Saadia Gaon on שִׂכֵּל אֶת יָדָיו כִּי מְנַשֶּׁה הַבְּכוֹר

In parashat Vayechi, Yaakov crosses his hands when blessing Ephraim and Menasheh. Thus, the pasuk and Rashi:

But Israel stretched out his right hand and placed [it] on Ephraim's head, although he was the younger, and his left hand [he placed] on Manasseh's head. He guided his hands deliberately, for Manasseh was the firstborn.		יד. וַיִּשְׁלַח יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת יְמִינוֹ וַיָּשֶׁת עַל רֹאשׁ אֶפְרַיִם וְהוּא הַצָּעִיר וְאֶת שְׂמֹאלוֹ עַל רֹאשׁ מְנַשֶּׁה שִׂכֵּל אֶת יָדָיו כִּי מְנַשֶּׁה הַבְּכוֹר:
He guided his hands deliberately: Heb. שִׂכֵּל. As the Targum renders: אַחְכִּמִינוּן, he put wisdom into them. Deliberately and with wisdom, he guided his hands for that purpose, and with knowledge, for he knew [full well] that Manasseh was the firstborn, but he nevertheless did not place his right hand upon him.		שכל את ידיו: כתרגומו אחכמינון, בהשכל וחכמה השכיל את ידיו (לכך, ומדעת), כי יודע היה כי מנשה הבכור, ואף על פי כן לא שת ימינו עליו:

It turns out that Saadia Gaon translates sikkel similarly, as sechel, and thus chochma:

Targum Onkelos then translates כִּי as arum, 'because'. I don't speak enough Arabic or Judeo-Arabic to see this, but according to Torah Shleima, Saadia Gaon translates כִּי here as 'despite':

בתרגום
 רס״ג ז״ל, נתן שכל לידיו לעשות כן אף
 כי מנשה היה הבכור:

Similarly Ibn Ezra, on both points:

[מח, יד]
שכל את ידיו -כאלו ידיו השכילו, מה שהוא רוצה לעשות.

כי מנשה הבכור -אע"פ שמנשה הוא הבכור. 
וכן: כי עם קשה עורף ורבים כן.

This reflects one approach to sikel. The competing approach, or Rashbam and Ralbag, is to recognize the sin / samech switchoff, and to find the parallel in סכל, meaning to cross or make not straight. For instance, סַכֶּל-נָא in II Shmuel 15:31:

לא  וְדָוִד הִגִּיד לֵאמֹר, אֲחִיתֹפֶל בַּקֹּשְׁרִים עִם-אַבְשָׁלוֹם; וַיֹּאמֶר דָּוִד, סַכֶּל-נָא אֶת-עֲצַת אֲחִיתֹפֶל יְהוָה.

31 And one told David, saying: 'Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom.' And David said: 'O LORD, I pray Thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.'

which is to be taken as 'divert', rather than 'make foolish', And similarly in Yeshaya 44:25:

כה  מֵפֵר אֹתוֹת בַּדִּים, וְקֹסְמִים יְהוֹלֵל; מֵשִׁיב חֲכָמִים אָחוֹר, וְדַעְתָּם יְסַכֵּל.

25 That frustrateth the tokens of the imposters, and maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish;

taken again as 'divert'. Consider the parallels in this pasuk, of mashiv achor.

Shadal (after listing the positions of Rashi et al and Rashbam et al) adopts as correct the position of his student R' Yitzchak Pardo, that he positioned his hands in a manner that those who saw would think that they had no knowledge, for after all, Menasheh was the Bechor. he notes that Abarbanel says similarly, though not precisely the same, using the term in a way contemporary philosophers used it, though that is not valid Biblical Hebrew.

The Gazelle and the Deer

In Nature and Man in the Bible, page 271, Dr. Yehuda Feliks explains how the common identification people make of the Biblical tzvi and ayal is reversed.

Chazal had their identities correct (as we can see from details in the gemara, Chullin 59a), but it was confused in the time of the Rishonim. To cite a post (/letter) from Rabbi Slifkin:

This is no different from how the Rishonim in Ashkenaz mistakenly thought that the tzvi is the deer, and were therefore confounded by the Gemara which states that the horns of a tzvi are not branched. The reason was that that they were unfamiliar with the gazelle, which does not live in Europe, and so transposed the name tzvi to the deer. Only Rav Saadiah Gaon, who was familiar with the animal life of the Middle East, correctly identified the tzvi as the gazelle and the ayal as the deer.

