא מחאלה¨ שיء משתרך הו מאדתהא והד˙א אלשיء אלמשתרך ללאסתקצאת אלארבעה¨ אלד˙י יעקלה צ˙רורה¨ הו אלד˙י נסמיה אלמאדה¨ אלאולי ואסמהו פי אללג˙ה¨ אליונאניה אלהיולי וכת˙ירא מא יסמיה אלאטבאء

ואלפלאספה¨ אלענצר

Hebrew translation by Aḥituv, (Efros 1938: פד Hebrew pagination):

כי התבאר במופת כי אלו היסודות הד׳ נפסדים (אבן תיבון: משתנים) קצתם אל קצתם ויתהוו קצתם מקצתם, א״כ יש להם בלא ספק דבר משותף הוא חמרם. וזה הדבר המשותף אל היסודות ארבעה אשר נשכילהו בהכרח הוא אשר נקרא אותו החמר הראשון. ושמו בלשון יון היולי ורבים מן הפילוסופים

.והרופאים יקראוהו הענצר

For it has been demonstrated that these four elements are corrupted [Ibn Tibbon: transformed] into one another and generated from one another, hence they undoubtedly have some thing in common which is their matter. And that thing which is common to the four elements and which the mind necessarily affirms is what we call prime matter, and in Greek hyle, and many philosophers and physicians call it the ʿanṣar [Arabic عُنْصُر (ʿunṣur), lit., origin, element, stock, race].

The terminological usage describing transformation in terms of corruption and generation goes back to Aristotle’s work Περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς (On Generation and Corruption) and is reflected in both the Arabic and Hebrew philosophical traditions.

Slavic (Taube 1016, 208):

а вѣдомо ижє корєнь всѣх замѣсных .д҃. основанїѧ. ‹. . .› а прото иж ‹. . .› казѧтсѧ єдинъ во єдинъ. ‹. . .› но мы видимъ ижє корєнь ихъ єдинъ. и то нарєчєм гїюли. и по грєцки також.

And it is known that the root of all things composite are the four elements. ‹. . .› And since ‹. . .› they are corrupted into each other ‹. . .› but we see that their root is one. And this we will call hyle, and in Greek the same ‹. . .›.

The choice by the translator into Slavic to use Aḥituv’s “corrupted” rather than Ibn Tibbon’s “transformed” (as was said, he used both) reflects the translator’s literalism.

APPENDIX 29

Aristotelian “form” rendered by “animacy” in the Logika, chapter 9.

Maimonides’s Logical Terminology in Arabic script (Türker 1960, 52; 1961, 98):

مثال ذلك الٳنسان من الأمور الطبيعية مادته هى الحيوانية وصورته القوة الناطقة وغايته ٳدراك المعقولات وفاعله هو الذى اعطاه الصورة اعنى تلك القوة الناطقة لٲن معنى الفاعل عندنا ٳنما هو موجد الصور فى المواد وهو الله عز وجل ولو على رأى الفلاسفة غير ٳنهم يقولون هو الفاعل البعيد ويطلبون لكلّ موجود محدث فاعله القريب

Maimonides’s text in Judaeo-Arabic transliteration (Efros 1966, כד Hebrew pagination):

מת˙אל ד˙לך אלאנסאן מן אלאמור אלטביעיה¨ מאדתה הי אלחיוניה¨ וצורתה אלקוה¨ אלנאטקה¨ וג˙איתה אדראך אלמעקולאת ופאעלה הו אלד˙י אעטאה אלצורה¨ אעני אלקוה¨ אלנאטקה¨ לאן מעני אלפאעל :ענדנא אנמא הו מוגד אלצור פי אלמואד והו אללה עז וגל ולו עלי ראי אלפלאספה¨ ג˙יר אנהם יקולון

.הו אלפאעל אלבעיד ויטלבון לכל מוגוד מחדת˙ פאעלה אלקריב

Hebrew translation by Moses b. Judah Ibn Tibbon (Efros 1938: מג Hebrew pagination):

דמיון זה האדם מן הענינים הטבעיים חמרו הוא החיות, וצורתו הוא הכח המדבר, ותכליתו הוא השגת המושכלות, ופועלו הוא אשר נתן לו הצורה ר''ל הכח ההוא המדבר. כי ענין הפועל אצלנו ממציא הצורות בחמרים, והוא האל ית' ואפילו לפי דעת הפלוסופים, זולת שהם יאמרו כי הוא הפועל הרחוק

.ויבקשו לכל נמצא מחודש פועלו הקרוב

For example, man, belongs to the natural order, his matter is living, his form is the rational faculty, his purpose [Greek telos] is the attaining of ideas, and his agent is the one who gave him his form, i.e., his rational faculty, because by “agent” we mean the creator of form in matter, and this is God, blessed be He, even according to the philosophers; albeit they maintain that He is the remote cause, and for every created thing they seek its proximate agent. (Based on Efros 1938, 50)

Slavic (Taube 2016, 204–7):

ꙗкож рєчєм о чл҃цѣ, ижє тѣлєство єго животъ. а дш҃євєнъство єго слово. а дѣлатєль єго дш҃єдавєць. а статокъ єго доставати разꙋмом истинны ‹. . .›.

We say, e.g., of Man that his matter is life, his form is rationality [lit., “his animacy is word”), his agent is the Giver of form [lit. soul-giver], and his purpose is the attainment of truth by the intellect . . .

APPENDIX 30

Maimonides’s view of “soul” as man’s form.

In the Guide of the Perplexed, part I, chapter 1, dealing with Hebrew words appearing in the Bible that risk to be interpreted as instances of anthropomorphism (which Maimonides utterly rejects), the word םלצ (tselem), “image,” is characterized as follows:

Maimonides’s Guide in the Judaeo-Arabic original I, 1 (Munk 1856–66: Hebrew pagination יב):

.אמّא צלם פהו יקע עלי אלצורה¨ אלטביעיה¨ אעני עלי אלמעני אלד֗י בה תג˙והר אלשיء וצאר מא הו

והו חקיקתה מן חיתֹ הו ד˙לך אלמוג˙וד אלד˙י ד˙לך אלמעני פי אלאנסאן הו אלד֗י ענה יכון אלאדראך אלאנסאני

ומן אג˙ל הד˙א אלאדראך אלעקלי קיל פיה בצלם אלהים ברא אותו ולד˙לך קיל צלמם תבזה

.לאן אלבזיון לאחק ללנפס אלתי הי אלצורה¨ אלנועיה¨ לא לאשכאל אלאעצ˙א ותכ˙טיטהא

Hebrew translation by Samuel Ibn Tibbon I, 1 (Jerusalem 1960: יב):

.אמנם צלם הוא הצורה הטבעית, ר״ל על הענין אשר בו נתעצם הדבר והיה מה שהוא

.והוא אמתתו, מאשר הוא הנמצא ההוא אשר הענין ההוא באדם הוא אשר בעבורו תהיה ההשגה האנושית

,ומפני ההשגה הזאת השכלית נאמר בו, בצלם אלהים ברא אותו, ולכן נאמר צלמם תבזה

.כי הבזיון דבק בנפש אשר היא הצורה המינית, לא לתכונת האברים ותארם

English translation (Maimonides 1963, 22, emphasis added):

The term image [צלם], on the other hand, is applied to the natural form, I mean, to the notion in virtue of which a thing is constituted as a substance and becomes what it is. It is the true reality of the thing in so far as the latter is the particular being. In man that notion is that from which human apprehension derives. It is on account of this intellectual apprehension that it is said of man: In the image of God created He him [Genesis 1:27]. For this reason also, it is said: Thou contemnest their image [Psalms 73:20]. For contempt has for its object the soul, which is the specific form, not the shape and configuration of the body.

An explanation equating “rational soul,” man’s constitutive characteristic, with “form of man” appears also in the Guide of the Perplexed Part I, chapter 41:

Maimonides’s Judaeo-Arabic original (Munk 1856: Hebrew pagination מו):

נפש: אסם משתרך הוא אסם אלנפס אלחיואניה¨ אלעאמה¨ לכל חסאס אשר בו נפש חיה, והו איצ˙א :אסם אלדם

.לא תאכל הנפש עם הבשר, והו איצ˙א אסם אלנפס אלנאטקה¨ אעני צורה¨ אלאנסאן

Hebrew translation by Samuel Ibn Tibbon (Jerusalem 1960: סא):

,נפש שם משותף, הוא שם הנפש החיה הכוללת לכל מרגיש אשר בו נפש חיה, והוא גם שם הדם

.לא תאכל הנפש עם הבשר, והוא גם הנפש המדברת כלומר צורת האדם

Soul [nefesh] is an equivocal term. It is a term denoting the animal soul common to every sentient being. Thus [Genesis 1:30]: Wherein there is a living soul. It is also a term denoting blood. Thus (Deuteronomy 12:23): Thou shalt not eat the soul [i.e., the blood] with the flesh. It is also a term denoting the rational soul, I mean the form of man.

APPENDIX 31

Aristotle and the Jewish Prophets according to an addition in the Logika (Taube 2016, 422):

конєцъ логичным книгамъ

а мꙋдрость сїю исполнилъ Аристотєль, а она подобна єсть вязє и мѣрѣ и ѡслѣ златои. а Аристотєль Мардаxаи и Зоровавєл и Eздра проркъ, и проркъ Малаxїѧ во єдины лѣта были. а ꙋ тѣxъ Аристотєль ꙋчился миротворєнїє.

End of the Books of Logic

This science was perfected by Aristotle. And it is like a weight and measure and like a touchstone for gold. Aristotle and Mardochai, and Zerubavel, and Ezdras the prophet, as well as the prophet Malachi lived in the same years, and it is from them that Aristotle learned the Natural Sciences [lit., Creation of the World).

The combination “Creation of the world” for denoting the natural sciences may reflect the Hebrew expression corresponding literally to the Hebrew יצירת העולם (jetsirat ha-‘olam) used by Ibn Tibbon in his translation of Sa‘adia Gaon’s Doctrines and Beliefs (אמונות ודעות), chapter 10. Alternatively, it may reflect the expression מעשה בראשית (ma‘śeh berēshit) (lit., “the act of the beginning”), a term commonplace since Maimonides, meaning “natural sciences.”

APPENDIX 32

The Slavic translator removes God’s associate from the Logika.

Arabic original of al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the philosophers (Dunyā 1961, 57–58):

،وكذلك قد يغلط فى الحملية ويظن أن قولك : (زيد نا بينا است) بالعجمية سالبة ، وهى موجبة ، إذ معانه أنه أعمى

وربما يقال بالعربية : زيد غير يبصر . وهى موجبة . والغير يبصر عبارة عن الأعمى ، وهو بجملته محمول يمكن أن يثبت ويمكن أن ينفى ، بأن يقال : زيد ليس غير بصير . وهذا سلب . إذ سُلب الغير بصير عن زيد . وتسمى هذه قضية معدولة ، أى هو إيجاب فى التحقيق ، عدل به إلى صيغة السلب . وآية ذلك : أن السلب يصح على المعدوم ، فيمكن أن يقال : شريك الله ليس بصيراࣧ . إذ المحال ليس علماࣧ ، ولا يمكن أن يقال : .شريك الله غير بصير . كما لا يقال : أعمى وهو فى لغة العجم أظهر

Likewise, one may err in [the interpretation of] the categorical [proposition], and think that when you say Zayd na bina asti in Persian it is a negative, but it is affirmative, for its meaning is that he is blind, and sometimes one says in Arabic, “Zayd is un-seeing” [sc., sightless] and it is affirmative. And “sightless” is an expression for “blind” and it is, within its proposition, a predicate which may be either affirmed or negated, for one may say: “Zayd is not sightless.” And this negates the “sightlessness” of Zayd. And this [type of] proposition is called digressive, i.e., it is truly an affirmative which has digressed into the negative mode. The demonstration thereof is that the negation is valid [even when applied] to the nonexistent, and one can say “God’s associate is sightless,” and “Idle talk is not wisdom,” but one cannot say “God’s associate does not see,” just as one cannot say [that he is] blind, and this is even more manifest in the vulgar tongue [i.e., Persian].

