Introduction
The Persian lexeme pahrēz-, pahrēxtan (inf.), is found in Geonic literature written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. It is also found in Jewish, Christian, and Mandaic magical artefacts,Footnote 1 and current in Mandaic. In this note I discuss two recently discovered occurrences of this word in the Babylonian Talmud.
The first occurrence is found in a reconstructed codex of chapters of Babylonian Talmud tractates Sanhedrin and Megillah, found in the Cairo Genizah (GM), recently published in an extensive study by Shlomi Efrati.Footnote 2 It is not found in the rest of the textual tradition of this chapter of the Talmud.Footnote 3 GM is a rare single-quire copy of talmudic chapters, from separate tractates, which circulated together.Footnote 4 Like some other single-quire codices, the width of the inner pages is smaller than those of the outer pages, which would have produced a relatively flat edge. It preserves a textual tradition that differs, in many details and also in some structural fundamentals, from the tradition reflected in all other known copies of these chapters.Footnote 5 Efrati (Reference Efrati2017: 68) believes that GM preserves a textual tradition of the Babylonian Talmud that diverged from the majority tradition at a very early stage, prior to the existence of a fixed text. Importantly for the purposes of this article, it preserves two Persian loanwords. Efrati discussed one, גוארא, Persian gōhr.Footnote 6 He did not discuss the other, פריזא, Persian pahrēz, which is the subject of this note.
Working on this occurrence of the word, I encountered a second one, hiding in plain sight, attested (with very slight corruptions) in the majority of textual witnesses to a sentence in BT Pesaḥim.
I begin with a reading of the sugya in BT Sanhedrin. I then discuss other uses of pahrēz in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: first, in geonic literature, and then the overlooked occurrence of pahrēz in BT Pesaḥim. I then turn to other dialects of Eastern Aramaic, and point to some relevant Middle Persian examples. I end with a re-reading of the Sanhedrin sugya in GM in light of the new identification of פריזא with pahrēz.
Sanhedrin 10
Among other matters, chapter 10 of Mishnah Sanhedrin discusses the rebellious city of Deuteronomy 13:13–19. This scriptural pericope describes the procedure to be undertaken when an entire city is persuaded to turn to idolatry. It is to be destroyed completely: its inhabitants must be killed with a sword, its property burnt in its central square, and its site abandoned. The Mishnah's discussion of the matter departs from its usual apodictic style and instead incorporates an exegetical source. It is a running commentary on the entire pericope, complete with lemmata.Footnote 7
The Mishnah which is the cue for our talmudic discussion expounds Deuteronomy 13:16, “All of its spoil you shall gather into its square (רְחֹבָהּ); then burn the town and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt-offering to the Lord your God. It shall remain a perpetual ruin, never to be rebuilt” The Mishnah reads the latter half of the verse thus:
And burn the city and all its spoil – its spoil, not the spoil of heaven. From here, they said: ‘the consecrated things in it shall be redeemed, the heave-offerings shall rot, and the second tithe and holy books shall be hidden away (ייגנזו).’
The Bavli (b. San 112b) connects a Tannaitic source to this Mishnah, which includes the following dictum, attributed to Rabbi Simon (second. c. CE): “Rabbi Simon says: its livestock (Deut 13:15) – and not firstborn and tithe livestock. Its spoil (Deut 13:16) – and not consecrated monies and tithe monies”. This teaching is the subject of the following talmudic discussion, which I quote from the first printed edition (Barco, Italy, 1498–1499):
ר׳ שמעון או׳ בהמתך ולא בכור: במאי עסיקי׳, אילימ׳ בתמימין? שלל שמים הוא. אלא בבעלי מומין? שללה ננהו. אמ׳ רבינא: לעולם בבעלי מומין, ומי שנאכל בתורת ״בהמתה״ יצאו אלו שאין נאכלי׳ בתורת ״בהמתה״ אל׳ בתור׳ בכור ומעשר.
Rabbi Simon says: its livestock (Deut 13:15) – and not firstborn and tithe livestock. What are we dealing with? If you say, with unblemished animals (תמימים) – it is the spoil of heaven! But if [you say] with blemished animals – it is its own spoil [and thus liable for burning]. Ravina said: [we are dealing with] blemished animals, [and Rabbi Simon is discussing] those animals which are eaten as its livestock, to the exclusion of those which are not eaten as its livestock but as firstborn and tithe livestock (b. San. 112b).