And in another post (/letter):

Europe has very different animals from those of Eretz Yisrael, and the names of animals in Tanach were transposed to local equivalents. For example, the gazelle of Israel perfectly matches all Scriptural, Talmudic and Midrashic descriptions of the tzvi. While Jews in north Africa, which also has gazelles, had a (correct) tradition that the tzvi is the gazelle (and that the deer is the ayal), there were no gazelles in Europe. As a result, the name tzvi in Europe was transposed to the deer (hirsch). This led Rashi, in his commentary to Chullin 59b, to note that the creature traditionally called tzvi in Europe (i.e. the deer) is not the tzvi described by Chazal. Thus, Rashi himself observes that European traditions regarding the identities of animals mentioned in the Torah are not accurate."

I would like to look in this post specifically at what Saadia Gaon says, but we should not forget this point, that "the gazelle of Israel perfectly matches all Scriptural, Talmudic and Midrashic descriptions of the tzvi." And that reversing the identification introduces a mismatch with these descriptions.

From Saadia Gaon's Tafsir on parashat Reeh:

Thus, the Biblical Hebrew word ha-tzevi is translated into the Arabic al-tzabi. And Biblical Hebrew word ha-`ayal is translated into the Arabic wal-`iyal.

In other words, Saadia Gaon is translating these Hebrew words into their Arabic cognates.

In other words, it is not merely Saadia Gaon operating in a place which has both animals transmitting the masorah by identifying these species by their (completely unrelated) Arabic names. There is an even stronger linguistic connection present in this identification, in that people living in the Middle East used the very same names, or their cognates, for these species. And we would expect less linguistic shift in the same area of the Torah and of Chazal. And Saadia endorses that linguistic connection.

On the other hand, this raises the possibility that Saadia Gaon is not really translating at all. Sure, he is writing in Judeo-Arabic, and explicitly identifying Hebrew species by their Judeo-Arabic equivalents, where these were indeed Judeo-Arabic words. (And if the species were indeed reversed, a conscientious translator would make sure to reverse them, as al-`iyal and al-tzabi.) But at the same time, since these are cognates, perhaps he was simply rendering the definite article ha as al and writing the existing Arabic word which was the cognate. Not necessarily as a masorah, but just assuming that word X == equivalent word Y. Just as in Onkelos, tabya is a cognate, because Aramaic letter tet corresponds to Hebrew letter tzadi; and ayla is obviously the Aramaic cognate of ayal.

Update:

A bit later in parashat Re'eh, in Devarim 14:5, we again have the tzvi and the ayal, in a list of five kosher wild animals. For the sake of completeness, we should see how Saadia Gaon renders this as well:

Once again, we have the Hebrew ayal rendered into Judeo-Arabic as wal-`iyal and the Hebrew utzevi rendered into the Judeo-Arabic wal-tzabbi.

We also see how many cognates there are in these lists of animals. For instance, Hebrew veyachmur in wal-yachmur in Judeo-Arabic. For the Hebrew ve`ako, we have wal-we'il, which does not match, but notice that the Aramaic in Onkelos is veya'la (note that yud and vav switch off). The other animals listed in this pasuk are not cognates. But see the previous pasuk and the cognates there, for behemah and tochelu, and for bakar, tzon, and ez.

So for some of these creatures, such as the giraffe for zemer, Saadia Gaon clearly is performing an identification and translation. And cognates will be present just because the two languages are closely related. Still, the ambiguity discussed above is present: that these are cognates lends strength to the identification, since these are approximately the same names in approximately the same area. On the other hand, these are easy to assume and fall back upon.

Update:

Also, in the Tafsir on Shir HaShirim 2:9, Saadia Gaon translates tzvi and ayal the same way:

Sapir as Crystal or Diamond

In parashat Pekudei we have an enumeration of the stones in the Choshen, such as (Shemot 39):

יא  וְהַטּוּר, הַשֵּׁנִי--נֹפֶךְ סַפִּיר, וְיָהֲלֹם.

11 And the second row, a carbuncle, a sapphire, and an emerald.

But this list can be potentially pretty useless since unlike common words like אמר and שמר, these are uncommonly used words in a very narrow domain (gemology). And since the meaning of words shifts over time, we cannot be sure we are speaking of the same item. For instance, many say that Biblical sappir is not sapphire rather lapis lazuli.

So it is not surprising that there is further dispute about the identity of Sappir. According to the quote that follows, Rav Saadia Gaon identified it as crystal while Michlal Yofi, on the basis of a Midrash Eicha Rabbati identified it as diamond.

Thus, from the collected commentary of Saadia Gaon on Torah:

" נֹפֶךְ סַפִּיר -- And the Gaon explained that Sappir was white, and that it is what they called in foreign tongue kristal.  

[Josh: To interject:

crystal (n.) 

