AN ARAMAIC DISPUTE BETWEEN THE MONTHS BY SAHLAN BEN AVRAHAM

Abstract

The article offers an overview of the corpus of poetic disputes between the months composed in Aramaic, together with a critical edition of one such poem, by Sahlan ben Avraham (Fustat, 11th century). The critical edition is accompanied by translations of the poem into Hebrew and English. Part of the text given in the critical edition is based on a copy found in a Genizah document copied in the 13th century by Yedutun Ha-Levi, now known as . The history of publication of this document is reviewed, and a description of its remaining fragments (including a INTRODUCTION: ARAMAIC DISPUTES BETWEEN THE MONTHS The corpus of Late Antique Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poetry1 may be conveniently divided into three categories on the basis of the Sitz im Leben of the poems: 1) poems that are connected in one way or another to the liturgical reading of the Aramaic Targum (i.e., socalled Targum poetry), 2) poems that are intended for para-liturgical occasions, in particular wedding poems and dirges, and 3) poems that are intended for incorporation into the liturgy proper.2 Cutting across this three-way distinction on the basis of locus (i.e., appearing in all three categories) is a literary type whose position within the corpus is quite prominent: the dialogue poem. In turn, a special sub-category of this type is the dispute poem. Dialogue poems in general and dispute poems in particular are of great interest to those who wish to trace the origins and development of Jewish Aramaic poetry on account of the fact that they are well attested in the roughly contemporaneous Christian Syriac poetic culture. Taken together with additional parallels between the two traditions, this shared feature points in the * Lecturer in Hebrew and Aramaic, University of Cambridge. Email: qalir@yahoo.com 1 This corpus has been conveniently collected in M. Sokoloff and J. Yahalom, ( Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999). Several of its aspects are the subject of an extensive and penetrating analysis by M. Kister, " ", Tarbiz. 76 (2006/07), 105–84. 2 present state of our knowledge of the corpus, the third category is essentially restricted to qinot, i.e., poetic dirges composed for the liturgy of the Ninth of Av. For an analysis of this group of poems, see M. Rand, “Observations on the Relationship between JPA poetry and the Hebrew Piyyut Tradition – The Case of the Kinot,” in Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship: New Insights into Its History and Interactions, eds. A. Gerhards and C. Leonhard (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 127–44. There is no reason to suppose that a relationship of dependence exists between the Aramaic and Hebrew qinot – i.e., that the former are somehow an imitation of the latter, or vice versa. It is quite likely that at some point in Late Antiquity, Aramaic and Hebrew qinot were simply composed alongside one another, with the Hebrew qinot eventually winning out by being incorporated permanently into the liturgy (with the result that the genre was cultivated and developed by successive generations of liturgical poets) while the Aramaic qinot were discarded, to be re-discovered among the literary remains preserved in the Cairo Genizah. 102 MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES the poetic corpora of the various relevant Aramaic literary cultures – Christian Syriac, Jewish Aramaic and Samaritan – and, by extension, in the traditions of Hebrew piyyut. and Greek Church poetry, which are closely related to the Jewish and Christian corpora, respectively.3 In the case of dispute poems, moreover, the existence of the genre in both Jewish Palestinian Aramaic as well as Syriac is to be attributed to a common ancestry, since such poems are attested in the Mesopotamian, Sumero-Akkadian tradition, which constitutes a substratum of Aramaic literary culture.4 Among the dispute poems, a coherent group is constituted by those which describe a precedence dispute between the months of the year. One such poem is attested in Syriac,5 and the following examples are known in Jewish Aramaic:6 ith.abbaru yarh. e shatta “The months of the year joined together”: This is the only poem in the list by a known author: Sahlan ben Avraham. A discussion and critical edition are provided below. itkannashu kol yarh. ayya “All the months gathered” (2): Published in M. Klein, Genizah Manuscripts of Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1986), 1.186-89. This poem is attested in ms. T-S NS 186.21, photographs of which are given in ibid., 2.163–64. ...u-vi sleq Moshe “... and in me Moses went up” (3): Published in Sokoloff and Yahalom, , 238–39 and Klein, Genizah Manuscripts, 1.190–1. This poem is attested in ms. T-S H 10.78, photographs of which are given in ibid., 2.176. itkannashun ka-h. ada kol yarh. ayya “All the months gathered together” (7): Published in Sokoloff and Yahalom, , 230–4 and Klein, Genizah Manuscripts, 1.201–5. This poem is attested in ms. T-S H 11.51, photographs of which are given in ibid., 2.165–171. Strictly speaking, it is not a dispute, as only Nisan speaks, 3 See O. Münz-Manor, “Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East – A Comparative Approach,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 1 (2010), 336–61. 