This sugya highlights a discrepancy between Rabbi Simon's reading of the verses and the Mishnah's. Rabbi Simon reads “spoil” to mean “coins”, and thus “its spoil” excludes holy coins, which the residents of the city do not own. Similarly, the possessive form “its livestock” excludes certain kinds of holy animals. The Mishnah however reads “spoil” as all manner of property. “Its spoil – not the spoil of heaven”, includes sacrificial animals. No other verse is needed to ground the law that sacrificial animals are not destroyed.
If the Mishnah's reading of the verse is given, Rabbi Simon's teaching becomes superfluous. As the sugya points out: if the animals are unblemished, fit for sacrifice, then they are “the spoil of heaven”, and are not burned with the property recovered from the city. If they are not fit for sacrifice, then they are assets like any other, they belong to the townspeople and are thus destroyed with the rest of “its spoil”.
Without positing a dispute between R. Simon and the Mishnah, what could he be teaching by pointing to the words “its livestock”? Ravina (fifth c. CE) offers a resolution: Rabbi Simon explicitly singles out blemished firstborn and tithe animals. These, says Ravina, are not merely an example for sacrificial animals, but a stand-alone category. These animals are not fit for sacrifice, and yet are not completely profane. Their holiness cannot be redeemed with money. They can be eaten in a profane context and slaughtered at home, but their carcasses must be buried, and their remains, such as bones and hide, cannot be used for other purposes. They are not consumed as “your animal”; even in their blemished state, consuming them is a ritual act.Footnote 8
This is the reading of the majority of the textual witnesses of this sugya, with two exceptions: (1) the shared textual tradition of MS Jerusalem Herzog 1 and Genizah fragment T-S F2(1).130 (T), and (2) Genizah fragment T-S F2(1).122 (which is part of GM, see Figure 1). The T tradition does not have a Persian loanword, and so it is not material for the purposes of this note. Instead I will turn to the version of the sugya found in GM, which features the curious form פריזא:
במאי עסיקינן? אי בתמימים בני הקרבה נינהו. אי בבעלי מומין בני פריזא נינהי. אמ׳ רבינא לעולם בבעלי ממון עסיקינן. בהמתה – כל שנאכל מיחמת בהמתה. יצא זה שאין נאכל מיחמת בהמתה אילא מיחמת בהמת בכור ומעשר.
What are we dealing with? If [we are dealing] with unblemished animals, they are to be sacrificed. If with blemished animals, they are bene pareza. Ravina said: we are dealing with blemished animals. Its livestock – all that is eaten because it is its livestock, to the exclusion of what is not eaten because it is its livestock, but because it is firstborn and tithe livestock.Footnote 9
Figure 1. T-S F2(1).122, 2v, ll. 26–33.
Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library
The structure of the sugya is the same: the question “what are we dealing with” is followed by a binary choice, each of which leads to aporia. Ravina resolves this aporia by offering a reading of Rabbi Simon's tradition. This version of the sugya, notably, does not attempt to hermeneutically reconcile Rabbi Simon's reading of the verse with that of the Mishnah. It does not connect the animals to the reading of the word “spoil”. Instead, GM interprets the Mishnah as rendering Rabbi Simon's reading of the verse redundant: if the animals are unblemished, then they should be sacrificed, and thus should not be burned with the property of the rebellious city. If they are blemished, then they have another status, the precise meaning of which is as yet unclear. Ravina's resolution is roughly the same as in the majority text of the Talmud: the words its livestock in Deuteronomy are read to mean that you must burn all the animals, consecrated or not, which, when eaten, are eaten as the property of their owners. This excludes firstborn and tithed animals, which are never eaten as the property of their owners.
The meaning of the sugya in GM hinges on the cryptic phrase בני פריזא. What does it mean that blemished consecrated animals are בני פריזא? What is the meaning of פריזא in this context? To answer this question I turn to other related Aramaic corpora.
Pahrēz and Parhēz in other corpora
JBA: Geonic literature
I propose that the form פריזא is a nominal form, derived from the Persian nominal form pahrēz. The spelling פריזא is an emphatic status Aramaic nominal form.