Old English cristal "clear ice, clear mineral," from Old French cristal (12c., Modern French crystal), from Latin crystallus "crystal, ice," from Greek krystallos, from kryos "frost," from PIE root *kru(s)- "hard, hard outer surface" (see crust). Spelling adopted the Latin form 15c.-17c. The mineral has been so-called since Old English; it was regarded by the ancients as a sort of fossilized ice. As a shortened form of crystal-glass it dates from 1590s. As an adjective, from late 14c.

] 

And in the Midrash [Eicha Rabbati , on the pasuk in Eicha 4:7:

ז  זַכּוּ נְזִירֶיהָ מִשֶּׁלֶג, צַחוּ מֵחָלָב; אָדְמוּ עֶצֶם מִפְּנִינִים, סַפִּיר גִּזְרָתָם.  {ס}

7 Her princes were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was as of sapphire; {S}

and specifically on   סַפִּיר גִּזְרָתָם -- the sappir is something which is kal [or else kasheh]. Rabbi Pinchas said] 

'there was an incident with a certain person who went to sell a sappir in Rome. The purchaser said to him, "I am purchasing it in order to investigate its properties." He placed it upon a sheet and began to strike it with a hammer. The hammer broke and the sappir stayed in its place.' 

And according to this Midrash, this is the gem they call the diamond, and it is white and pure, end quote." (Michlal Yoffi citing Rav Saadia Gaon za'l on Eicha)

I am not sure where the quote of Saadia Gaon ends and Michlal Yoffi begins.

I also wasn't able to find this quote at all in Michlal Yoffi. Maybe there is another Michlal Yofi by another author, or another edition from the same author? This is what I found on the pasuk on Eicha from R' Shlomo ibn Melech in Michlal Yofi:

Update: Thanks to Yitzchok, in the comment section, who pointed me at two earlier versions, which do have the quote:

I don't know why the later version would have omitted it. (Assuming that the earlier versions are original and don't reflect someone's insertion.) Maybe in the interest of space, since the other two or three opinions, namely Saadia Gaon, the midrash, and Ibn Ezra, are ones found elsewhere?

Rav Saadia Gaon on Ashterot Tzonecha

Most of this is done with pictures.

At the start of Ekev, Saadia Gaon that ashterot tzonecha is vegafrat jinmak:

The Arabic word ghanam is sheep, so ghinmak means your sheep. The word before, we-gaphrat, I don't know.

Rabbenu Yonah Ibn Janach on the meaning of this:

and in Sefer Hashorashim of Ibn Janach, where this compilation is getting it from:

What does it mean to say that the ghufar is from the בני השה? Is it a term for a young sheep, as I think?

Elsewhere, we see this Arabic ghufar as a cognate of Hebrew עפר, as in עפר האילים. From Keil and Delitzsh's commentary on Song of Songs:

 עפר is the young hart, like the Arab. ghufar (ghafar), the young chamois, probably from the covering of young hair; whence also the young lion may be called כּפיר. 

The chamois is a goat-antelope species. But I think the idea is the young of the species. And here, the young females of the sheep species.

Did Saadia Gaon have a masorah on shafan as al-wabr?

According to Ibn Ezra, Saadia Gaon sometimes made things up, for the honor of Torah.

To quote Jewish Encyclopedia on Ibn Ezra's allegation:

Nor was Saadia without influence outside Jewish circles. Abraham ibn Ezra, writing on Gen. ii. 11, states, probably on good authority, that Saadia planned his translation of the Bible for Mohammedans as well as for Jews, and that he used Arabic script for this reason; and Ibn Ezra accordingly explains the fact that Saadia translated even those expressions whose meaning was not known through tradition, as being due to a desire that the Mohammedan reader might not think the Bible contains words which are unintelligible. 

I wrote about this Ibn Ezra a few years back (and even mentioned al-wabr), about whether Saadia Gaon dreamed that the Pishon was the Nile. That is, on Bereishit 2:11, which begins shem ha'echad pishon, it Rav Saadia Gaon's Tafsir, it is the Nile River. Al-Nil.

Rashi agrees and gives a derivation, but Ibn Ezra disagrees in a long and harsh comment. And he ends that comment by saying:

 ואין ראיה על פישון שהוא היאור, רק שתרגם החוילה כפי צרכו, כי אין לו קבלה וכן עשה במשפחות ובמדינות. ובחיות ובעופות ובאבנים. אולי בחלום ראה וכבר טעה במקצתם כאשר אפרש במקומו, א"כ לא נשען על חלומותיו אולי עשה כן לכבוד השם בעבור שתרגם התורה בלשון ישמעאל ובכתיבתם, שלא יאמרו כי יש בתורה מלות לא ידענום. 