4 For dialogue poems and dispute poems from a comparative perspective, see E.Hacohen, " " , Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 20 (2006), 97–171; O. Münz-Manor, " " , in Textures – Culture Literature Folklore for Galit Hasan-Rokem ( Jerusalem: The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 2013), 1.187–209; R. Murray, “Aramaic and Syriac Dispute-Poems and Their Connections,” in Studia Aramaica: New Sources and New Approaches M. Geller, and M. Weitzman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 157–87. For Syriac dispute poems, see S.P. Brock, “A Dispute of the Months and Some Related Syriac Texts,” JSS 30 (1985), 181–211; idem, “Syriac Dispute Poems: The Various Types,” in Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East, eds. H. Vanstiphout and G. Reinink (Louvain: Peeters, 1991), 109–19. For a discussion of the poetic debate in Hebrew piyyut., see E. Hacohen, " '", Masoret Ha-Piyyut. 4 (2008), 61-83. A dispute between Passover and the Sabbath, beginning with , has recently been added to the corpus of Hebrew dispute piyyut.im: see M. Rand, “Qillirian Compositions for Double Liturgical Occasions: Linguistic and Iconic Aspects (Including an Appendix with Editions of Two New Shivatot for Shabbat and Pesah),” in The Experience of Jewish Liturgy – Studies Dedicated to Menahem Schmelzer, ed. D.R. Blank (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011), 222–5. 5 This poem is published in Brock, “Dispute of the Months.” 6 A similar list is provided in Murray, “Aramaic and Syriac Dispute-Poems,” 166–8. Murray did not have the advantage of being able to refer to Sokoloff and Yahalom, (as he himself notes on p. 165, note 37). In any case, the list given here updates that of Murray. Where relevant, the number of the poem in Murray’s list is indicated in parentheses immediately following the incipit in the list given above. Poem 6 on Murray’s list is itbeh. er zahra le-qiddush yarh. in and Yahalom, , 222–9) and poem 8 is [ [..] a[..] li-[vnay] be-rashe yarh. ai “I will [...] my sons on my new moons” (ibid., 234–9). Neither poem is a dispute, as noted by Murray himself. AN ARAMAIC DISPUTE BETWEEN THE MONTHS (MICHAEL RAND) 103 addressing each of his opponents in turn and arguing for the inadmissibility of each to be the “Redeemer” month. The poem is therefore the exact opposite of a precedence to some negative feature.7 However, it shares enough features with the other items in this list to justify its inclusion (see below). Where data are available, we see that the poetic disputes, which serve as targumic embellishments of (Exod. 12:2), are cast in the same basic mold. Each begins with an introduction, in which the gathering of the months is described. The theme of gathering is given expression in the opening lines of the poems, which are essentially stereotypical: .8 The introduction is followed by a presentation of arguments by each month in turn, beginning with Iyyar (i.e., the month immediately following Nisan). In the case of , this feature is paralleled by the fact that Nisan begins his tirade against his opponents with Iyyar. There are several possibilities for the end of the debate. In that his claim rests on the “authority of the Most High” (l. 60). The victory of Nisan is therefore implied rather than asserted explicitly. In Nisan does not present arguments. Rather God, the presiding judge, rules in favor of Nisan immediately following Adar’s arguments. In the case of with Adar, he pronounces himself the victor, again on God’s authority: “The Mighty One made me a redeemer for his people” (l. 44; translation mine). In addition to the poems listed above, the following two items should also be noted: va-hava kevan de-itgele YY “And when the Lord was revealed” (1, 5): This dispute between the months is not cast in a poetic form, but rather in that of a prose targum expansion (tosefta) to Exod. 12:2. The literary structure of this expansion, however, entirely corresponds to that of the poetic disputes. It is attested in two versions, which are The FragmentTargums of the Pentateuch (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980), 1.72–3. A translation is given in ibid., 2.37–39. An alternative translation, including suggested emendations to the Aramaic text, is provided by Brock, “Dispute of the Months,” 209–211. The second recension, beginning with va-hava kad itgele qiris “And when the Lord was revealed”, is published in Klein, Genizah Manuscripts, 1.194–5. It is attested in ms. Ox. Heb. e.73, photographs of which are given in ibid., 2.173–74. • itreme polemos [transcription following the vocalization in the manuscript] “A dispute arose” (4): This short targumic poem to Exod. 12:2, which at present consists of four stanzas, has been published on several