Hebrew anonymous translation of the Intentions of the Philosophers (Taube 2016, 487):

וכן כבר יטעה בנשואיי, ויחשב שאמרך: זיד נאבינסת בפרסי ולא רואה בעברי שולל, והוא מחייב, כי ענינו שהוא עור. ופעמים יאמר בערבי: זיד בלתי רואה, ויחשוב שהוא שולל, והוא מחייב. והבלתי רואה מליצה מן העור, וזה בכללו נשוא אפשר שיקויים ואפשר שיסולק, בשיאמר זיד אינו בלתי רואה, וזה שלל הבלתי רואה מזיד. ויקרא זה משפט מוסר, ר''ל הוא חיוב באמת, סר בו אל דרך השלילה. ואות זה שהשלילה תהיה אמיתית על הנעדר, ואפשר שיאמר שותף האל ית' אינו רואה, והבטל אינו ידיעה, ואי

.אפשר שיאמר שותף האל ית' בלתי רואה, כמו שלא יאמר עור, והוא בלשון ההמון יותר נראה

Likewise, one may err in the categorical [proposition], and think that when you say Zayd nebina asti in Persian and [sc., Zayd] lo roʾeh [“does not see”] in Hebrew it is a negative, but it is affirmative, for its meaning is “blind.” And sometimes one says in Arabic, “Zayd is un-seeing” [sc., “sightless”] and thinks that this is a negative, whereas it is affirmative. And “sightless” is an expression for “blind” and it is, within its proposition, a predicate which may be either affirmed or negated, as for example, “Zayd is not sightless.” This negates the “sightlessness” of Zayd. And this [type of] proposition is called digressive, i.e., it is truly an affirmative which has digressed into the negative mode. The demonstration thereof is that the negation is valid [even when applied] to the nonexistent, and one can say “God’s associate is sightless,” and “Idle talk is not wisdom,” but one cannot say “God’s associate does not see,” just as one cannot say [that he is] blind, and this is even more manifest in the vulgar tongue [i.e., Persian].

Slavic translation (Taube 2016, 486):

и такєж҃ съблꙋдит҃ въ одрьжатєлⸯномъ, да мнитсѧ єгда рч҃ємъ ꙗко{ва} нє видѧщимъ ꙗкобы то въємъ, ѡнⸯжє въ истинⸯнѹ прилог҃ ижє разꙋмєєтьс҃ ꙗкобы то слѣпъ . . .›. и нарєч҃тсѧ ѡсꙋд҃ сїи ѿстꙋпⸯ ныи понєж҃ ѿстꙋпил҃ въимѡм҃ ѹ прилогъ. ‹. . .› а могомъ рєчи, бг҃ъ ‹. . .› нє видитєль, и празднословїє нє мѹдрость, а нє могом҃ рєчи бг҃ъ ‹. . .› нє видит҃. ‹. . .›

Likewise, one may err in the categorical [proposition], and it may seem as though when we say “Jacob is unseeing” this would be a negative [proposition]. But it is indeed an affirmative, meaning that “he is blind.” ‹. . .›. And this [type of] proposition is called digressive, for it has digressed from negation into affirmation. ‹. . .› And we can say “God ‹. . .› [is] sightless,” and “Idle talk [is] not wisdom,” but we cannot say “God ‹. . .› does not see ‹. . .›.”

APPENDIX 33

The Slavic translator of the Logika removes the “point” from the instances of true unity.

Arabic original of al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers (Dunyā 1961, 183):

الموجود ينقسم إلى واحد ، وكثير . فلنذكر أقسام الواحد ، والكثير ، ولواحقهما . أما الواحد : فإنه يطلق حقيقة .ومجازًا

والواحد بالحقيقة ، هو الجزئ المعين ، ولكنه على ثلاث مراتب : المرتبة الأولى : وهى الحقيقة الحقة هو الجزئ

الواحد الذى لا كثرة فيه ، لا بالقوة ، ولا بالفعل . وذلك كالنقطة ، وذات البارى جلت قدرته ، فإنه ليس .منقسما بالفعل ، ولا هو قابل له ، فهو خال من عن الكثرة بالوجود والإمكان ، والقوة والفعل .فهو الواحد الحق

Hebrew anonymous translation (Taube 2016, 376):

הנמצא יחלק אל אחד ורב. ונזכור חלקי האחד והרב ומשיגיהם. אולם האחד, הנה הוא ישולח אמתי ודרך העברה. והאחד באמת הוא החלק המעויין, ואבל הוא על שלוש מדרגות: המדרגה הראשונה, והיא האמתית באמת, הוא החלק האחד אשר אין רבוי בו לא בכח ולא בפעל, וזה כנקודה ועצמות הבורא, כי הוא אינו מתחלק בפעל ולא הוא מקבלו, והוא מתעלה מן הרבוי במציאות והאפשר והכח והפעל, והוא

.האחד האמתי

Being is divided into one and many. Let us, then, mention the kinds of “one” and of “many” and their attributes. As for “One,” it can be applied properly or metaphorically. And “one” in the proper sense is the kind we focus on, and it is of only three degrees: the first degree, which is truly [one], is that in which there is no multiplicity, neither potentially nor actually. And this is, for example [Arabic: the essence of] the point and the essence of the Creator, for He is indivisible neither potentially nor actually, nor does He admit multiplicity, and He is above multiplicity in reality and possibility, both actually and potentially, and He is the true One.”

(The English word “above” here is a misreading in Hebrew of Arabic خال [khal, “devoid of” as عال (ʿal), “superior”].)

Slavic translation in the Logika (Taube 2016, 377):

обрѣтєныи дѣлитсѧ на єдина и многа. но помѧнєм части єдина и многа. ‹. . .› єдиныи бо рєчєтсѧ истиною и прєxодом. єдиныи бо по истинѣ сє єсть часть тождєствєна ино на трєxъ стєпєнєxъ. а҃. оножє по истиннѣ в нємжє нѣсть множєство ни в силѣ ни в дѣлѣ. и сє ꙗко ‹. . .› самость сотворитєлєва нєраздѣлима ни в силѣ ни в дѣлѣ. такожє ‹нє прїимаєть› множєства возможєнствомъ и прємѣнєнїѧ и в силѣ и в дѣлѣ, онжє єсть єдинъ по истинѣ.

Being is divided into one and many. Let us, then, mention the parts of one and of many ‹. . .›. “One” can be said [either] properly or metaphorically. “One” in the proper sense is a concrete part[icular], and this [occurs] in three degrees: first, which is truly [one], is that in which there is no multiplicity, neither potentially nor actually. And this is, for example ‹. . .› the essence of the Creator, [Who is] indivisible, [admitting division] neither potentially nor actually, and [Who] also ‹does not admit› multiplicity as a possibility, nor variation potentially or actually, and He is “one” in the true sense.

APPENDIX 34

Translator’s addition about the difference between essential and accidental qualities.

Arabic text of the Intentions of the Philosophers (Dunyā 1961, 50):

فإن أبدلت الناطق بعرضى يفصله عن سائر الحيونات

And if you replace “rational” by an accident, it will differentiate him from the other animals.

Anonymous Hebrew translation (Taube 2016, 473):

.ואם המרת המדבר במקרה יבדילהו משאר הבעלי חיים

And if you replace “rational” by an accident, it will differentiate him from the other animals.

Slavic (Taube 2016, 472) with an addition, marked in the English by italics:

а ащє ѿмѣниши словѣсного приключєнїамъ, въѡсобиш҃ єго ѿ иных҃ живых҃. но нє исповѣси чтовства єго.

But if you replace “rational” by accidents, you may differentiate him from other animals, but you will not express his quiddity.

APPENDIX 35

Additions in the discussion of figures of syllogisms

Interpolation by Jacob Anatoli in Moses ibn Tibbon’s translation of Maimonides’s Logical Terminology. (Efros 1938: לד Hebrew pagination):

והתמונה הג' משותפת לראשונה באיכות ונבדלת ממנה בכמות, וזה בהקדמות ובתולדה. ורצוני בשתוף באיכות בהקדמות שהשלישית תשמר סדר המחייבת ר"ל שהיא עכ"פ בקטנה כמו בתמונה הראשונה. ונבדלת בכמות שאפשר שתהיה הגדולה חלקית. ורצוני בתולדה שתוליד ג"כ מחייבת. ורצוני בהבדל בכמות כי השלישית תוסיף על הראשונה שלא תצטרך לכוללת הגדולה, ובו בעצמו תחסר ממנה שלא תוליד כוללת. השנית והשלישית הפכיות בכמות ובאיכות, רצוני בזה כי השנית תשמר סדר הכוללת ולא תשמר סדר המחייבת ותוליד כוללת ולא תוליד מחייבת, והשלישית בהפך זו, כי היא שומרת סדר המחייבת ולא תשמר סדר הכוללת ולכן תוליד מחייבת ולא תוליד כוללת. ובכלל שהשנית

.לא תשמר סדר חיוב ולא תולידהו, והשלישית לא תשמר סדר כולל ולא תולידהו

The third figure shares with the first in quality and differs from it in quantity, and this [both] in the premises and in the conclusion. And what I mean by “sharing in quality in the premises” is that the third [figure] conserves the order of affirmation, i.e., that with regard to the minor premise it is in all instances like in the first figure [sc., affirmative]. And it differs in quantity, because the major premise may be particular. And what I mean by “[sharing] in the conclusion” is that it [sc., the third], too, yields an affirmative [conclusion]. And what I mean by the “difference in quantity” is that the third is larger [in scope] than the first, in that it does not require universality of the major premise. Yet for this same reason it [sc., the scope of the third] is also lesser [in scope] than it [sc., the first] in that it [sc., the third] will not yield a universal conclusion. But the second and the third [figures] are opposed to each other in quantity and quality. That is, the second preserves the order of universality but not the order of affirmation, and yields universality but not affirmation, whereas the third is the opposite thereof, for it preserves the order of affirmation but renounces the order of universality, and yields affirmation, but does not yield universality.

Slavic (Taube 2016, 184–86; additions in Slavic marked by italics in the English translation):

Образ .г҃. Примѣшєнъ къ пєрвои качєством. а разнитсѧ ѿ нєѧ количєством. а то тєж в прєдкох и ѹ рожєнои. а слово моє ѡ примѣшанїи качєством в прєдкохъ, ижє трєтїи ѡбразъ хранит рѧд приложныи. ижє всєлично малым прєдком ꙗко и образ пєрвыи ‹. . .›. а слово моє ѡ рожєнои, ижє родит тєж приложнꙋю. а слово моє о разни количєства ижє трєтѧѧ болєи пєрвоє, тѣм ижє нє потрєбна до всѧчєства прєдкꙋ вєликого. а того дѣлѧ тєж ѹбꙋдєтъ єѧ ижє нє родитъ всѧчєства. алє дрꙋгаѧ и трєтиѧ прєвращєны сꙋть количєствомъ и качєством. рєкомо ижє дрꙋгїи хранитъ рѧд всѧчєства. а нє хранитъ чинꙋ приложєнїѧ. а родитъ всѧчєство. а нє приложєнїє. а трєтїи прєвращєнъ сємꙋ. занєжє хранит рѧд приложєнїѧ. но оставлѧєтъ рѧд всѧчєства. а родитъ приложєнїє. а нє родитъ всѧчєскои. ‹. . .› а вси образы дрꙋгїи и трєтїи навратѧтсѧ к пєрвомꙋ образꙋ. а пєрвыи нє навратитсѧ до нихъ. а родит ѡклады чєтыри прєдрєчєнныхъ. а ровны жє сꙋт ѡбразы три сим ижє нѣт ровнанїѧ з двꙋ прєдковъ частных. ни з двꙋ ѹємных. ни малыи ѹємныи, а вєликїи частныи. а болє сєго ищи в долгои логицє.

The third figure shares with the first in quality and differs from it in quantity, and this both in the premises and in the conclusion. And my statement about sharing the quality in the premises [means] that it conserves the rule of affirmation, i.e., that with regard to the minor premise it is in any case like the first figure [i.e., affirmative] ‹. . .›. And my statement about the conclusion [refers to the fact] that it [the third], too, yields an affirmative [conclusion]. And my statement about difference in quantity refers to the fact that the third is larger in scope than the first, in that it does not require universality of the major premise. Yet for this same reason it [sc., the scope of the third] is also less than it [sc., the first] in that it [sc., the third] will not yield a universal conclusion. But the second and the third [figures] are opposed to each other in quantity and quality. That is, the second preserves the order of universality but not the order of affirmation, and yields universality but not affirmation, whereas the third is the opposite thereof, for it preserves the order of affirmation but renounces the order of universality, and yields affirmation, but does not yield a universal [conclusion]. ‹. . .› And both these figures, the second and the third, revert to the first [i.e., in order to yield a conclusion], while the first [need] not revert to them, and it yields the four aforementioned quantifiers. And the three figures are equal in that there is no syllogism from two particular premises, nor from two negative ones, nor from a negative minor and a particular major. And for more [details] look in the Long Logic.

APPENDIX 36

The terminology for the parts of speech.

Al-Ghazālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers (Dunyā 1961, 41):

اللفظ ينقسم إلى فعل وإسم وحرف . والمنطقيون يسمون الفعل كلمة . وكل واحد من الاسم والفعل يفارق .الحرف فى أن معناه تام بنفسه فى الفهم ؛ بخلاف الحرف

The word [lit., expression/sound-form] is divided into verb [lit., act; cf. Greek πρᾶγμα (prāgma), act, thing), noun [lit., name], and particle [sc., function word, lit., edge; gram. letter/particle/consonant]. And the logicians call the verb word [lit., speech/utterance; cf. Greek ῥῆμα (rhēma), that which is said, word; gram. verb]. And both [lit., each one of] the noun and the verb differ [lit., differs] from the function word in that their [lit., its) meaning is complete in itself in the mind, unlike the function word.