And there is no proof regarding the Pishon that it is the Nile {which does not share a single source with these, or flow in this manner}. Rather, he {=Rav Saadia Gaon} translated HaChavilah {the country it surrounds} as he needed, for he had no tradition. And so did he do by the families and countries, and the animals, birds, and stones. Perhaps he saw them in a dream. And he already erred in a few of them, as I will explain in each place. If so, we shall not rely upon his dreams; perhaps he did this for the honor of Hashem, for he translated {in the Tafsir} the Torah into the Arabic language, and in their script, so that they should not say that there are words in the Torah which we do not know.

That is, it would be an embarassment before the Muslims to leave a word untranslated, saying in effect that we don't know what the word is. And so Saadia Gaon made things up, or else tried to figure it out based on other pesukim.

This is more than a simple argument between a Rishon and a Gaon, each perhaps with a masorah or perhaps not.

However, there are a number of points to make about this.

1) This is just Ibn Ezra talking, and alleging this. It does not necessarily mean that it is so, that Saadia Gaon did not make use of a masorah. It might mean that Ibn Ezra is trying to justify his arguing with a Gaon.

2) Along the same lines, it is Ibn Ezra saying this. And some 'frummies' are triumphantly citing this Ibn Ezra as halacha leMoshe miSinai, when they would likely not cite other Ibn Ezras in such matters. For one random example, as to what peshat is in the prohibition to shave with a razor.

3) Ibn Ezra also does not mean that in every case, Saadia Gaon operated without a masorah. For example, surely Saadia Gaon knows what a parah is. But Ibn Ezra says:

And he already erred in a few of them, as I will explain in each place

Ibn Ezra does not argue with Saadia Gaon in his commentary in Shemini, about shafan. He is silent, which means that he does not argue. It might still mean that Saadia was operating without a masorah, but Ibn Ezra still thinks he got it right.

4) Given that the hyrax was an animal local to Eretz Yisrael and its vicinity, and was one of the few animals with a distinctive and readily recognizable sign, of apparent rumination while not possessing split hooves, it stands to reason that this would not be one of the animals for which there was no masorah. That is, if the shafan is indeed the hyrax, then it would make sense for there to have been a masorah for it, unlike for random non-kosher animals and birds, for which the masorah was lost.

5) Last but not least, the same folks suggesting that Saadia lacked a masorah are simultaneously suggesting that the Spanish Rishonim may have had a masorah as to the identity of the shafan. Which is more likely, that Saadia had a masorah, or that the Spanish Rishonim had a masorah?

That Wascally Wabr

The meaning of words changes over time and over place.

For example, growing up, I was always confused when Torah translations talked about there being corn in Egpyt. Wasn't corn a plant that was native to America? How then could Yaakov have heard that there was corn in Egypt? Either corn existed in Egypt, or this was a strange translation.

I didn't realize that the English translations originated in England, and that in England it means grain, usually wheat, while in modern America it means maize. Or that it locally is understood to denote the leading crop of a district. At the time, in my teens, I didn't think to look up such a common word in a dictionary, and there was no Google to use to find its etymology in three seconds.

Nowadays, I can search for etymology corn and find the etymology of corn:

corn (n.1) 

"grain," Old English corn, from Proto-Germanic *kurnam "small seed" (cf. Old Frisian and Old Saxon korn "grain," Middle Dutch coren, German Korn, Old Norse korn, Gothic kaurn), from PIE root *gre-no- "grain" (cf. Old Church Slavonic zruno "grain," Latin granum "seed," Lithuanian žirnis "pea"). The sense of the Old English word was "grain with the seed still in" (e.g. barleycorn) rather than a particular plant.

Locally understood to denote the leading crop of a district. Restricted to corn on the cob in America (c.1600, originally Indian corn, but the adjective was dropped), usually wheat in England, oats in Scotland and Ireland, while Korn means "rye" in parts of Germany. Maize was introduced to China by 1550, it thrived where rice did not grow well and was a significant factor in the 18th century population boom there. Cornflakesfirst recorded 1907. Corned beef so called for the "corns" or grains of salt with which it is preserved; from verb corn "to salt" (1560s).

I did know that there were differences between American English and British English. For example, boot either means the trunk of an automobile or a shoe. But that is not nearly as confusing as when the word is a cognate, that is, almost the same meaning, with the same surface form, in the two languages.

Here is another example: Rabbit.

Did you know that in British English, and in scientific zoological usage, "rabbit" refers to one group of animals (I'll call them "true rabbits" to keep things clear), while in American English "rabbit" it refers to an entirely different group of animals ("hares")?