Prods Oktor Skjærvø showed that the cognate verbal form pahrēz- has three basic meanings: “1. Versari (English ‘abide, dwell, stay, live, be.’); 2. protect; 3. abstain, stay away (from)”.Footnote 10 Aramaic verbal forms derived from this verbal stem are found in some Geonic works.Footnote 11 In these works they connote both “protect” and “avoid”. Thus, in the She'iltot:
מימר אמור רבנן ׳אסיר לאיניש לקבולי לשון הרע׳ למיעבד ביה מעשה, אבל למיחש ליה בעי, לפרהוזי נפשיה מיניה? […] היכי דמי. כגון דאמרו ליה. פלניא קא מסגי בהדך בניכלא. מיבעי ליה למיחש ליה ולפרהוזי נפשיה מיניה […]?
When the rabbis say that a person may not accept “evil speech”, is this to the extent that he acts upon it, but should he fear for it, to protect himself (le-parhuzei napšeh) from it […] How so? If they said to him: “So-and-so is walking treacherously with you”. Should he fear for this and protect himself from him […]?Footnote 12
The form of the verb is an Aramaic infinitive, in which פרהז is a quadrilateral root. The object of the verb pahrēz, spelled פרהז in the She'iltot, is oneself.Footnote 13 The spelling פרהז is similar to that used in New Persian (پرهيز ; parhīz), and in Classical Judaeo-Persian, as well as in Parthian.Footnote 14 In early Judaeo-Persian texts, however, the spelling פהרז is used.Footnote 15 Both medieval commentaries on She'iltot gloss the expression לפרהוזי נפשיה with the Hebrew לשמור עצמו or לשמור נפשו.Footnote 16
Similarly, in the Geonic work Halakhot Pesukot (HP) we read:
וכד טבלא צריכא למיבדק נפשה בקמטין. […] וצריכא לפרהוזי נפשה משיכנא
And when [a woman] immerses [to purify herself after menstruation], she needs to check herself in her crevices. […] and she needs to protect herself from slime.Footnote 17
HP rules that a woman should make sure that her body is clean when immersing. If the water does not touch all of her body, the immersion is not effective. Thus, she should “check her crevices”, i.e. armpits and groin, when immersing, and she should make sure that slime, or mud, not stick to her body during the immersion itself. HP calls this an act of caution לפרהוזי נפשה, to protect herself.
Two Hebrew translations of this latter pericope in HP have survived. One is an Oxford MS known as Hilkhot Re'u (HR),Footnote 18 and the other is a Genizah fragment published under the name הלכות קטנות (HK).Footnote 19 Each translates the verbal form לפרהוזי נפשה differently.
וצריכא לפרהוזי נפשה משיכנא :HP
וכשטובלת צריכה לשמור עצמה מן הטנופתFootnote 20 והטיט :HK
וצריכה להרחיק עצמה מן הנמורFootnote 21 :HR
Ostensibly, each translation offers a different meaning of pahrēz: HK uses “protect”, whereas HR uses “distance”, or “avoid”. These two translations are, however, semantically proximate, and the original likely connoted both meanings to the audience.Footnote 22 An Arabic translation has survived as well, which translates the phrase bolded above “ותתחפד מן אלחמא”, i.e. “and she should keep herself from the mud”.Footnote 23 Geonic texts do not use פרהז to mean versari.
JBA: An overlooked talmudic occurrence
Working on פריזא in BT Sanhedrin I encountered another talmudic occurrence of פרהז. It is found in most witnesses of the Babylonian Talmud, Pesaḥim 111b, including all printed editions. It was, however, overlooked by the lexicographic tradition of the Babylonian Talmud, from the tenth-century dictionary Arukh, down to the latest dictionary, by Michael Sokoloff. In ed. Princ. Venice (1520–1523) we read:
אמרה ליה שידא לברא, פירחי נפשיך מכרו משא
The female demon told her son: pirḥi yourself from the service tree.Footnote 24
The textual tradition of the Talmud here has multiple forms for the phrase “pirḥi yourself”, which can be divided into two groups: one group (7 direct witnesses) has forms associated with the letters פ-ר-ח; the other (4 direct witnesses) has Aramaic verbs of caution: אזדהר and חזי.Footnote 25 Arukh and Sokoloff, 1,000 years apart, both used MSS which had the verb אזדהר, and so did not discuss this word.Footnote 26 Modern dictionaries based on the printed editions derived it from Aramaic פ-ר-ח, “fly away”.Footnote 27