Hebrew anonymous translation (Taube 2016, 453):

התיבה תחלק אל פעל ושם ואות. וההגיוניים יקראו הפעל מלה והאות כלי. וכל אחד מהשם והפעל .יבדל מהאות בשענינו שלם בעצמו ובהבנה, בחלוף האות

The [written) word [lit., ark/box] is divided into verb [lit., act], noun [lit., name], and particle [sc., function word; lit., letter]. The logicians call the verb word and the function word vessel/tool. And both [lit., each one of] the noun and the verb differ [lit., differs] from the function word [lit., letter] in that their [lit., its] meaning is complete in itself and in its understanding, unlike [lit., in difference] the function word.

Slavic (Taube 2016, 452):

слово разнитсѧ вⸯ дѣло и имѧ и сꙋд҃но. мꙋдрѣциж҃ лоичⸯныи зовꙋть дѣло словомъ а слово сꙋдном҃. а всѧкоє имѧ и дѣло разнитсѧ ѿ сꙋдна ижє ѿвѣтъ єго полон҃ .собою. алѣ слово нє так

The word is divided into verb [lit., act/affair/business), noun [lit., name] and particle/function word [lit., vessel]. And the scholars of logic call the noun [lit., name] word while the word [they call] vessel. And both [lit., each] the noun and the verb differ [lit., differs] from the function word [lit., vessel] in that their [lit., its] meaning is complete in itself, whereas the particle/function-word [lit., word] is not so.

APPENDIX 37

The translator into Slavic omits a faulty rendering in Hebrew.

Arabic original of the Intentions of the Philosophers (Dunyā 1961, 133):

.ولكنا نورد فى خلل الكلام من الطبيعى ما يتوقف عليه فهم المقصود

But we shall quote in the course of the discussion from the natural science what the comprehension of the intended [point] depends upon.

Anonymous Hebrew translation (Taube 2016, 263):

.ואבל אנחנו נביא בחולשת הדברים מן הטבעית מה שיעמוד עליו הבנת המכוון

But we will bring in the deficiency of the words/things from the natural science what the comprehension of the intended [point] rests [lit., stands] upon.

Slavic (Taube 2016, 262):

но мы привєдєм ‹. . .› ѿ свѣтскіє чим сѧ даразумѣєть корєнь ихъ

But we will bring ‹. . .› from the natural science that by which its deep meaning [lit., root] may be understood.

APPENDIX 38

Evidence of oral dictation in the translation of the Intentions.

Arabic original of the Intentions of the Philosophers (Dunyā 1961, 40):

وإذا قلت عبد الله وكان اسم لَقَب ، كان مفرداً ، لأنك لا تقصد به إلا ما تقصد بقولك زيد

And when you say ʿabd-ullah [lit., God’s servant] as an agnomen/nickname, then it would be (considered) simple, since you do not intend by it anything more than what you intend by saying Zayd.

Hebrew anonymous translation (Taube 2016, 451):

וכאשר אמרת עבד האל והיה שם כנוי, היה נפרד, לפי שאתה לא תכוין בו אלא .מה שתכוין באמרך זיד

And when you say ʿeved ha-ʾel [God’s servant] as a nickname, then it would be [considered] simple, since you do not intend by it anything more than what you intend by saying Zayd.

Slavic (Taube 2016, 450) much longer:

а коли рч҃ємъ богорабъ, а было бы то прозвищо, было бы особⸯноє. занжє ты нє мыслишь тымъ. алѣ шⸯто мыслишь ꙗко рч҃єшь, зовомо самостїю, ино бꙋдєт҃ за єжє ты нє мыслишь, ниж҃ли ꙗко бы єси рєк҃лъ, исаи дв҃дъ.

And when we say “God’s servant” as a sobriquet/nickname, then it would be [considered] simple, since you do not intend by it anything more than what you intend by saying, properly speaking, it will be: for you do not intend anything more than if you had said “Jesse,” “David.”

APPENDIX 39

Evidence of oral dictation in the Secret of Secrets.

Arabic original (Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc, Rabat, MS d-754, f. 37v):

يا اسكندر . طاعة السلطان لا تكون الا باربعة وجوه وهى الديانة والمحبة والرغبة والرهبة . واحسم علل الناس كلهم وارفع الظلم عنهم ولا تحوجهم الى القول . فان الرعية اذا قدرت ان تقول قدرت ان تفعل . فاجهد ان لا تقول تسلم من ان تفعل

Alexander, obedience of power does not occur unless for four reasons [lit., faces], and these are religion, love, desire/greed/ambition, and fear. And settle the pleas of all the people and relieve them of injustice, and [sc., thus] you will not compel them to speak [ill of you]. Because the subjects, if they are in a position to speak, will be able to act. Therefore, make efforts that they do not speak so that you may be safe from their acting.

Hebrew anonymous translation (Gaster 1907–8: page ח of Hebrew pagination):

אלכסנדר. לא יסורו למשמעות המלך אלא בארבעה פנים. והם אמונת הדת והאהבה והשאילה והאימה. ולכן מנע עילות האנשים כולם. והסר מהם החמס. ואל תצריכם לדבר. כי ההמון כמו שיכולים לדבר כן .יכולים לעשות. ואם תשמור מלדבר תשלם מעשיתם

Alexander, one does not obey a king unless in four manners [lit., faces], and these are belief in religion, love, desire/interest, and fear. Therefore, prevent the reasons/pretexts [sc., of grudge] of all the people and relieve them of injustice, and do not compel them to speak [ill of you]. Because the crowd, just as they can speak, they can also act. And if you keep [them] from speaking, you will be safe from their acting.

(Moses Gaster used for his 1907–8 edition four Hebrew manuscripts out of the twenty-one full witnesses [and twenty-two partial copies] that have been preserved. Since he had no access to the Arabic version, he lacked the means for properly choosing the best readings, so that sometimes his variants happen to have a better reading than his main text. We tacitly provide the better reading when appropriate.)

Slavic (Ryan and Taube 2019, 110–11, additions marked by italics in English):

Алєксандръ нє пристꙋпають к послѹшєнствꙋ црс҃комꙋ. нижєли чєтырма вєщьми. а҃. крѣпѧи ꙁаконъ. в҃. любовъю твоєю до них. г҃. пытанїєм҃. д҃. гроꙁою. а ѹнятиєм кривды ѿ них. иꙁвєдєши им҃ вси чєтыри прєдрєчєнных. а смѣютъ ли говорить ѡ тобє лихо. смєють ѹчинит҃. а протож нє даи ѡ собѣ говорити. да нє дашь и ѹчинити. а иначє нє ѿвєдєшь дєла их. нижєли слово ѿвєдъ.

Alexander, people obey the king only for four reasons [lit., by four things]: (1) for [your?] being steadfast in [God’s?] Law; (2) for your love for them [the people]; (3) for ambition; (4) for awe. And by redressing their wrongs you will induce in them all four aforementioned things, ‹. . .› and if they dare speak ill of you they will also dare to act. Therefore do not let them talk about you lest you also let them act, otherwise [said], you shall not prevent their deeds unless you prevent their words.

APPENDIX 40

The two oldest versions of the sorites in the Laodicean Epistle.

Saint Petersburg, Academy Library ms 4.3.15 (Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 265):

Moscow, Russian State Library, fond 310 (Undol’skij collection), no. 53

TABLE 3

TABLE 4

APPENDIX 41

A figure in eight parts promised in the Secret of Secrets.

(Gaster 1907–8, p. יא Hebrew pagination; Taube 1995b and 1998; Ryan and Taube 2019, 126–27):

ואני מדמה לך תבנית חכמי פילוסופי אלוהי נחלק לשמונה חלקים. והוא יגיד לך כל ענייני העולם כולו. ובכלל על כל הנהגות העולם ומאסף כיתותם. ואיכות הגעת הראוי מהיושר לכל כיתה. וחילקתיהו חלק עגול כל חלק כנגד כת אחת. וכשתתחיל באי זה חלק שתרצה תמצא מה שאחריו במציאות עיגול הגלגל. ולפי שהיו המחשבות כולם מטה ומעלה עומדים על העולם ראיתי להתחיל בזה כפי ערך העולם. והצורה הזאת היא מבחר הספר הזה, ותועלת שאילתך. ואילו לא שלחתי אליך במה שחיליתה פני אלא התבנית הזה כן היה מספיק אליך. ולכן חשוב אותו ועיין בו יפה ותמצא חפציך :ויגיע אליך רצונך. וכל מה שזכרתי בספר הזה בארוכה ובפירוש הוא נכלל בתבנית הזה. וזו היא צורתו

And I am drawing for you a gnomic philosophic divine figure divided in eight parts, which will tell you all the affairs of the world, and in general all that concerns the governments of the world with all the variety of their factions, and how each faction receives the justice that it is due. And I have divided it into parts of the circle, each part for each faction, and if you begin by whichever part, you will find that which follows it in the essence of the circular sphere. And since all schemes high and low are based on the world, I saw fit to start it appropriately with “World.” And this figure is the quintessence of this book, and the goal of your quest. And even if I had not sent you in response to your request anything but this figure, it would have been sufficient for you. Consider it therefore and study it well and you will find your desire and your wish will be fulfilled. And everything that I have discussed and explained in this book in extenso is included in this figure, and here is its form:

APPENDIX 42

The text of the circle in the Secret of Secrets (some variant readings both in Arabic and Hebrew, omitted here):

1. The world is a garden, hedged in by the kingdom.

2. The kingdom is a power exalted by Law

3. Law is a custom administered by the king

4. The king is a shepherd supported by the army

5. The army are helpers nourished by money

6. Money is sustenance gathered by the people

7. The people are servants subjected to justice

8. Justice is bliss and the basis of social order [lit., reparation of the world].

APPENDIX 43

Promised circle in the Slavic Secret of Secrets (Ryan and Taube 2019, 126–27, with portions added in Slavic marked by italics in the English translation):

а протожє хочю ти написати два крѫги, єдинъ свѣт҃скїи а дрѹгии дх҃овныи. а почнѹ ти свѣт҃скїи свѣтом, а дх҃овныи дш҃єю. а каждыи ѿ них ѡсми частєи. а ими тобѣ ꙁавѣꙁꙋю вси ѡбыходы достатиѧ их. а бых ти написал҃ толко два тыи крѹги. досыть єси мѣлъ на том, ꙁанⸯжє нєвоꙁможно цр҃ю иꙁвѣсти свѣтьскаѧ. нє иꙁвѣд дх҃овнаѧ. ноли бєсєдою мрдою. а бєꙁ того нє поможєть ємꙋ ни планєта єго. а всє что поминано во книꙁє сєи иꙁдолга ꙁавєꙁѫєтсѧ во кратцє во крꙋꙁєх сих аминь.

And therefore I wish to inscribe for you two circles, one worldly and the other spiritual. And I will begin the worldly one with “world” and the spiritual with “soul,” and each of them [has] eight parts and in them I shall draw together for you all the requirements for their attainment, and had I written for you only these two circles, that would suffice you, for it is not possible for a king to master worldly matters without mastering spiritual matters except by learned discourse, and without this not even his planet shall help him, and all that is discussed at length in this book is contained in concise manner in these circles, Amen.

APPENDIX 44

The reconstructed eight-part sorites.

1. Душа самость властна заграда еи вѣра.

2. Вѣра наказание ставит сѧ пророкомъ.

3. Пророкъ старѣишина исправляется чюдотворениемь.

4. Чюдотворение даръ ѹсилеет мудростию.

5. Мудрость сила еи житие фарисеиско.

6. Фарисеиство жительство прокъ емѹ наука.

7. Наука преблажена ею приходимъ въ страхъ божии.

8. Страхъ божии начало добродѣтели—сим сооружается душа.

1. “Soul” is a separate substance whose constraint is religion.

2. “Religion” is a [set of] commandments established by a prophet.

3. “Prophet” is a leader authenticated by working miracles.

4. “Miracle-working” is a gift strengthened by wisdom.

5. “Wisdom”—its power is in a temperate [“pharisee”] way of life.

6. “Temperate [‘pharisee’] way of life”—its goal is learning.

7. “Learning” is most blessed—through it we attain the fear of God.

8. “The fear of God” is the incipience of virtues—by it is edified the soul.

APPENDIX 45

Retroversion of the Slavic reconstructed text into Hebrew.

APPENDIX 46

The Enlightener on the Jew Scharia.

Kazakova and Lurie 1955, 468ff:

Бысть убо в та времена жидовин именем Схария, и сей бяше диаволов съсуд, и изучен всякому здейства изобретению, чародейству же и чернокнижию, звездозаконию же и астрологьи, живый в граде Киеве.

There was at that time a Jew by the name of Scharia, and this one was the Devil’s instrument, versed in every kind of evil-doing invention, in sorcery, in the books of black magic, astronomy, and astrology, living in the city of Kyiv.