That is, from the perspective of scientific taxonomy, looking at the genera (genuses) that make up the family Leporidae,

Members of all genera except Lepus are usually referred to as rabbits, while members of Lepus (which accounts for almost half the species) are usually called hares.

And in British English, this is true. However, in American English, hares are called rabbits. That is because there are no native "true rabbits" in America, only hares. And so the term "rabbit" was applied to the closest species.

I found this out from an online etymological dictionary:

rabbit (n.) 

...

Zoologically speaking, there are no native rabbits in the United States; they are all hares. But the early colonists, for some unknown reason, dropped the word hare out of their vocabulary, and it is rarely heard in American speech to this day. When it appears it is almost always applied to the so-called Belgian hare, which, curiously enough, is not a hare at all, but a true rabbit. [H.L. Mencken]

Note that Americans call rabbits hares and hares rabbits.

It is no wonder that, on occasion, American publications will confuse the terms and speak of rabbits instead of hares, where earlier and later works, employing the precise scientific taxonomic names, make it clear that hares were the subject matter. A certain fellow pointed to sources showing "rabbits" in Eretz Yisrael, based on American sources,

Rabbits were also found in excavations in the Negev [Theron Douglas Price, Anne Birgitte Gebauer. “Last hunters, first farmers: new perspectives on the prehistoric transition to agriculture”. School of American Research (Santa Fe, N.M.) School of American Research Press, 1995 - Technology & Engineering - 354 pages, page 61] and in Israel’s vicinity like Syria [Andrew M. T. Moore. “A Pre Neolithic Farmers' Village on the Euphrates”. Scientific American. 1979;241(8):62-70, page 66]

and refused to accept any correction in this matter, in part on ideological grounds.

This is an example of the meaning of a word changing based on locale. The word "rabbit" also changed across time. From the same etymological dictionary:

rabbit (n.) 

late 14c., "young of the coney," from French dialect (cf. Walloon robète), diminutive of Flemish or Middle Dutch robbe "rabbit," of unknown origin. "A Germanic noun with a French suffix" [Liberman]. The adult was a coney (q.v.) until 18c.

Thus, initially it meant the young of a coney, whereas now it refers to both young and old of the species.

The gemara, as well, makes note of words changing their meaning, and that this can have practical ramifications. Shabbat 36a-b:

For R. Hisda said: The following three things reversed their designations after the destruction of the Temple: [i] trumpet [changed to] shofar, and shofar to trumpet. What is the practical bearing thereof? in respect of the shofar [blown] on New Year. [ii] 'Arabah [willow] [changed to] zafzafah and zafzafah to 'Arabah. What is the practical bearing thereof? — In respect of the lulab [iii] Pathora [changed to] pathorta and pathorta to Pathora. What is the practical bearing thereof? — In respect of buying and selling. Abaye observed: We too can state:Hoblila [changed to] be kasse and be kasse to hoblila. What is the practical bearing thereof? In respect of a needle which is found in the thickness of the beth hakosoth, which if [found] on one side, it [the animal] is fit [for food]; if through both sides, it [the animal] is terefah. R. Ashi said, We too will state: Babylon [changed to] Borsif and Borsif to Babylon.

Another famous example is the tzvi. As Dr. Yehuda Feliks wrote in Nature and Man in the Bible: Chapters in Biblical Ecology, the Biblical and Talmudic tzvi is the gazelle, but later European translators transferred the term to the Biblical ayal, a deer.

Next, we have the shafan. The Biblical term most likely refers to the hyrax, which the Israelites were familiar with. Pesukim in Mishlei and Tehillim describe behavior and habitat for the shafan that matches that of the hyrax. I am not going to rehash all of this here.

Saadia Gaon translates the shafan as wabr in his Tafsir. Thus, where the Torah has:

Rav Saadia Gaon writes:

He wrote the Tafsir between 922 and 928 CE.

Is this Rav Saadia Gaon's al-wabr? :-)

Great, but we don't know what a wabr is. Is the wabr a hyrax? An octopus? Maybe it means llama or pica! Saadia Gaon was writing for an audience, though, so we can try to determine what al wabr meant in his time and his place. There is good evidence that where Saadia Gaon was (Egypt, Eretz Yisrael, etc.), it meant hyrax, which is indigenous to the area and was indeed referred to as al-wabr.

However, the Arabic language spread throughout the world, since the Arabs were conquering and converting the entire world. And in other places, they did not have hyraxes, but they did have other animals, which required an Arabic name. And so, the name wabr could be reused to apply to the similar local species.