In two unrelated fragmentary copies of the chapter, however, a St Petersburg genizah fragment (P) and a Modena fragment embedded in a book binding (M), the word פרהיז is clearly spelled out:
דאמרא ליה שידתין לברה פרהיז מכרומשא :P
דאמ׳ ליה שידתון לבריה פרהיז מ׳ מ׳ […]Footnote 28 :M
The female demon told her son: parhēz from the service tree.Footnote 29
פרהיז is also found in a citation of this sentence in the early modern work Menorat ha-maʾor by Isaac Aboab. This citation features a Persian-Aramaic digloss:
אמרה ליה שדתין לברה: פרהיז איזדהר מסילויה דכרמושא
The female demon told her son: parhēz (Persian), beware (Aramaic) of the thorns of the service tree.Footnote 30
The reading פרהיז found in three unrelated witnesses shows that the various readings with the letters פרח, i.e. פרחי ,פרחין ,פרחא are all minor graphic corruptions of פרחיז or פרחז: the final ז morphed into a ן or י (or a graphic combination of the two, א). Weak glottals and visual similarity both account for the interchangeability of ח/ה. Some witnesses add the object of protection: “yourself”, (לך, נפשיך); others add מיניה, “from it”. אזדהר, “beware”, is an Aramaic translation of פרהיז, and חזו/חזאי, “take care”, is likely one too. Both replaced the Persian word in part of the textual tradition.Footnote 31 The orthography here features the radical ה/ח. As in the Geonic texts (and in New Persian), it is spelled פרהז and not פהרז. The semantics are also proximate, “beware” falling between “protect yourself” and “stay away from”.
This is another example of how Persian words in the Babylonian Talmud were corrupted in the process of textual transmission, and how the oral transmission of the Babylonian Talmud naturally lent itself to the insertion or omission of loanwords, especially as knowledge of Persian dwindled among reciters. Some loanwords disappeared from the textual tradition quickly; others were only corrupted into oblivion in modern editions of the Babylonian Talmud.Footnote 32 A loanword might remain part of the textual tradition throughout, become appended to it in transmission, or be lost as part of the same transmission. Both the oral nature of the Talmud in its formative stages and the fluidity of its textual transmission in its later stages offer the possibility of Persian words entering and exiting the textual tradition.Footnote 33
The Aramaic magical tradition
It is notable that the verb in Pesaḥim is used in a conversation between a female demon and her son, because the root פרהז is much more common in the Eastern Aramaic magical tradition than in the Talmud.Footnote 34
Verbs and nouns derived from the root פרהז are found in the magical tradition, in three dialects of Eastern Aramaic: Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Syriac, and Mandaic. The currently known occurrences of the root in Syriac are confined to the magical tradition.Footnote 35 The uses in Mandaic are broader and not found only in magical texts. In the magical tradition, too, פרהז does not connote versari, and it tends closer to “protect” than to “avoid”.
In the Eastern Aramaic magical tradition the root פרהז is used in conjunction with other verbs of protection. Thus in a JBA bowl from Borsippa:Footnote 36
[…] אינון (10) נינטרוניה ונשיזבוניה וניפ<ר>חזוניה וניכלכלוניה לכיניחיי בר חתאי מן עינא בישתא ומן מסכיתא חסמתא ומן מחשב ליבא ומן מללת לישנא.
They (10) will guard and save and protect and maintain Keyaniḥaye bar Ḥatai against the evil eye and the envious gaze and the thought of the heart and the word of the tongue.
This reading follows an emendation suggested by Müller-Kessler, corroborated by two Mandaic Amulets which read nʿnṭrwnh wnʿprḥzwnh, as well as in Syriac bowls (AO 17.284:8).Footnote 37 A similar formula is found in a pair of Jewish Aramaic bowls (VA.2496 and VA.2575), which also feature angels with names derived from the same verb: פרהזיאל and מפרהזיאל.Footnote 38
Nominal forms derived from the root in the magical tradition are more rare. One noun form is found in a Jewish Aramaic bowl, VA.2423, to refer to the form of the incantation that is to follow:
הדא פרהזתא דלוטתא ונידרא ודשיקופתא
This is a protection against curses and oaths and afflictions (Levene Reference Levene2014: 38, ll. 16–17).