APPENDIX 47

A rationalist manifesto added at the end of the Logical Terminology in the Logika (Taube 2016, 246ff.):

а мдрость сїю исполн{лъ} аристотєль голова всѣм филосоөом пєрвым и послѣдним, подлꙋг смыслу мудрєцов҃ израилєвыхъ, ажє по плѣнєнїи нє нашли своихъ книгъ, а спꙋстилисѧ на єго разꙋм ижє ровєн во пророчєскїих фундамєнтєх. занєжє нєвозможно єсть абы пророкъ нєполонъ был в сєдми мꙋдростѣх . а овсєм в логицѣ ‹и въ› пꙋт{ны} . а исполнил єѧ осмыми книгами прєжєрєчєнными. ижє она направит каждого в тых мꙋдростѣх. а она подобна єсть вазѣ и мѣрѣ ї ослѣ златои. а дѣло иногды имѧнꙋєтсѧ наꙋка разꙋмнаѧ. а иногды дѣиствєнаѧ .а҃. от сєдми мдростєи числєнаѧ .в҃. мѣрнаѧ .г҃. спѣвалнаѧ .д҃. нбс҃наѧ .є҃. свѣтскаѧ . а та на .д҃. а҃. водити дш҃ꙋ свою .в҃. дом своиг҃. вєстисѧ гс҃дрю вєликомꙋ .д҃. водити зємлю и сꙋды єѧ . ‹. . .› ѕ҃. о прирожєнїи сєго свѣта . а тых книг҃ дєсѧт. и мꙋдрость лѣкарскаѧ под нєю жє . з҃. мд҃рость бжс҃твєннаѧ. ꙗжє єсть глава всѣм сєдмим . ї ꙗдро их статочноє . занєжє єю оживєт во вѣки дш҃а чл҃чєскаѧ. а то познаєт каждыѧ вѣры чл҃къ . ижє жадныи глꙋпыи ꙋ бг҃а нє можєт быти. а то подобно какъ бы нѣкто рєклъ ижє ꙗзъ кнѧзю слꙋжꙋ а кто тои кнѧз нє вѣдаю. или хожу в цр҃ковь . а гдѣ цр҃ковь нє вѣдаю . а сїѧ .з҃. мдростєи нє подлꙋгъ жаднаго законꙋ. нєжєли подлꙋг҃ чл҃чєства . а можєсѧ каждыѧ вѣры чл҃къ кохати в них. какожє видим ижє во всѣх вѣрахъ сꙋть прото ижє законникъ подобєн скарбникꙋ . а мдрєцъ к томꙋ, что дабываєт . а на каторꙋю рѣчь нє прикладают подлꙋгъ ѡноѧ. а таѧ гинєт .

Рєчє Алєѯандръ . приводы нєзнатїѧ правды чєтырє .а҃. глꙋбины єѧ кратким разꙋмом .в҃. нєпорꙗднєю разꙋма .г҃. ищꙋчи пєрємоганїѧ і паньства .д҃. любѧ то в чєм привыкъ. а то наиболшаѧ завада нижє котораѧ їнаѧ . а сїи исполнєнїѧ нє могꙋт быти, нєжєли и с съвѣтскою мдростїю а ѡставлѧѧ всѧ лишнѧѧ . ꙗкѡжє рєчє Дв҃дъ цр҃ь . близ гд҃ь ко всѣм призывающимъ єго . всѣмъ єжє призываєтъ єго по правдѣ.

And this Wisdom was perfected by Aristotle, chief of all Philosophers, both ancient and recent in accord with the view of the wise men of Israel, since after the exile they did not find their books, so they relied on his wisdom, which is equal in its foundations to that of the prophets. For it is inconceivable that a prophet be incomplete in the seven wisdoms, and especially in logic ‹and in› the mathematical sciences. And he completed it in the aforementioned eight books, for it guides everyone in those wisdoms, and it is [for them] like a weight and measure and like a touchstone for gold. And art is [a term by which] sometimes is designated the theoretical science and sometimes the practical [craftsmanship]. The first among the seven wisdoms is arithmetic, second geometry, third music, fourth astronomy. The fifth is politics, which divides into four: (1) self-governance [ethics]; (2) household governance [economics]; (3) the conduct of a great lord; (4) governance of a land and its rules. ‹. . .› The sixth is physics, and the books thereof are ten, under which is also medicine. The seventh wisdom is theology, which is the crowning of all seven as well as the core of their purpose. For through it will the human soul survive in eternity. And this a man of any creed will admit, that he who is ignorant, cannot be with the Lord. For this is as if one were to say: I serve the prince, but who that prince is I do not know; or: I go to church, but where that church is I do not know. And these seven wisdoms are not in accordance with any [particular] religion, but rather in accordance with humanity. And a man of any creed can embrace them. As we see that in all creeds it is asserted that the jurist resembles the keeper of the treasury, whereas the wise man resembles him who adds to it. And to whichever thing one fails to add according to it[s nature], that thing perishes.

Said Alexander [Aphrodisiensis]: The reasons for ignorance of the truth are four. (1) Its depth for the shallow mind; (2) the weakness of the intellect; (3) striving to overpower and dominate; (4) cherishing that to which one is accustomed. And this is a greater hindrance than any other. And these accomplishments cannot be [achieved] but in combination with the political science by shedding all vices. As King David said (Psalms 145:8): The Lord is near unto all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.

APPENDIX 48

The right to add to the divine law according to Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishna, in al-Ḥarizi’s translation from Arabic.

.(שאין תורה נתונה אחרי הנביא הראשון ואין להוסיף ואין לגרוע, כמו שנאמר "לא בשמים היא" (דברים .ל יב

.ולא הרשנו הקב"ה ללמוד מן הנביאים אלא מן החכמים אנשי הסברות והדיעות

https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%93%D7%9E%D7%AA _%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%91%22%D7%9D_%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%94_(%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%96%D7%99).

For there is no Torah given after the first prophet [sc., Moses] and one must not add to or subtract from it, as it is said (Deuteronomy 30:12) “it is not in heaven”, and God has not allowed us to learn [the Law] from the prophets, but [only] from the sages, masters of logical argumentation and knowledge.

APPENDIX 49

Stagnation = Demise.

Babylonian Talmud Baba batra 121b:

(מכאן ואילך דמוסיף יוסיף ודלא מוסיף יסיף (נ״א: יאסף) (תענית לא א׳, בבא בתרא קכא ב׳

From that [day] onward, he who adds [from the night to the day] will [also] add [length of days and years for himself], [and he] who does not add [from the night to the day], decreases [his years].

APPENDIX 50

Universality of wisdom.

Book of Grades (Venetianer, 75):

.כי החכמות כל האומות משתתפות בהם ואינם מיוחדות לאומה ידועה

For all nations have a part in the wisdoms, and they are not the particular [property] of any given nation.

APPENDIX 51

True worship of God and wisdom.

Book of Grades (Venetianer, 34):

ואפלטון אמר כי אי אפשר שיעבוד האלוהים ית' עבודה אמתית אלא או הנביא או הפילוסוף במה שיש .עמו מן החכמה

And Plato said that no one can worship God in true manner, except for a prophet or a sage full of wisdom.

APPENDIX 52

The four reasons of ignoring the truth.

Interpolation from Maimonides’s Book of Asthma in the Slavic Secret of Secrets (Ryan and Taube 2019, 330–31):

Рєчє Алєѯандръ: приводы нєзнатїѧ правды чєтырє. а҃. глꙋбины єѧ кратким разꙋмом .в҃. нєпорꙗднєю разꙋма .г҃. ищꙋчи пєрємоганїѧ і паньства .д҃. любѧ то в чєм привыкъ. а то наиболшаѧ завада нижє котораѧ їнаѧ.

Said Alexander [of Aphrodisias]: “The reasons for ignorance of the truth are four: (1) Its depth for the shallow mind; (2) weakness of the intellect; (3) striving to overpower and dominate; (4) cherishing that to which one is accustomed. And this is a greater hindrance than any other.”

APPENDIX 53

Archbishop Gennadij of Novgorod in 1490 on the Jews of Kyiv relating exciting rumours about events in Moscow (Sobolevskij 1903, 397):

Здѣсє пріѣхалъ жидовинъ новокрещеныи. Даниломъ зовутъ. а нынѣ христіанинъ. да мнѣ сказывалъ за столомъ во всѣ люди. нарядился дѣи єсми изъ Кѣєва къ Москвѣ. ино ми дѣи почали жидове лаяти. собака дѣи ты ся куды нарядилъ. князь дѣи вєликіи на Москвѣ цєркви изъ града всѣ вымєталъ вонъ.

A newly baptized Jew has arrived here [i.e., in Novgorod], by the name of Daniel, presently a Christian, and told me at the table, in front of everyone: I set out for Moscow from Kyiv, and then, he says, the Jews began to insult me: “You dog, they say, where are you headed for? The great prince in Moscow, they say, has swept all the churches out of the City.”

APPENDIX 54

Sefer ha-qanah f.18b on the redemption predicted for the year 5250 from Creation.

ספר הקנה דף י״ח ע״ב

ובין השמשות של אלף השביעי יעמוד העולם וביאת המשיח כשיעברו ה׳ אלפים ומאתיים וחמשים שהוא חצי לממשלת הכת״ר לת״ק השנה אז יבא המשיח זהו בר״ן יחד כוכבי בוקר ויריעו כל בני אלקים ואותו האיש קרא שיעבוד האומות ת״י ישראל חורבן העולם כי ירא לבשר מפלתם כדי לרדוף

.(אחריו (נ.א. כי ירדופו אחריו

And in the twilight of the seventh millennium the world will stop and the coming of the Messiah [is] when 5250 [years)]have elapsed, which is half of the five-hundred-year reign of the Sefirah of Keter, then will the Messiah come, that is “when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy”. And that man [i.e., Jesus] called the subjugation of the nations under the hand of Israel the destruction of the world for he was afraid to announce their demise lest they persecute him.

APPENDIX 55

Rabbi Moses in Shoshan Sodot f. 73a on the approximate date of the redemption.

:שושן סודות דף עג, א

והנה אנחנו כהיום הזה רס"ט מאלף הששי בת"ק שני הכתר ובממשלתו יבוא הגואל כי גאל בא"ת ב"ש כתר וקבלנו כי מעת בא גואל עד סוף אלף הז' יהיה ממשלתו של ישראל ומה שאמר וחד חרוב

.ר"ל חרוב מן ממשלת האומות. ולא רצה לגלותו כי ירדופו אחריו

And here we are today in the [year] 269 of the sixth millennium [= 5269 (=1509CE)] in the five hundred years of [the sefirah of] Keter during the reign of which the redeemer will come. For gaʾal [redeem] in a"tba"sh [cipher mapping the alphabet to its reverse] is keter. And as for what is written “and one is destroyed” it means: void of the reign of the nations. And he did not want to divulge it, for they would persecute him.

APPENDIX 56

Rabbi Moses on the importance of proselytes for the Redemption.

Shoshan Sodot, para. 431, f.73b

.שושן סודות: אות תנא, עמוד עג, ב

סוד המדרש שאמר גדולים גרים בזמן הזה מישראל: שעמדו על הר סיני לקבל התורה. וזה דבר זר מאוד לא יסבלהו השכל זה שעבד כל ימיו ע"ז ועתה ששב יהודי, יהיה עדיף מישראל שזכה והשיג בקול מתן תורה. ונראה הטעם כי סוד הדבר כן הוא. כי העומדים בהר סיני הם בעצמם עשו העגל עד שהמלך במ .סיבו נרדי נתן ריחו הבאישו וקצצו בנטיעות ונטמאו. והגר פשט בגד טומאתו ועשה חיבור כ"י בבת זוגו

The secret of the Midrash that says: proselytes at this time are greater than the Israelites who stood at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. And this is a strange statement which the mind refuses to accept, that somebody who indulged in idolatry all his life will now, once he turned into a Jew, be preferable to an Israelite who got to perceive by voice the giving of the Torah. And it seems that the reason lies in the following secret: since those who had stood at Mount Sinai, they themselves made the [golden] calf “While the king is at his table, my spikenard sends forth its fragrance” [Song of Songs 1:12] they polluted and destroyed the saplings and were soiled with impurity, whereas the proselyte has shed off his garment of impurity and brought about “the union of Ecclesia Israel with its partner.”

APPENDIX 57

Celebrating five hundred years since the defeat the Judaizers.

Marking the five hundredth anniversary of the defeat of the Judaizers on a Kyivan nationalistic site

(http://archiv.kiev1.org/page-1053.html):

К 500-ЛЕТИЮ РАЗГРОМА ЕРЕСИ ЖИДОВСТВУЮЩИХ

В декабре 2004 года исполняется 500 лет Московского церковного собора, на котором была безоговорочно осуждена ересь жидовствующих – крайне опасное иудейское еретическое движение в Древней Руси последней трети XV – начала XVI века.

Это было напряженное время, когда многим казалось, что вот-вот грянет вселенская катастрофа, которую связывали с «роковым» 1492 годом – окончанием очередного тысячелетия от сотворения мира. Только что, в середине XV века, в 1453 году, рухнул Второй Рим, пала тысячелетняя православная держава. Глубоко промыслительным представляется тот факт, что едва пала Византия, восстал из пепла татарского пожара Феникс – великая Русь . . .