Indeed, I've seen wabr translated as 'weasel', 'guinea pig', 'coney', and 'hyrax'.

At some point, at least 85 years later (that it, some time after 1013 CE), and in Spain, a country that did not have hyraxes, Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach wrote Sefer HaShorashim, in which he explains shafan as al wabr, and then proceeds to define the term in medieval Spanish.

Thus, he writes:

Zohar Amar has translated it as:

"הוא 'אלובר', בעל חיים כמידת חתול שהוא מצוי מעט במזרח, ואולם אצלנו הוא מרובה, ואולם המון העם אינו מכירו באותו השם, אלא בשם 'קנליה' (قنلية), והוא ניב ספרדי"

In English (some help from commenters on this post):

"This is the al-wabr, an animal the size of a cat which is found rarely in the East, yet by us it is plentiful. [Footnote 45: And it is well known in Morroco.] And the hamon am do not recognize it by this name [Josh: of wabr], but rather by the name conilio, which is a foreign [=Spanish] word."

We see here that Ibn Janach, who did not travel to the East, is identifying the Arabic al-wabr as conilio. Since in modern Spanish, conilio means rabbit, it is quite plausible that he meant it to be rabbit. The hyrax is not found in Spain; the rabbit was not found (or at least found plentifully) in the East, and was plentiful in Spain.

He is also saying that this is not what the people in his vicinity would call the creature. It is thus an identification he is making himself, or which some people use.

It thus seems quite likely to me that this is an instance of a word's meaning shifting over time and place. That is, Ibn Janach did not know of the hyrax, but he did know of the rabbit, and that some people called the rabbit by the term al-wabr, and so he assumed that this was the meaning of Saadia Gaon's term.

And so, Ibn Janach reports and passes on the masorah of shafan as al-wabr from the authority or authorities before him, but accidentally shifted the identification of al-wabr to the rabbit. This is similar to the way in which various Rishonim living in Europe identify Chazal's shafan as the rabbit. Indeed, perhaps Ibn Janach is the very vector of the shift.

How to translate יוֹרִשֶׁנָּה. Should we emend Onkelos? Take II

Summary: Chelek HaDikduk explains why the Teimanim will disregard Rashi and preserve their reading of Onkelos, as יוֹרְתִנַּהּ. I agree, but take slight exception. Is Rashi setting out to emend the text, or to justify what he believes is the only extant reading of the Targum?

In parshat Shlach, Bemidbar 14:

24. But as for My servant Caleb, since he was possessed by another spirit, and he followed Me, I will bring him to the land to which he came, and his descendants will drive it[s inhabitants] out.

כד. וְעַבְדִּי כָלֵב עֵקֶב הָיְתָה רוּחַ אַחֶרֶת עִמּוֹ וַיְמַלֵּא אַחֲרָי וַהֲבִיאֹתִיו אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר בָּא שָׁמָּה וְזַרְעוֹ יוֹרִשֶׁנָּה:

Rashi writes:

will drive it[s inhabitants] out: Heb. יוֹרִשֶׁנָּה, as the Targum [Onkelos] renders,“They will drive out.” They will expel the giants and the people who dwell in it. But it [the word יוֹרִשֶׁנָּה] is not be rendered as“will inherit it” unless the text has יִירָשֶׁנָּה.

יורשנה: כתרגומו יתרכינה, יורישו את הענקים ואת העם אשר בה, ואין לתרגמו יירתינה, אלא במקום יירשנה:

Despite this, the Teimanim have a nusach in Onkelos which is precisely this:

יד,כד וְעַבְדִּי כָלֵב, עֵקֶב הָיְתָה רוּחַ אַחֶרֶת עִמּוֹ, וַיְמַלֵּא, אַחֲרָי--וַהֲבִיאֹתִיו, אֶל-הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר-בָּא שָׁמָּה, וְזַרְעוֹ, יוֹרִשֶׁנָּה.

וְעַבְדִּי כָּלֵב, חֲלָף דַּהֲוָת רוּחַ אֻחְרִי עִמֵּיהּ, וְאַשְׁלֵים, בָּתַר דַּחְלְתִי--וְאַעֵילִנֵּיהּ, לְאַרְעָא דְּעָאל לְתַמָּן, וּבְנוֹהִי, יוֹרְתִנַּהּ.

