Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.034 June 14, 1993 1) Yoshke Pandre (Bob Rothstein) 2) Rebbe/rebbetzin (Hershel Basser) 3) Yiddish -- The Fifteenth Slavic Language? (Zachary Baker) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 11 21:18:37 1993 From: ROBERT A ROTHSTEIN Subject: Yoshke Pandre Having returned from two weeks spent in Slovakia, I offer the following first installment of some catch-up comments. In his book _Jesus of Nazareth, His Life, Times, and Teaching_, Joseph Klausner writes regarding the name "Ben Pandera" or "Ben Pantere" (I quote from Herbert Danby's 1925 translation of Klausner's Hebrew text, omitting footnotes): "This pseudonym is certainly very old, for we learn from Origen that the heathen Celsus, about the year 178, heard from a Jew a statement to the effect that Miriam was divorced from her husband, a carpenter by trade, after it had been proved that she was an adulteress. Discarded by her husband and wandering about in shame, she bore Jesus in secret, whose father was a certain soldier, Pantheras. And Origen himself says that James, the father of Jesus' father, Joseph, was called by the name "Panther." Origen apparently wished in this way to explain why Jesus the son of Joseph was called "Ben Pandera" or "Ben Pantere" by the Jews; according to Origen, Jesus was so called after the name of his grandfather. At all events, the name "Ben Pandera" is very early. It is impossible for us to assume that there really was a Roman soldier of the name Pandera or Pantheras, who had relations with the mother of Jesus, since the entire story of the birth of Jesus by a Roman soldier is only a legend owing its origin to the conviction of the Christians, from the time of Paul, that Jesus was born without a natural father; therefore we must seek elsewhere for the source of this curious name. Of all the explanations so far offered, that of Nietsch and Bleek appears preferable--that "Pantere" is a corrupt travesty of _Parthenos_, virgin. The Jews constantly heard that the Christians (the majority of whom spoke Greek from the earliest times) called Jesus by the name "Son of the Virgin," _uios tes Parthenou_; and so, in mockery, they called him "Ben ha-Panterea," i.e. son of the leopard. It was gradually forgotten that Jesus was so called after his mother, and the name "Pantere" or "Pantori," or "Pandera" was thought to be that of his father, and since this is not a Jewish name, there arose the legend that the natural father was a foreigner; and ... it was concluded that Miriam, the mother of Jesus, committed adultery with a soldier, and, of course, with a Roman soldier, since there were Roman legions in Judaea at the time. Bob Rothstein 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 13 13:08:22 1993 From: fishbane@epas.utoronto.ca (simcha fishbane) Subject: Rebbe/rebbetzin To say rebets or whatever for the husband of a rabbi is to beg the question. if we are going to call her by the masculine term "rabbi" and not the fem. "rabbasi" we have to call him by the feminine rebbetzin. fair is fair. hershele bolshiviker 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Jun 14 15:42:06 1993 From: Zachary Baker (bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu) Subject: Yiddish -- The Fifteenth Slavic Language? The last couple of weeks, the pseudonymous Philologos has run columns in the (English) Forward, summarizing the views of Paul Wexler, professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University. If I understand him correctly, his thesis is that Yiddish originated not in "Loter" (northeastern France/northwestern Germany), as Max Weinreich would have it, but further east, in an area where the predominant language was Sorbian. As that region became Germanized during the Middle Ages, speakers of what Wexler refers to as Judeo-Sorbian also adopted a form of German -- or, as Prof. Neil Jacobs put it to me, their Slavic language became "relexified" -- while retaining underlying features of their earlier language. These views, summarized by Philologos and further abstracted here, were given their most extensive treatment in a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language (1991). (I have not yet seen that issue.) According to Philologos, Wexler is about to publish a book on the origins of Eastern European Jewry, which he apparently regards (in terms of their ethnic composition) as a Slavic and Turkic group that became Judaized during the Middle Ages. Needless to say, such views -- expressed by a highly regarded linguist -- are very controversial. I am surprised that none of the professional linguists who contribute to this forum have not commented on it. (Hint, hint...) Zachary Baker, YIVO Library ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.034