Будем же молить великих подвижников земли русской, Преподобного Иосифа Волоцкого, архиепископа Новгородского Геннадия и всех святых об избавлении Православной России от новой ереси. Пусть Московский церковный собор 1504 года станет уроком для поборников Святой Руси.

On the Five Hundredth Anniversary of the Defeat of the Judaizing Heresy

December 2004 marks five hundred years since the gathering of the Moscow church council that unconditionally condemned the heresy of the Judaizers—an extremely dangerous Jewish heretical movement in ancient Rusʹ of the last third of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century.

It was a tense time, when many people thought that at any moment there would break out a universal catastrophe, which is associated with the fateful year of 1492—the end of the current millennium from creation. Just recently, in the middle of the fifteenth century, in 1453, the Second Rome collapsed, the millennial Orthodox power fell. Profoundly providential is the fact that as soon as Byzantium fell, there rose from the ashes of the Tatar fire a Phoenix—Great Russia . . .

Let us pray to the great zealots of the Russian land, the venerable Joseph of Volokolamsk, the archbishop of Novgorod Gennadij and all the saints of Orthodox Russia for deliverance from the new heresy. Let the Moscow church council in 1504 be a lesson for the supporters of holy Russia.

Marking the anniversary of the victory over the Judaizers by members of the Russian Duma, Alexander Krutov, on the pages of the Moscow journal, Russkij Dom [Russian house], published with the blessing of the patriarch of Moscow.

Александр Николаевич Крутов —Журнал Русский Дом, декабрь 2005 г.

http://www.kroutov.ru/content/pz29.shtml.

Уходящий год был отмечен юбилеями знатных побед наших прадедов и отцов: 1040 лет разгрома Хазарского каганата, 625 лет победы на Куликовом поле, 525 лет освобождения от татаро-монгольского ига, 500 лет победы над ересью жидовствующих, 60 лет победы в Великой Отечественной войне. Каждая дата - это символ, это призыв к нам, сегодняшним, из великого героического прошлого. Услышим ли мы этот призыв? Или нам выгоднее, удобнее постараться не заметить его?

The outgoing year was marked by the anniversaries of the notable victories of our great-grandfathers and fathers: 1040 years of the defeat of the Khazar Khanate, 625 years of the victory on the Kulikovo Field, 525 years of the liberation from the Tatar-Mongol yoke, five hundred years of the victory over the heresy of the Judaizers, sixty years of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Each date is a symbol, is a call to us today from the great heroic past. Will we hear that call? Or is it more profitable, easier for us to try not to notice it?

NOTES

1. THE JEWISH PRESENCE IN EASTERN EUROPE: THE BEGINNINGS

1. For Jacob Pollak, see Kulik and Shalem 2019, 38n29. For Sholem-Shakhne, see the catalogue of the National Library of Israel, accessed June 23, 2022, https://www.nli.org.il /he/manuscripts/NNL_ALEPH000066507/NLI.

2. A recent paper on Jewish scholarship in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Rusʹ (Kulik and Yahalom 2019) was published after the delivery of the three talks at Berkeley, and deals with the “knowledge, study and observance of Talmudic law in the Jewish communities of eastern Europe in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries” (36) based on evidence from rabbinic (mostly Ashkenazic) sources.

3. Something very similar happened to the local tradition of the Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews in the Ottoman Empire with the arrival of the Sephardic Jews exiled from Spain in 1492.

4. On the controversy regarding the historical value of onomastic and toponomastic testimonies—such as the nickname Zhidjata (“little Jew”) and the place-name Zhidovskaja vorota (“Jewish Gate”)—and of anti-Judaic statements for establishing the presence of an early Jewish settlement in Rusʹ, see Weinryb 1962; Birnbaum 1973; Pritsak 1988; and Pereswetoff-Morath 2002, esp. vol. 2, Assessing the Sources.

5. On the controversy regarding the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, see Pritsak 1978, 1988; Zuckerman 1995; Brook 1999, 2003b; Golden 2007; Shapira 2009; Gil 2011; and Stampfer 2013.

6. The term yibbum denotes the right and duty of the brother of a man who died without children to marry the widow (and become the benefactor of his brother’s estate). The term halitzah (חֲלִיצָה) denotes the ceremony in which the widow takes off the brother’s shoe as a symbolic act of renunciation of this right if either of the parties refuses the marriage. See Deuteronomy 25:5–10.

7. This, pace Pritsak’s assertion (1988, 9) that “Since Samuel b. Ali (d. 1194), the head of the Babylonian academy in Baghdad, corresponded with R. Moses of Kyiv, the latter must have returned from the West and established his reputation in Kyiv.”

8. If we disregard the Jesuit academy in Vilnius founded in 1579 by Stephen Báthory, the grand duke of Lithuania.

9. See Meshcherskij 1956, 1958, and 1964, as well as the posthumous collection of his papers from 1995.

10. Rusian is a term coined by Horace G. Lunt for the adjective derived from Rusʹ.

11. Earlier attempts (cited in Sobolevskij 1903, 433–34 and in Thomson 1999, 309n74) to link the translation with figures of the late fifteenth century have proved anachronistic, given that the earliest manuscript dates to ca. 1400.

12. The oldest known Slavic alphabet, used in the Middle Ages in the Balkans (mainly Croatia) and in Moravia.

13. The additions include:

— an opening prologue that describes a dream had by Mordecai

— the contents of the decree against the Jews

— prayers for God’s intervention offered by Mordecai and by Esther

— an expansion of the scene in which Esther appears before the king, with a mention of God’s intervention

— a copy of the decree in favor of the Jews

— a passage in which Mordecai interprets his dream (from the prologue) in terms of the events that followed

— a colophon appended to the end, which reads:

In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said he was a priest and Levite, and his son Ptolemy brought the present letter of Purim, saying that it was genuine and that Lysimachus, son of Ptolemy, of the community of Jerusalem, had translated it.

14. For the purpose of comparison we also add in the appendix the readings from Esther in the late fifteenth-century Ruthenian translation from Hebrew contained in the Vilnius Florilegium 262 (see discussion in chapter 3).

15. Weinreich tests various possible explanations for this confusion in some Yiddish dialects, among them an internal development, which he rejects, and the hypothesis of influence from coterritorial Belarusian and Russian dialects. After detailed review of the latter, he concludes (1952, 373): “It is evident that a great deal of Slavic and Yiddish research—both dialectological and historical—is a necessary prerequisite for the final acceptance or rejection of the Belorussian hypothesis.”

16. The agreement here of the Slavic with the Alpha-text of the Septuagint does not indicate that the Alpha-text is the source of the Slavic, since in many respects it is, at least in its surviving four manuscripts, textually different from the Masoretic Text, i.e., in containing the same additions as the Septuagint.

17. The account of Alexander in Jerusalem also appears in Flavius Josephus’s Greek work Jewish Antiquities, in pseudo-Callisthenes’s Alexander Romance, as well as in several Hebrew Talmudic and post-Talmudic sources (see Kazis 1962, 4–11); the Old Rusian version, however, is textually different and is clearly translated from the Josippon, not from any of them.

18. The Josippon, discussed in more detail in the second chapter, is an anonymous tenth-century Jewish reworking of the Latin Hegesippus, a fourth-century anonymous Christian reworking of Flavius Josephus’s first-century Greek work, The Jewish War.

19. The most conspicuous indication of this derivation is the omission of the name of the high priest. As Flusser suggests (1981, 55n22), the editor of the Josippon, not wishing to reject Josephus’s version in his Jewish Antiquities, where the high priest is called Jaddus, and not wanting to contradict the Talmudic account in Yoma 69a and Megillat Ta’anit 9, where the high priest is named Simon the Just (on his possible identity, see discussion in Kazis 1962: 6), simply left the high priest nameless (though some copies and a later recension of the Josippon [see Flusser 1981, 55n22] do supply the name ḥonia for the priest).

20. The Laurentian redaction, attested in the oldest surviving manuscript (1377) of the Primary Chronicle, is thought to have been compiled ca. 1113 and carries at the end of the entry for 1110 a colophon from 1116 by the copyist Sylvester. It comprises the Kyiv chronicle, as well as the chronicles of other towns in Rusʹ—for example, Vladimir, Suzdal, Tver, and Nizhny Novgorod.

21. The Hypatian redaction, attested in the second oldest surviving manuscript (1425) of the Primary Chronicle, comprises also the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle (considered to have been compiled after 1292).

22. Baratz is described by Sholem Aleichem in his autobiography From the Fair as the most scatterbrained man in Kyiv, unable to help the aspiring writer with securing a job on his arrival there, though the young Sholem Rabinovich was carrying with him warm letters of reference.

2. TRANSLATIONS FROM HEBREW IN RUSʹ IN THE THIRTEENTH-FIFTEENTH CENTURIES: MADE BY CONVERTS?

1. Lithuanian, a Baltic (non-Slavic) language, is not attested in writing before the sixteenth century.

2. And according to some Russian scholars such as Nikita Meshcherskij even earlier than that, see discussion in chapter 1.

3. The name Palaea reflects of course the fact that the text contains accounts from the Palaea Diathēkē, Greek for “Old Testament.”

3. THE HERESY OF THE JUDAIZERS AND THE TRANSLATIONS FROM HEBREW IN MUSCOVITE RUSSIA IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

1. The banning appears in the proceedings of the Stoglav (“Hundred Chapters”) church council convened by Tsar Ivan IV in 1551 (Emchenko 2000).

2. It was probably this introduction, with “suspicious” instructions such as the following, that drew the attention of the church authorities (see Taube 1995a, 194, emphases added, italics marking words not in Hebrew): “if you want to know the true position of the luminaries, or to correct the Law of the Moon or the Law of the Dragon at the time of renewal or of the conjunction, then go to the second wing and proceed horizontally . . . Then move your fingers in the length of the page and in the width of the page so that they meet on one column . . .”

3. Aviasaf appears in Exodus 6:24 as the name of one of Korah’s sons.

4. Israel Efros published in 1938 a very lacunary Judaeo-Arabic (sc., Arabic in Hebrew script) text of the Logical Terminology based on a single manuscript, together with the three Hebrew translations and his English translation of the whole work. Following M. Türker’s discovery and publication (Türker 1960, 1961) of two full copies written in Arabic script, Efros published in 1966 a Judaeo-Arabic transliteration of the full text based on Türker’s editions.

5. Maimonides formulated God’s unique oneness as the second of his Thirteen Principles (of Faith): “I believe with perfect faith that God is One, and there is no unity that is in any way like His.”

6. A similar terminological discussion, with somewhat different results in Slavic, appears in chapter 13 of Maimonides’s Logical Terminology (Taube 2016, 236–37).

7. The specific mistranslation in Hebrew is probably because the translator was influenced by the critical tone of the general introduction to the Intentions of the Philosophers, emphasizing the errors of the philosophers in their approach to all branches of science, but particularly to the most important one—theology (see Taube 2016, 432): “As for the Theological Sciences, most of their [i.e., the philosophers’] views [about them] contradict truth, while veracity occurs in them exceptionally.”

8. The crucial stumbling block here is the Arabic noun khalal (interval, gap, but also defect, failing). The prepositional phrase, both with the plural form of the same noun fī khilāl as with the singular fī khalal, means in the course of, through, or during.

9. A comparable situation that comes to mind is the one described by Mendele Mocher-Sforim (Abramovitch, 1836–1917) in his Yiddish satiric novel The Travels of Benjamin III (printed in 1878 but with many subsequent editions, as well as translations into numerous languages), modeled after Don Quixote by Cervantes. The hero Benjamin, relatively well-read in Hebrew popular books, sets out to travel the world in search of the ten lost tribes, despite having no knowledge of languages besides his native Yiddish and the holy tongue. When trying, with the help of his aide and interpreter, the simple but practical Senderl (his Sancho Panza), to obtain information from the captain of the boat on matters of history and geography, his vain efforts are described as follows (my translation of the Yiddish from the 1911 edition, Warsaw, p. 91): “However, the little bit of Goyish that Senderl learned to speak going regularly with his wife to the market was not enough for such lofty matters. Bargain for eggs, onions, potatoes, this he could do somehow, but discuss with a captain learned matters, this he was absolutely incapable of.”

10. At the end of the interpolation from Maimonides’s On Coitus there is a short section on various kinds of foods (Ryan and Taube 2019, 488), which was marked in the edition as unidentified. This section has recently been identified by Temchin (2020b) as stemming from Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine.

11. After mentioning some of the Ruthenisms, Speranskij concludes (1908, 119):

This clearly indicates the way in which the text of “Aristotle’s Gates” [sc., the Secret of Secrets, see Ryan and Taube 2019, 8ff.] penetrated into Muscovite literature: they were originally translated by a Belarusian, or in general by a person (perhaps from among the Jews) who knew and used the Belarusian vernacular and had little command of the Slavic-Russian bookish (perhaps Muscovite) language, but was familiar, of course, with Jewish letters.