In Chelek HaDikduk, they justify this:

"In old manuscript nuschaos, the Targum is יורתינה, and so is it in the printings. And Rashi who wrote 'like its Targum ירתכינה' wrote according to the girsa which was before him. And our sefarim and printed sefarim argue on his girsa, and we should not change our girsa. For even in the variant girsaot which are found in the gemara, in matters which pertain to halacha, one does not change [הכרע] to one of the girsaot, as the Ramban writes in Masechet Yevamot, daf 419a in sefer haMilchamot, see there. So too here. And not only this, but also, there are many differences between our manuscript sefarim to the printed sefarim, even according to the girsa of the commentators of Targum. And many mefarshim have aready explained that it is a language of inheritance, as in ולזרעו יורישנה -- {and to his descendants he will inherit it}; and the intent is that it should not be removed from him to another, but rather should be as an inheritance to his descendants and to his descendants' descendants, and it is ensured. And see Radak, Chizkuni, and Abarbanel; And Rav Saadia Gaon za"l explained it in Arabic as ולנסלה יורתה {with the lamed, and as יורתה}, in agreement to the commentary of the Targum in manuscript, vedok."

That is, RaSaG writes:

My thoughts on this is that they certainly are entitled to maintain their nusach in Onkelos, and indeed, it may well be correct and thus reflect the original in Onkelos.

The only thing I am not so convinced about is the assertion that

And Rashi who wrote 'like its Targum ירתכינה' wrote according to the girsa which was before him.

There are two ways of interpreting Rashi.

1. One is that he had only one text of Onkelos before him, and he sided with it, explained it, and explained why the text of Onkelos was not different.
2. Another is that Rashi was well aware of the other girsa, namely the one the Teimanim have, and explained why he believed it to be incorrect. To that end, he made a grammatical argument as well as an appeal to how Onkelos translates throughout Torah.

My gut tells me that Rashi reads more like someone selecting between girsaot, or even emending the text on the basis of sevara. So, #2.

If so, then there is less basis for claiming that we should ignore Rashi's comment and side with the 'masoretic' Onkelos text. There is a difference between a text which is masiach lefi tumo and simply assumes a text, on the one hand, and a Rishon who compared the two alternatives and explicitly sided with one of the two, backing it up with argument, on the other. And likewise, there might be a greater imperative to preserve masoretic Torah text against sevara than to preserve Onkelos to such an onslaught.

Even so, I'll reiterate that they may well be right, and the discussion is not closed merely because Rashi said something.

Finally, see what I wrote about last year about this very Rashi and Onkelos.

Did Rav Saadia Gaon dream that Pishon was the Nile?

Summary: This is what Ibn Ezra alleges. It is possible, though far-reaching. I try to give a sevarah, at the end.


Post: According to the second perek of Bereishit, the river whiched flowed out of Eden separated and became four heads. And,

11. The name of one is Pishon; that is the one that encompasses all the land of Havilah, where there is gold.

יא. שֵׁם הָאֶחָד פִּישׁוֹן הוּא הַסֹּבֵב אֵת כָּל אֶרֶץ הַחֲוִילָה אֲשֶׁר שָׁם הַזָּהָב:

What is Pishon? According to Rav Saadia Gaon's Tafsir, it is the Nile River. Al-Nil.

 Rashi agrees, and gives two reasons the Nile would be called that:

פישון: הוא נילוס נהר מצרים ועל שם שמימיו מתברכין ועולין ומשקין את הארץ נקרא פישון, כמו ופשו פרשיו. דבר אחר פישון שהוא מגדל פשתן שנאמר על מצרים (ישעיה יט ט) ובושו עובדי פשתים:

However, Ibn Ezra disagrees, and pretty harshly. See the paragraph below, 'And there is no proof', which I bolded:

[ב, יא]
שם האחד -אמר הגאון:

כי פישון יאור מצרים. 

וידוע כי גיחון קרוב מארץ ישראל, כי כן כתוב: והורדתם אותו אל גיחון והוא בא מפאת מזרחית דרומית, גם פרת כן והוא אחרית גבול הארץ פאת מזרח .

ומפרשים אמרו:
כי חדקל הוא הנהר השני העובר על בגדא"ד עם נהר פרת, א"כ הנה שלשתם מזרחים. ויאור מצרים יוצא מהר הלבונה רחוק מקו השוה בצד נגב והראיה גדולה בקיץ.

וידענו כי גן עדן תחת הקו השוה שלא יוסיף היום ולא יחסר כל ימות השנה. וריקי מוח תמהו איך יתכן זה. והראיות גמורות בלי ספק יש עליהם. אם כן ירד פישון לפאת דרומית מערבית ואחר כן ישוב דרך צפונית. ואין ראיה על פישון שהוא היאור, רק שתרגם החוילה כפי צרכו, כי אין לו קבלה וכן עשה במשפחות ובמדינות. ובחיות ובעופות ובאבנים. אולי בחלום ראה וכבר טעה במקצתם כאשר אפרש במקומו, א"כ לא נשען על חלומותיו אולי עשה כן לכבוד השם בעבור שתרגם התורה בלשון ישמעאל ובכתיבתם, שלא יאמרו כי יש בתורה מלות לא ידענום. והזכיר הזהב, בעבור כבוד הנהר היוצא מהגן.