Levene notes (Reference Levene2014: 42): “The verb ܦܪܗܙ is […] not however previously attested in the nominal form in any of the Aramaic dialects”. A nominal form of פרהז is also found in the Borsippa bowl, following the reading of Morgenstern and Ford:
הלין מלאכי ניהוין פרהזני ומיצרי ביני טב לביש
These angels will be protectors and boundaries between good and evil.Footnote 39
The radical ה/ח is almost always found in the verbal and nominal forms in the magical tradition. However, in two bowls we find: ויפרחון ויפקון ויפרזון ירור בישתא מן ביתיה,Footnote 40 without the radical ה/ח, just as in the form פריזא found in GM. This likely reflects a phonetic spelling, combined with a weakening of the glottal ה/ח. (In this phrase, the meaning is closer to “keep away (from)”, rather than “to protect”, as revealed by the other verbs in the sentence, which connote distance, and the object of the verb, the demon Yaror).Footnote 41
The Mandaic magical tradition uses פרהז like the Jewish and the Syriac traditions. In two published amulets, פרחז is used in conjunction with verbs from the root כ-ל-ל, “to surround” and נ-ט-ר, “to protect”.Footnote 42 For the literary tradition, Drower and Macuch's Mandaic Dictionary offers several examples for uses of verb forms of the root פרהז in Mandaic literature, which connote protection or avoidance of a person from something (e.g. water; “this and that”; “creatures of darkness”) or from someone else (“keep away from her”).Footnote 43 Drower and Macuch do not list a nominal form for this root.
The Eastern Aramaic magical tradition and Geonic texts feature both nouns and verbs derived from the quadrilateral root פרהז. The basic meaning in both these corpora is “to protect”, and sometimes “to avoid”. This is the meaning in BT Pesaḥim as well. The meaning versari is not attested.
Middle Persian
As noted above, in Middle Persian (MP) there is both a verbal form, pahrēz-, pahrēxtan, and a nominal form pahrēz.Footnote 44 Some instructive parallels from Middle Persian literature that I have found are:Footnote 45
1. Šāyest nēšāyest, Supplementary texts 15: 6
kē pahrēz ī ēn har haft hammōxtēd xūb kunēd ud šnāyēnēd ā-š hagriz ruwān ō xwēšīh ī ahreman ud dēwān nē rasēd ka-š pahrēz ī awēšān kard ā-š pahrēz ī ēn haft amahraspandān kard bawēd
Whoever teaches care for all these 7 (creations of Ohrmazd in the material world mentioned in the previous paragraph – just people, cattle, fire, metals, earth and virtuous women, water and plants – AG) does well and pleases (the Amahraspands); then his soul will never arrive at kinship with Ahreman and dēws (demons – AG). When he has cared for them (i.e. the creations), then the care of these 7 Amahraspands is for him (trans. Kotwal Reference Kotwal1969: 59).
2. Greater Bundahišn, chapter IVa [2; 6]
[2] gōšurun […] ō ohrmazd garzīd ku-t sārārīh ī dām […] ku hēd ān mard ke-t guft ku dahēm tā pahrēz be gōwēd […]
[5] u-šān pas frawahr ī zardušt be nimūd ku be dahēm ō gētīg ku pahrēz be gōwēd.
[2] Gōšurwan – that is, the soul of the sole-created cow – […] complained to Ohrmazd […]: “To whom have you given authority over creation […]? You said: I will create a man who will protect you with his words. Where is he?”
[5] Then Ohrmazd showed it (i.e. Gōšurun – AG) the frawahr Footnote 46 of Zoroaster, and said: “I will create him in the material world and he will protect you with his words”.Footnote 47
3. A Pahlavi medical text
abar […] čē ēwēnag pahrēz ī aburnāyag pad gāh<wārag> ud bandišn ud xwābišn ud parwarišn pānagīh
On […] the manner of caring for the child in the crib, swaddling, sleep, nurture, and protection.Footnote 48
4. Ardā Wirāz Nāmag 37.4
gōwēd srōš-ahlaw ud ādur-yazad ku ēn ruwān ī awēšān mardōmān hēnd ke-šān pad gētīg āb ud ātaxš ne pahrēxt ud rēmanīh ō āb ud ātaxš burd ud pad nigerišn ātaxš ōzad
Srōš the pious and the deity Ādur say: these are the souls of the people who in the material world were not careful about fire and water. They brought impurity to water and fire, and deliberately killed (i.e. extinguished) fire.Footnote 49
In these texts, pahrēz is “care” or “protection” of something in the material world, whether the creations of Ohrmazd, the spirits, animals, a child in the crib, or fire and water. Pahrēz is something one does to someone else, according to certain rules and procedures. Children, for example, need to be swaddled, put to sleep and nurtured; fire needs to be kept pure and never be extinguished. Animals, especially bovines, need to be cared for properly, and slaughtered in the proper way, because they have souls.Footnote 50 In these examples, pahrēz connotes care and protection which are to be afforded to divine or important things. In some of these examples, the person who offers this protection is to be protected too, as in the Aramaic magical texts.