12. The word stems from Old Polish porobnik (s.v. “porobnik,” Reczek 1968). It is absent from the SRJaXI–XVIIvv (the historical dictionary of the Russian language of the eleventh through seventeenth centuries).

13. The reading of the main text follows the oldest, Ruthenian manuscript, now in Minsk (see note 47), named V, since it was previously kept in Vilnius. The variants are from the following Muscovite manuscripts (for details, see Ryan and Taube 2019, 70–72): A—Saint Petersburg, Library of the Academy of Sciences, Archeographic Comission Collection 97 (229); Q—Saint Petersburg, Russian National Library, Q XVII 56.

14. The adjective фриевны (frievny) (flirtatious, coquettish) stems ultimately from German: cf. freien (Middle High German vrien = to woo), through Old Polish (s.v. “fryjowny,” Reczek 1968). That word, fryjowny, is glossed kokieteryjny, nierządny, rozpustny, zalotny, i.e., flirtatious, bawdy, dissolute, wheedling. The related Ruthenian noun фрияръ (frijar) is glossed in the HSBM (the historical dictionary of Belarusian) as follows: палюбоўнік, спакуснік (paljubownik, spakusnik), i.e., lover, seducer. Similar meanings are found for Old Polish (s.v. fryjer, fryjerz, and fryjarz, Reczek 1968):. One should also add here the etymologically related modern Ukrainian фраер (frajer) (sweetheart, suitor, wooer, marriageable young man), as well as Modern Polish frajer (sucker) and modern Russian slang фраер (frajer) (dupe, sucker; flashy dresser; noncriminal), which has made its way, through Yiddish (frajer), into contemporary Israeli Hebrew—frajer (dupe, sucker).

15. We know of a Laodicean Epistle, allegedly written by Saint Paul. Although the title is mentioned in his Epistle to the Colossians (4:16), it is an apocryphal work that never became part of the New Testament. Many texts, starting in the sixth century, pretend to be the “true” epistle, but not one of them is considered authentic.

16. This interesting figure is remembered, apart from his role in the Judaizing heresy, for having brought back to Russia from his 1482–85 embassy to Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, a German version, soon to be rendered into Russian, of the Dracula story. On Kuritsyn, see Lurie 1988, 89ff. On the Dracula story, see Cazacu 1974, 2014.

17. The translation of the Song of Songs in the Vilnius Florilegium has some lexical similarities to another Ruthenian translation of this book, preserved in a single mid-sixteenth-century Russian copy (Russian State Library, Museum collection, no. 8222). The translator of the Vilnius Florilegium was probably familiar with the museum translation. On the controversy surrounding the source language of the latter translation, its time, and location, see Alekseev 1980, 1981, 1983, 2002; Taube 1985; Lunt 1985; Thomson 1998, 873–74; and, recently, Lourié 2018 and Grishchenko 2019.

18. All his works in manuscript form are available from the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

19. All the copies are available from the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

20. Yet a recent history book (Baronas and Rowell 2015, 391) asserts, without any qualifications, that Orthodox culture thrived in Lithuanian-ruled Kiev. The Olelkovich princes employed Jewish scholars to produce Ruthenian (rather than Old Church Slavonic or eastern Slavonic) vernacular translations of holy scripture and western and Arabic philosophical and scientific texts.

21. Another sixteenth-century copy of the list was recently discovered and published by Ju. S. Temchin (2020a).

22. A simple search on Google Books for the English combination “Judaism does not proselytize” yields hundreds of examples. Here is a sampling: Peter S. Temes, The Future of the Jewish People in Five Photographs (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 183–84; David Matas, Aftershock: Anti-Zionism & Anti-Semitism (Toronto: Durndurn Group, 2005). 58; Wayne Allen, Prescription for an Ailing World (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017), 49; and Daniel Frank and Aaron Segal, Jewish Philosophy Past and Present: Contemporary Responses to Classical Sources (New York: Routledge, 2017), 277. Many more such examples could be given.

23. To prevent any misunderstanding, I do not imply in any way that Lurie, a Jewish Soviet historian with enormous achievements, was an antisemite. When I started my research in the late 1980s, I suspected that his views, as expressed in his 1955 and 1960 books, were motivated by the reigning atmosphere in the USSR, which prompted him to brand the heresy an “anti-feudal movement” not linked to Judaism. However, when I heard him give a lecture in Jerusalem in 1996, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it appeared that he was still holding onto his views, though he was willing to give some credence to my assertion (in a discussion following his lecture) of Jewish influence on the heresy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DICTIONARIES: ABBREVIATED REFERENCES

HSBM—Гістарычны слоўнік беларусскай мовы, Вып. 1–37. Minsk, 1982–2017.

SRJaXI–XVIIvv—Словарь русского языка XI–XVII вв. Вып. 1–31. Moscow, 1975–2019.

BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Abramovich, Dmitrij I., and Dmitrij I. Tschižewskij. 1964. Das Paterikon des Kiever Höhlenklosters. Slavische Propyläen 2. München: Eidos Verlag.

Adler, M. N., ed. 1907. The itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela. Critical text, translation, and commentary by Marcus Nathan Adler. London: H. Frowde.

Alekseev, Anatolij A. 1980. Песнь песней в древней славяно-русской письменности. Предварительные публикации 133–34. Moscow: Институт Русского Языка.

———. 1981. „Песнь песней по русскому списку XVI века в переводе с древнееврейского оригинала.» Палестинский сборник 27: 63–79.

———. 1983. „К определению объема литературного наследия Мефодия (Четий перевод Песни песней).» Труды Отдела древнерусской литературы 37:229–55.

———. 1987. „Переводы c древнееврейских оригиналов в Древней Руси.» Russian Linguistics 11:1–20.

———. 1988. „К истории русской переводческой школы XII века.» Труды Отдела древнерусской литературы 41:154–96.

———. 1993a. „Переводы c еврейских оригиналов у восточных славян в эпоху средних веков.“ Славяне и их coceди. Еврейское население Центральной, Восточной и Юго-Восточной Европы: средние века—начало нового времени. Сборник тезисов XII чтений памяти В.Д. Королюка, 10–11.

———. 1993b. „Русско-еврейские литературные связи до 15 века. „ In Jews and Slavs, edited by W. Moskovich, Shmuel Shvarzband, and Anatolij A. Alekseev, 44–75. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

———. 1996. „Кое-что o переводах в Древней Руси (по поводу статьи Фр. Дж. Томсона “Made in Russia”).“ Труды Отдела древнерусской литературы 49:278–96.

———. 1999a. Текстология славянской Библии. Bausteine zur slavischen Philologie und Kulturgeschichte, Neue Folge, Reihe A: Slavistische Forschungen, 24. Cologne: Böhlau.

———. 1999b. “По поводу статьи Г. Г. Ланта «Еще раз o мнимых переводах в Древней Руси.»” ТОДРЛ 51:442–45.

———. 2001. “К вопросу об изучении переводной письменности Киевского периода. ” Русская историческая филология: Проблемы и перспективы. Доклады Всероссийской научной конференции памяти Н. А. Мещерского. Петрозаводск, 18–20 октября 2000 г. Петрозаводск: КГПУ “Периодика.” 34–42.

———. 2002. Песнь песней в древней славяно-русской письменности. Saint Petersburg: Пушкинский дом.

———. 2003. „Еще раз о книге Есфирь.„ Русский язык в научном освещении 1/5: 185–214.

———. 2014. „Русско-еврейские литературные связи Киевской эпохи.“ In The Knaanites: Jews in the Medieval Slavic World, edited by W. Moskovich, M. Chlenov, and A. Turpusman, 166–82. Vol. 24 of Jews and Slavs, edited by W. Moskovich, Shmuel Shvarzband, and Anatolij A. Alekseev. Jerusalem: Gesharim.

Alónso, A. M. 1963. Algazel: Maqāṣid al-falāsifa o intenciones de los Filósofos. Translation, preface, and notes by P. Alónso Manuel Alónso, SJ. Barcelona: Juan Flors.

Altbauer, Moshe. 1992. The Five Biblical Scrolls in a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Translation into Belorussian. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Altbauer, Moshe, and Moshe Taube. 1984. “The Slavonic Book of Esther: When, Where and from What Language Was it Translated.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 8/3:19–35.

d’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse. 1989. «Les traductions à deux interprètes: d’arabe en langue vernaculaire et de langue vernaculaire en latin.» In Traduction et traducteurs au Moyen Âge: Actes du colloque international du CNRS organisé à Paris, Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes les 26–28 mai 1986, 193–206. Documents, études et répertoires de l’Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, 42. Aubervilliers: Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, 1989.

Arkhipov, Andrej. 1995. По ту сторону Самбатиона: Этюды о русско-еврейских культурных и литературных контактах в X–XVI в . Oakland: Berkeley Slavic Specialties.

Averroes. 1969.Commentarium Medium in Porphyrii Isagogen et Aristotelis Categorias. Vol 1a, parts 1–2, Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem, Versionum Hebraicarum, edited by Herbert A. Davidson. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America.

Baratz, Herman Markovich. 1924–27. Собраніе Трудовъ по вопросу о евреискомъ элемнте в памятникахъ древне-русской письменности. О соствителяхъ «Повѣсти Временныхъ Лѣтъ» и ея источникахъ, преимущественно еврейскихъ. Vol. 1, Paris: Imprimerie d’Art Voltaire 1927. Vol. 2, Berlin: 1924.

Baronas, Darius, and S. C. Rowell. 2015. The Conversion of Lithuania: From Pagan Barbarians to Late Medieval Christians. Vilnius: Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore.

Birnbaum, Henrik. 1973. “On Some Evidence of Jewish Life and Anti-Jewish Sentiments in Medieval Russia.” Viator 4:225–55.

Brook, Kevin A. 1999. The Jews of Khazaria. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

———. 2003a. “The Origins of East European Jews.” Russian History 30 (1–2): 1–22.

———. 2003b. “Khazars and Judaism.” In The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, edited by Jacob Neusner, Alan J. Avery-Peck, and William Scott-Green, 4:1821–32. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003.

Brutzkus, Julij. 1944. “The Khazar Origin of Ancient Kiev.” Slavonic and East European Review. 3 (1): 108–24.

Cazacu, Matei. 1974. “A propos du récit russe ‘Skazanie o Drakule voevode.’” Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 15 (3–4): 279–96.

———. 2014. Dracula. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Commented Palaea. 1406. Палея Толковая по списку сделанному в г. Коломне в 1406 г. труд учеников Н.С. Тихонравова. Moscow: типография и словолитня А. Гербека., 1892.

———. 1477. Палея Толковая 1477 года. Воспроизведение Синодальной рукописи 210. Общество Любителей Древенрусской Писменности 93. Saint Petersburg: типография Императорской Академии наук, 1892.

———. 2002. Палея Толковая. Ред. А. Камчатнов, В. Мильков и др. Moscow: Согласие 2002.

Davidson, Herbert A. 2001. “The Authenticity of Works Attributed to Maimonides.” In Me’a She’arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, edited by E. Fleischer, G. Blidstein, C. Horowitz, and B. Septimus, 111–33. Jerusalem: Magnes.

Dunyā, Suleymān, ed. 1961. Muqaddamat Tahāfut al-Falāsifah al-musamāh Maqāṣid al-Falāsifah lil-ʾImām al-Ghazālī. Manṭiq, wa-ʾIlahiyāt, wa-Ṭabīʿīyāt. Taḥqīq al-Duktōr Suleymān Dunyā. Ustāḍ al-falsafah al-musāʿid bi-kulliyat Uṣūl ad-dīn. Cairo: Dār al-maʿārif bi-Miṣr, 1961.

Efros, Israel. 1938. Maimonides’ Treatise on Logic: The Original Arabic and Three Hebrew Translations. New York: American Academy for Jewish Research.

———. 1966. “Maimonides’ Arabic Treatise on Logic.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 34:153–60.

Eisenstein, Julius D., ed. 1915. Ozar Midrashim. 2 vols. New York: Reznik, Menschel.

Emchenko, E. B. 2000. Стоглав: исследование и текст. Изд. Moscow: Индрик.

Ettinger, Shmuel. (1961) 1994. “The Jewish Influence on the Religious Turmoil in Eastern Europe at the End of the Fifteenth Century.” In Yitzhak F. Baer Jubilee Volume: On the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, edited by S. Ettinger, B. Dinur, and S. W. Baron, 228–47. Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel. Reprinted in Between Poland and Russia: S. Ettinger’s Collected Papers, edited by Israel Bartal and Jonathan Frankel, 37–56. Jerusalem: Shazar Center.

Evseev, Ivan E. 1902. Книга пророка Даниила в переводе жидовствующих по рукописи XVI в. Чтения в Императорском Обществе Истории и Древностей Российских при Московском Университете. 202 кн. 3. 127–64.

———. 1905. Книга пророка Даниила в древне-славянском переводе. Введение и тексты. Moscow: Г. Лисснер и Д. Собко.

———. 1912. Очерки по истории славянского перевода Библии. вып. 2. Христианское чтение 92:1343–74.

Fine, J. V. A. 1966. “Fedor Kuricyn’s ‘Laodikijskoe Poslanie’ and the Heresy of the Judaizers.” Speculum 16 (3): 500–504.

Florovskij, George. (1937) 1981. Пути русского богословия^2. Paris: YMCA Press. Reprint.

Flusser, David. 1981.

דוד פלוסר (עורך), ספר יוסיפון (שני כרכים). ירושלים: מוסד ביאליק

Forte, Doron. 2016. “Back to the Sources: Alternative Versions of Maimonides’ Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon and Their Neglected Significance.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 23:47–90.

Fox, Michael V. 1990. “The Alpha Text of the Greek Esther.” Textus 15 (1): 27–54.

Freudenthal, Gad, and Ruth Glasner. 2014. “Patterns of Medieval Translation Movements.” In De l’antiquité tardive au Moyen Âge: Études de logique aristotélicienne et de philosophie grecque, syriaque, arabe et latine offertes à Henri Hugonnard-Roche, edited by Elisa Coda and Cecilia Martini Bonadeo, 245–52. Paris: Vrin.

Gaster, Moses. 1907–8. “The Hebrew Version of the Secretum Secretorum: A Medieval Treatise Ascribed to Aristotle.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1907 (October): 879–912; 1908 (January): 111–62; 1908 (October): 1065–84.

Gil, Moshe. 2011. “Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism?” Revue des Étude Juives 170 (2–3): 429–41.

Golb, Norman, and Omeljan Pritsak. 1982. Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Golden, Peter B. 1983. “Khazaria and Judaism.” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 3: 127–56.

———. 2007. “The Conversion of the Khazars to Judaism.” In The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives, edited by Peter B. Golden, Haggai Ben-Shammai, and András Róna-Tas, 123–61. Handbook of Oriental Studies 17. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Golenishchev-Kutuzov, I. N. 1963. Гуманизм у восточных славян (Украина и Белоруссия) Moscow: АН СССР. Доклады советской делегации, 5 Международный сьезд славистов, София, сентябрь 1963. 1–93.

Grishchenko, Alexander I. 2018. Правленое Славяно-Русское пятиккнижие XV века: предварительные итоги лингвотекстологического изучения. Moscow: Древлехранилище.

———. 2019. “The Church Slavonic Song of Songs Translated from a Jewish Source in the Ruthenian Codex from the 1550s (RSL Mus. 8222): A New Revised Diplomatic Edition.” Scrinium 15:111–31.

Gudzij, Nikolaj K. 1958. Review of Meshcherskij 1958.

———. 1958. Новейшее издание и исследование выдающегося памятника древней Руси. Известия АН СССР. Отделение литературы и языка. вып. 17. с. 561–69.

Harvey, Steven. 2001. “Why Did Fourteenth-Century Jews Turn to Alghazali’s Account of Natural Science?” Jewish Quarterly Review 91 (3–4): 359–76.

Harvey, Warren Zeev. 2016. Review of Taube 2016. Iyyun 65 (October): 381–88.

.כופרים פילוסופיים ברותניה: לספרו של משה טאובה. עיון ס״ה (תשרי תשע״ז): 81–388

Istrin, Vasilij M. 1905. Хронограф Академии Наук Nо. 45.13.14 (из Вологды). In Летописи Историко-филологического Общества при Новороссийском университете, 313–41. Vol. 13. Odessa: n.p., 1905.

———. 1912. Особый вид Еллинского Летописца из собрания Тихонравова. Известия Отделения русского языка и словесности Императорской академии наук. 91. кн. 2.

———. 1934. La prise de Jérusalem de Josèphe le Juif. Edited by André Vaillant. Translated by Pierre Pascal. Paris: Institut d’Études slaves. 2 vols.

Kämpfer, Frank. 1968. „Zur Interpretation des ‚Laodicenischen Sendschreibens.‘“ Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 16 (1): 141–51.

Kazakova, N. A. and Ja. S. Lurie. 1955. Н.А. Казакова и Я. С. Лурье. Антифеодальные еретическкие движениа на Руси XIV–начала XVI в. М-Л.

Kazis, I. 1962. The Book of the Gests of Alexander of Macedon: Sefer Toledot Alexandros ha-Makdoni; A Mediaeval Hebrew Version of the Alexander Romance by Immanuel Ben Jacob Bonfils. Edited and translated by Israel J. Kazis, Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1962.

Klar, Benjamin. 1947.

קלאר, בנימין (עורך). ספר השהם: שערי דקדוק ואוצר מלים לרבי משה בן יצחק בן הנשיאה מאינגלטירא. [כרך 1]. ירושלים: מקיצי נרדמים

Krivoruchko, Julia G. 2007. “The Constantinople Pentateuch within the Context of Septuagint Studies.” In XIII Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Ljubliana 2007, edited by Melvin K. H. Peters, 255–76. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Krymskij, A. E. 1910. [Рец. на] Сперанский М. Н. Из истории отреченных книг IV: Аристотелевы врата или Тайная тайных, Saint Petersburg: n.p., 1908. Этнографическое обозрение. Год 22-й (1910). Nos. 3–4. Кн. 86–87. Warsaw: n.p., 1911, С. 226–31.

Kulik, Alexander. 1995. О несохранившемся греческом переводе книги Есфирь. Славяноведение 2:76–80.

———. 2004–5. “The Earliest Evidence on the Jewish Presence in Western Rus’.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 27:13–24.

———. 2012. “Jews from Rus′ in Medieval England.” Jewish Quarterly Review 102 (3): 371–403.

———. 2014. “Jews and the Language of Eastern Slavs.” Jewish Quarterly Review 104 (1): 105–43.

Kulik, Alexander, and Shalem Yahalom. 2019. “Jewish Scholarship in Eastern Europe.” Viator 50 (1): 31–75.

Leonid (Kavelin), Archimandrite. 1883–85. Сведения о славянских рукописях поступивших из книгохранилища Свято-Троицкой Сергиевой Лавры в библиотеку Троицкой Духовной Академии. Чтения Общества Истории и Древностей. Российских 1883 (1, 2, 4); 1884 (3, 4); 1885 (1).

Lourié, Basil. 2017. Происхождение «русской» Есфири: еврейский → греческий эпохи эллинизма → сирийский → славянский, в: А.Х. Элерт (отв. ред.), Проблемы сохранения отечественной духовной культуры в памятниках письменности XVI–XXI вв., Новосибирск 2017 ( = Археография и источниковедение Сибири, 36), с. 52–66.

———. 2018. “Rewritten Bible in the ‘Museum’ Slavonic Translation of the Song of Songs.” Scrinium 14:257–72.

Lunt, Horace G. 1985. “The OCS Song of Songs: One Translation or Two?” Die Welt der Slaven 30:279–318.

Lunt, Horace G., and Moshe Taube. 1988. “Early East Slavic Translations from Hebrew?” Russian Linguistics 12:147–87.

———. 1994. “The Slavonic Book of Esther: Translation from the Hebrew or Evidence for a lost Greek Text?” Harvard Theological Review 87 (3): 347–62.

———. 1998. The Slavonic Book of Esther: Text, Lexicon, Linguistic Analysis, Problems of Translation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies.

Lurie, Ja. S. 1960. Идеологическая борьба в русской публицистике конца XV—начала XVI века. Moscow: АН СССР.

———. 1988. Русские Современники Возрождения. Leningrad: Наука.

Lysén, Irina. 2001. Книга Есфирь: К истории первого славанского перевода. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

Maier, Johann. 1969. „Zum Jüdischen Hintergrund des sogenannten ‚Laodicenischen Sendschreibens.‘“ Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 17:155–71.

Maimonides. 1960. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Samuel Ibn Tibbon. Jerusalem: n.p.

ספר מורה נבוכים להרב רבינו משה בן מיימון הספרדי ז״ל בהעתקת הרב ר׳ שמואל אבן תיבון ז״ל. עם שלשה פירושים הנודעים ומפורסמים ה״ה אפודי, שם טוב, ן׳ קרשׁקשׁ, והרביעי הכי נכבד הנוסף כעת .להשר וגדול בישׁרון רבינו דון יצחק אברבנאל ז״ל. צולם ונדפס מחדש בעיה״ק ירושלים תש״ך

———. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated and with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines. Introductory essay by Leo Strauss. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 2002. On Asthma. Vol. 1, edited, translated, and annotated by Gerrit Bos. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.

———. 2008. On Asthma. Vol. 2, edited and translated by Gerrit Bos and Michael R. McVaugh. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.

———. 2009. On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs. A Parallel Arabic-English Edition. edited, translated, and annotated by Gerrit Bos with critical editions of medieval Hebrew translations by Gerrit Bos and medieval translations by Michael V. McVaugh. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.

———. 2018. On Coitus. Edited and translated by Gerrit Bos, with editions of medieval Hebrew translations by Gerrit Bos, medieval Latin translations by Charles Burnett, and a Slavonic translation by W. F. Ryan and Moshe Taube. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Mann, Jacob. (1920–22) 1969. The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fāṭimid Caliphs: A Contribution to their Political and Communal History, Based Chiefly on Genizah Material Hitherto Unpublished. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1920–22. Reprint London: Oxford University Press.

———. 1922. “Glanures de la Gueniza.” Revue des études juives 74:154–57.

Mathiesen, Robert. 1983. “The Typology of Cyrillic Manuscripts (East Slavic vs. South Slavic Old Testament Manuscripts).” In American Contributions to the Ninth International Congress of Slavists (Kiev, 1983), edited by Michael S. Flier, 193–202. Vol 1, Linguistics. Columbus, OH: Slavica.

Meshcherskij, Nikita Alexandrovich. 1956a. К вопросу об изучении переводной письменности Киевского периода. Ученые записки Карело-Финского педагогического института. Петрозаводск. том 2, вып. 1. 198–219. Corrected reprint in Meshcherskij 1995, 271–99.

———. 1956b. Отрывок из книги «Иосиппон» в «Повести временных лет». Православный палестинский сборник 64 (2): 58–68.

———. 1958. История Иудейской войны Иосифа Флавия в древнерусском переводе. М.; Л.

———. 1964. Проблемы изучения славяно-русской переводной литературы ХІ–ХV вв. Труды Отдела Древнерусской Литературы 20:180–231.

———. 1974. К вопросу о составе и источниках Академического Хронографа. Летописи и хроники: Сборник статеи. Moscow: Наука. 212–19.

———. 1978. Источники и состав древней славяно-русской переводной письменности IX-XV веков. Leningrad: ЛГУ.

———. 1995. Избранные статьи. Отв. ред. и сост. Е. Н. Мещерская; Предисл. З.К. Мещерской, Е.Н. Мещерской.—СПб. : Яз. центр филол. фак. СПбГУ: .

Munk, S. 1856–66. Dalālat ʾal-ḥāʾirīn: traité de théologie et de philosophie de Maïmonide. 3 vols. Paris: A. Frank libraire.

Neverov, S. L. 1909. Логика иудействующихъ. Университетские известия 48/49. Kyiv. с. 1–62.

Nyberg, H. S. 1919. “Muḥyiddin Ibn al-ʿArabi, ‘Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom.’” In Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-ʿArabi, edited by H. S. Nyberg. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Orlov, Andrei. 2009. Selected Studies in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Pereswetoff-Morath, Alexander. 2002. A Grin without a Cat. Vol 1, Adversus Judaeos texts in the Literature of Medieval Russia 988–1504. Vol. 2, Jews and Christians in Medieval Russia : Assessing the Sources. Lund Slavonic Monographs 4–5. , 2002. Lund: Lund University.

———. 2006. “Whereby We Know That It Is the Last time”: Musings on Anti-Messiahs and Antichrists in a Ruthenian Textual Community; Antidoron natalicium Laurentio Steensland expleto sexagesimo quinto aetatis anno oblatum. Lund: Lund University.

Peretts, V. N. 1906. Новые труды по источниковедению древнерусской литературы и палеографии: критико-библиографический обзор XVI‒XXIV, Университетские Известия (Kiev), Т. 46 вып. 4:47‒102, пр. с. 51‒67.

———. 1908. Новые труды о жидовствующих XV в. и их литературе: критико-библиографический обзор, с приложением “Плач Иеремии” в переводе с еврейского языка по белорусской рукописи XV века. Kiev: тип. Н.Т. Корчак-Новицкого.

———. 1915. До історії перекладу Біблії в Західній Русі. Книга Естери в перекладі к. XV в. / В. М. Перетц. Фільологічний збірник пам’яти К. Михальчука.—К., 1915.—С. 23–45.

Pichkhadze, A. A., I. I. Makeeva, G. S. Barankova, and A. A. Utkin, eds. 2004. История Иудейской Войны» Иосифа Флавия: Древнерусский перевод. Vols. 1–2. Moscow: Языки славянсой культуры.