Back to the Talmud
We can now translate the words bene pareza in BT Sanhedrin using meaning (2) of pahrēz, “care, protection”:
If [we are dealing] with unblemished animals, they are to be sacrificed. If with blemished animals, they are to be protected. Ravina said: we are dealing with blemished animals. Its livestock – all that is eaten because it is its livestock, to the exclusion of what is not eaten because it is its livestock, but because it is firstborn and tithe livestock.
This version of the sugya does not assume that blemished animals are part of the property of the city and might need to be consigned to destruction. On the contrary: it rules that first-born and tithe animals would not be destroyed, in any case. If they have no blemishes, they are to be sacrificed; if they are blemished they need to be protected. In GM Rabbi Simon's reading of the words its livestock is not contradictory to the Mishnah, but redundant, because it provides no new information: the animals would not be destroyed in any case!
Ravina's resolution is to modify the Talmud's understanding of Rabbi Simon's dictum: the words its livestock (בהמתה) teach that all animals which can be eaten because they are private property are burned if they belong to a rebellious city. This includes blemished sacrificial animals, but excludes firstborn and tithed animals, which are not destroyed because they are not private property. Blemished sacrificial animals must indeed be protected, and they are bene pareza; but this does not exempt them from being destroyed with the rebellious city. What does that is the special ownership structure of firstborn and tithe animals. Rabbi Simon's dictum is no longer redundant.
Blemished sacrificial animals, or blemished tithed and firstborn animals, are in this version animals to be protected and cared for. Much like fire or water, infants, Amaharaspands or beneficient immortals in the Middle Persian texts, these sacrificial animals must be protected, and not used for mundane purposes.
Bene pareza in GM seems to be a technical term. The Talmud opposes it to בני הקרבה, which describes unblemished sacrificial animals. Like that term, bene pareza refers to a known series of prescriptions regarding the manner in which people should relate to an animal that is the object of special protection: they cannot be used for work, it is forbidden to partake of their wool, milk, and offspring, and they must be buried after death.Footnote 51 This technical term is absent from the rest of the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic corpus. I have also been unable to locate an exact corresponding term in other dialects of Aramaic or in Middle Persian. Pahrēz does, however, capture quite well the status of the blemished sacrificial animal: while it cannot be offered for sacrifice, it needs to be protected and cared for properly, and may not be used for mundane purposes.
Conclusions
The verb pahrēz-, pahrēxtan garnered scholarly attention because it is ostensibly absent from the Babylonian Talmud.Footnote 52 In that respect, both talmudic examples discussed in this article are instructive: additional textual evidence of Bavli can yield words supposedly missing from the lexicon of the Talmud. Similar words have been found in other textual witnesses, including in GM itself, as I noted above.Footnote 53 Other Persian lexemes are currently found only in Geonic works but not in the Talmud.Footnote 54
Bene pareza in GM Sanhedrin stands out as an especially flexible and innovative use of a Persian loanword in this fluid process of textual transmission. It is deployed as a technical term for the treatment of disqualified sacrificial animals, a field of knowledge that was useful only for scholastic talmudic discussions. Further study is needed to understand whether this might be an importing of Zoroastrian mores of protecting animals and its attendant terms and language, to the Jewish sphere of caring for sacrificial animals, which at this time existed only in the imagination of scholars.Footnote 55
T-S F2(1).122, 1r–2v is reproduced in Figure 2.
Figure 2. T-S F2(1).122, 1r–2v
Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library
Acknowledgements
Ohad Abudarham, Domenico Agostini, Oz Aloni, Robert Brody, Shlomi Efrati, Simcha Gross, Ofir Haim, Yedidah Koren, Avigail Manekin Bamberger, Shai Secunda, Ayelet Wenger, Oded Zinger and especially Shaul Shaked, read drafts and offered advice and multilingual assistance. Shlomi and I also had many conversations about GM over the years. Yoav Rosenthal read a seminar paper I wrote on a section of GM in 2012. The reviewers for BSOAS provided invaluable information and suggestions which vastly improved this paper. Dominiki Papadimitriou of Cambridge University Library supplied digital images quickly and efficiently under a lockdown during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Many thanks to all. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows for the writing of this paper, and in general.