Pritsak, Omeljan. 1978. “The Khazar Kingdom’s Conversion to Judaism.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2 (3): 261–81.

———. 1988. “The Pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe in Relation to the Khazars, the Rusʹ and the Lithuanians.” In Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, edited by Howard Aster and Peter J. Potichnyj, 3–22. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press.

Reczek, S. 1968. Podręczny słownik dawnej polszczyzny. Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1968.

Reifmann, Jacob. 1884. “Prozdor.” Ozar Tob: Hebräische Beilage zum Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judentums: 17–50.

יעקב רייפמאנן. פרוזדור. אוצר טוב כולל דברים עתיקים מתוך כ״י מועתקים. ברלין תרמ״ד־תרמ״ה. עמ׳ 50–17

Romanchuk, Robert. 2005. “The Reception of the Judaizer Corpus in Ruthenia and Muscovy: A Case Study of the Logic of Al-Ghazzali, the ‘Cipher in Squares’ and the Laodicean Epistle.” In Speculum Slaviae Orientalis: Muscovy, Ruthenia and Lithuania in the Late Middle Ages, edited by V. V. Ivanov and Julia Verkholantseva, 144–65. UCLA Slavic Studies 4. Moscow: OGI.

Ryan, William F. 1968. “Aristotle in Old Russian Literature.” Modern Language Review 63 (3): 650–58.

———. 1978. “The Old Russian version of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta Secretorum.” Slavic and Eeast European Review 56 (2): 242–60.

———. 1986. “Aristotle and Pseudo Aristotle in Kievan and Muscovite Russia.” In Pseudo Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts, edited by Jill Kraye, W. F. Ryan, and C. B. Schmitt, 97–109. Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts 11. London: Warburg Institute.

———. 1988. “Maimonides in Muscovy: Medical Texts and Terminology.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51: 43–65.

———. 1999. The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Ryan, William F., and Moshe Taube. 2018. “The Slavonic Version of Maimonides’ De Coitu.” In Maimonides’ On Coitus: A New Parallel Arabic-English Edition and Translation By Gerrit Bos, Medieval Latin Translations by Charles Burnett and a Slavonic Translation by W.F. Ryan and Moshe Taube. Leiden—Boston: Brill. 129–151.

———. 2019. The Secret of Secrets: The East Slavic Version: Introduction, Text, Annotated Translation, and Slavic Index. London: Warburg Institute.

Schneider, Michael. 2014. “The ‘Judaizers’ of Muscovite Russia and Kabbalistic Eschatology.” in The Knaanites: Jews in the Medieval Slavic World, edited by Wolf Moskovich, Shmuel Shvarzband, and Anatolij A. Alekseev, 223–58. Vol. 24 of Jews and Slavs, edited by W. Moskovich, Shmuel Shvarzband, and Anatolij A. Alekseev. Jerusalem: Gesharim Publishers, 2014.

Schwarz, Arthur Zacharias. 1925. Die hebräischen Handschriften der Nationalbibliothek in Wien. Vienna: Strache.

Seebohm, Thomas M. 1977. Ratio und Charisma: Ansätze und Ausbildung eines philosophischen und wissenschaftlichen Weltverständnisses im Moskauer Rußland. Mainzer Philosophische Forschungen 17. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

Shapira, Dan Y. 2009. “Jews in Khazaria.” In Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, edited by Mark Avrum Ehrlich, 1097–1104. Vol. 3, Countries, Regions, and Communities. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

———. 2012. “The First Jews of Ukraine.” In Antony Polonsky, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, eds., POLIN: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 26, Focusing on Ukraine, edited by Antony Polonsky and Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, 1–19. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.

———. 2018. Review of Taube 2016 The Logika of the Judaizers. Aleph 18 (2): 295–312.

Shinan, Avigdor. 1977.

.דברי הימים של משה רבנו. הספרות 24: 116–100

Slavova, Tatiana. 2002. Тълковната Палея в контекста на Старобългарската Книжнина. Sofia: Унив. Изд. “Св. Климент Охридски.”

Sobolevskij, A. I. 1903. Переводная литература Московской Руси XIV‒XVII веков. Библиографические материалы. Saint Petersburg: Типография Императорской Академии Наук. Reprinted Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der DDR, 1989.

Solon, Peter. 1970. “The Six Wings of Immanuel Bonfils and Michael Chrysokokkes.” Centaurus 15:1–20.

Speranskij M. N. 1908. Из истории отреченных книг IV: Аристотелевы врата или Тайная тайных. Памятники древней письменности и искусства 17. Saint Petersburg: Тип. М. А. Александрова. [ = Памятники древней письменности и искусства 17].

Stampfer, Shaul. 2013. “Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism?” Jewish Social Studies 19 (3): 1–72.

Taube, Moshe. 1985. “On Two Related Slavic Translations of the Song of Songs.” Slavica Hierosolymitana 7:203–10.

———. 1989. «О генезисе одного рассказа в составе Еллинского Летописца второй редакции (о Взятии Иерусалима Титом).» In Russian Literature and History: In Honour of Professor Ilya Serman, edited by W. Moskovich, Jonathan Fraenkel, Victor Levin, and Samuel Shvarzband 146–51. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

———. 1992. “On Some Unidentified and Misidentified Sources of the Academy Chronograph.” In Russian Philology and Literature Presented to Prof. Victor D. Levin on his 75th Birthday, edited by W. Moskovich, J. Frankel, I. Serman, and S. Shvarzband, 365–75. Jerusalem: Praedicta.

———. 1993. “On the Slavic Life of Moses and Its Hebrew Sources.” In Jews and Slavs, vol. 1, edited by W. Moskovich, 84–119. Jerusalem: n.p.*.

———. 1995a. “The Kievan Jew Zacharia and the Astronomical Works of the Judaizers.” In Jews and Slavs, vol. 3, edited by W. Moskovich, S. Schwarzband, and A. Alekseev, 168–98. Jerusalem: Hebrew University.

———. 1995b. “The ‘Poem on the Soul’ in the Laodicean Epistle and the Literature of the Judaizers.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19:671–85.

———. 1997. Послесловие к Логическим Терминам Маймонида и Ересь Жидовствующих. In N.M. Botvinnik and E.I. Vaneeva (eds.) In Memoriam: Памяти Я.С. Лурье, edited by N. M. Botvinnik and E. I. Vaneeva, 239–46. Saint Peterburg: Izd. “Feniks.”

———. 1998. “The Spiritual Circle in the Secret of Secrets and the Poem on the Soul.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 18 (3–4): 342–55.

———. 2004. “The Vilnius 262 Psalter: A Jewish Translation?” In Jews and Slavs, vol. 14, edited by W. Moskovich, S. Shvarzband, and A. Alekseev, 27–38. Jerusalem: Gesharim.

———. 2005a. “The 15th-c. Ruthenian Translations from Hebrew and the Heresy of the Judaizers: Is There a Connection?” In Speculum Slaviae Orientalis: Muscovy, Ruthenia and Lithuania in the Late Middle Ages, edited by V. V. Ivanov and Julia Verkholantseva, 185–208. UCLA Slavic Studies 4. Moscow: OGI..

——— 2005b. “The Book of Job in Vilnius 262.” In Jews and Slavs, vol. 15, edited by W. Moskovich and S. Nikolova, 281–96. Jerusalem–Sofia: Center for Slavic Languages and Literatures of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem—Cyrillo-Methodian Research Center of The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences .

———. 2006. “Which Hebrew Text of Algazel’s Intentions served for the Translation of the Slavic Logika?” In Quadrivium: Festschrift in Honour of Professor Wolf Moskovich, edited by S. Schwarzband, M. Taube, and R. Timenchik, 47–52. Jerusalem: Center for Slavic Languages and Literatures of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

———. 2010. “Transmission of Scientific Texts in 15th-Century Eastern Knaan.” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 10 (2): 315–53.

———. 2014. “On the Third Capture of Jerusalem by Titus and Its Sources.” In Philology Broad and Deep: In Memoriam Horace G. Lunt, edited by Michael S. Flier, David J. Birnbaum, and Cynthia M. Vakareliyska, 247–64. Bloomington, IN: Slavica.

———. 2015. “The Book of Proverbs in Codex Vilnius 262.” In The Bible in the Slavic Tradition, edited by Alexander Kulik, Mary MacRobert, Svetlina Nikolova, Moshe Taube, and Cynthia Vakareliyska, 179–94. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

———. 2016. The Logika of the Judaizers: A Fifteenth-Century Ruthenian Translation from Hebrew. Critical edition of the Slavic texts presented alongside their Hebrew sources, with introduction, English translation, and commentary. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Taube, Moshe, and William F. Ryan. 2021. “Chancellor Timofej Kamenevič and the Russification of the Тайная тайных.” In Sub specie aeternitatis: Сборник научных статей к 60-летию Вадима Борисовича Крысько, 779–808. / Отв. ред. И. М. Ладыженский, М. А. Пузина; ИРЯ им. В.В. Виноградова РАН.—Мoscow: Издательский центр «Азбуковник,» 2021.

Temchin, S. Ju. 2008. “Skharia and Skoryna: On the Sources of Vilnius Old Testament Florilegium (F 19–262).” Pinkas: Annual of the Culture and History of East European Jewry II: 17–33.

———. 2017. Review of Taube 2016. Ruthenica 14: 235–49.

———. 2020a. Перечень наук руськомовного перевода Слов логики Маймонида и отзвуки византийского гуманизма в Киеве второй половины XV—начала XVI вв. Ruthenica 16: 112–24.

———. 2020b. Фрагмент «Канона врачебной науки» Ибн Сины в руськомовном переводе трактата «Тайная тайных». Slavistica Vilensis 65 (1): 10–19.

Thomson, Francis J. 1998. “The Slavonic Translations of the Old Testament.” In The Interpretation of the Bible: The International Symposium in Slovenia, edited by Jože Krašovec, 605–920. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

———. 1999. The Reception of Byzantine Culture in Mediaeval Russia. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Thorndike, Lynn. 1949. The Sphere of Sacrobosco and its Commentators. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Türker, Mübahat. 1960. “Al-Maḳāla fī Ṣinā’at Al-Manṭiḳ de Mûsâ Ibn Maymûn (Maimonide).” İslâm Tetkikleri Enstitüsü dergisi: Review of the Institute of Islamic Studies. 3 (1–2): 55–110.

———. 1961. “Mûsâ İbn-i Meymûn’un al-Maḳāla fī Ṣinā’at Al-Manṭiḳ-ının Arapça Aslı.” Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 18 (1–2): 9–64.

Tvorogov, Oleg. V. 1987. Палея Толковая. Словарь Книжников и Кнжности Древней Руси. Вып. І (XI‒первая. половина XІV в.), 285–88. Отв. редактор Д.С. Лихачев. Leningrad: Наука.

———. 1989. Хронограф Академический. Словарь Книжников и Кнжности Древней Руси. Вып. 2 (вторая половина XIV‒XVI в.), Часть 2, Л‒Я, 498–99. Отв. редактор Д.С. Лихачев. Leningrad: Наука.

———. 1999–2001. Летописец Еллинский и Римский. 1: текст; 2: комментарий и исследование. Saint Petersburg: Д. Буланин.

Ussani, Vincenzo, ed. 1932. Hegesippi qui dicitur Historiae Libri V . Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky AG—Akademische Verlags-Gesellschaft M. B. H.

Veder, William R. 2010. “Esther’s Glagolitic Ancestry.” Ricerche slavistiche 8 (54): 213–23.

Velcheva, Borjana, and K. Kostov. 2002. Книга Естир и нейният славянски превод. Palaeobulgarica 26:73–92.

Venetianer, Ludwig, ed. 1894. Das Buch der Grade von Schemtob b. Joseph Ibn Falaquera. Berlin: S. Calvary.

Weinreich, Max. 1956. “Yiddish, Knaanic, Slavic: The Basic Relationships.” In For Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, 11 October 1956, edited by Morris Halle, Hugh Mclean, and Horace Lunt, 622–32. The Hague: Mouton.

Weinreich, Uriel. 1952. “Sábesdiker losn in Yiddish: A Problem of Linguistic Affinity.” (Slavic supplement to) Word 8 (4): 360–77.

Weinryb, Bernard. 1962. Studies and Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman, President, Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, Philadelphia. Edited by M. Ben-Horin, B.D. Weinryb, and S. Zeitlin Leiden: E. J. Brill Reprinted as The Beginnings of East European Jewry in Legend and Historiography. Leiden: E. J. Brill 1962.

Zuckerman, Constantin. 1987. “The ‘Psalter’ of Feodor and the Heresy of the ‘Judaizers’ in the Last Quarter of the Fifteenth Century.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 11:77–99.

———. 1995. “On the Date of the Khazars’ Conversion to Judaism and the Chronology of the Kings of Rus Oleg and Igor. A Study of the Anonymous Khazar Letter.” Revue des études byzantines 53:237–70.

———. 2011. “On the Kievan Letter from the Genizah of Cairo.” Ruthenica X. 7–56.