"The name of one... The Gaon {=Rav Saadia Gaon, in his Tafsir} said that Pishon is the River of Egypt. And it is known that Gichon {the second named River, which surrounded Kush} is close to Eretz Yisrael, for so is written {I Kings 1:33, at David's command for the coronation of his son Shlomo, where we are taking Gichon as the river Gichon; see also I Divrei Hayamim 32:30}: 

לג  וַיֹּאמֶר הַמֶּלֶךְ לָהֶם, קְחוּ עִמָּכֶם אֶת-עַבְדֵי אֲדֹנֵיכֶם, וְהִרְכַּבְתֶּם אֶת-שְׁלֹמֹה בְנִי, עַל-הַפִּרְדָּה אֲשֶׁר-לִי; וְהוֹרַדְתֶּם אֹתוֹ, אֶל-גִּחוֹן.

33 And the king said unto them: 'Take with you the servants of your lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, and bring him down to Gihon.

and it comes from the Southeast side. The Euphrates {Perat, the fourth river} as well, and it is behind the border of the land, on the east side. And the commentators say that Chidekel {=the third mentioned river} is the second river which passes by Bagdad with the Perat {=Euphrates river; thus, presumably, the Tigris river}. If so, behold the three of them are eastern. And the {Nile} River of Egypt goes from Har HaLevonah distant from the equator {?} on the south side, and the proof {?} is great in the summer.

And we know that the Garden of Eden is beneath the equator, that the {length of} the day does not increase or decrease all the days of the year. And those of empty brains are confounded how this is possible. And there are great proofs, without doubt, upon them. If so, Pishon decends to the southwest side and afterwards returns by way of the north.

And there is no proof regarding the Pishon that it is the Nile {which does not share a single source with these, or flow in this manner}. Rather, he {=Rav Saadia Gaon} translated HaChavilah {the country it surrounds} as he needed, for he had no tradition. And so did he do by the families and countries, and the animals, birds, and stones. Perhaps he saw them in a dream. And he already erred in a few of them, as I will explain in each place. If so, we shall not rely upon his dreams; perhaps he did this for the honor of Hashem, for he translated {in the Tafsir} the Torah into the Arabic language, and in their script, so that they should not say that there are words in the Torah which we do not know.

And it {=the pasuk} mentions the gold, for the honor of the river which went out of the Garden."

If true, it is an important principle, that we should not (necessarily) rely on Arabic translations in the Tafsir as a masorah to identify plants, animals, countries, etc. For instance, part of the masorah for the shafan as hyrax is that Rav Saadia Gaon, in his Tafsir, translated it as al-wabr, which seems to be the hyrax. But if he was just making it up...

Rav Saadia Gaon translated haChavilah as Zevilah. I don't know what country that was, in Rav Saadia Gaon's time. A bit of Google searching yielded a kingdom called Zawilah, a state that existed in Fezzan, between the eighth and twelfth century. The similarity of name could influence this identification, unless it is a masorah. Fezzan seems to be in modern Libya. Thus, the area of Phut.

Another reason Rav Saadia Gaon may have thought to identify Pishon with the Nile is this other pasuk, pointed out by Ramban. In Bereishit 25:18, about the sons of Yishmael:

18. And they dwelt from Havilah to Shur, which borders on Egypt, going towards Asshur; before all his brothers he dwelt.

יח. וַיִּשְׁכְּנוּ מֵחֲוִילָה עַד שׁוּר אֲשֶׁר עַל פְּנֵי מִצְרַיִם בֹּאֲכָה אַשּׁוּרָה עַל פְּנֵי כָל אֶחָיו נָפָל:

Ramban writes that the purpose of spelling out that Chivalah was the place where there was gold was to exclude this other Chavilah from the running. But perhaps Rav Saadia Gaon did not have a tradition, and did not dream, but somehow extrapolated from Chavilah bordering Egypt, to making the river encircling Chavilah into the Nile River.

The hyrax as ruminant

In parashat Re'eh, we read of the non-kosher animals which are non-kosher even though they are ruminants. In Devarim 14:7:

7. But you shall not eat of those that chew the cud, or of those that have the split hooves: the cloven one, the camel, the hyrax, and the hare, for they chew the cud, but do not have split hooves; they are unclean for you.

ז. אַךְ אֶת זֶה לֹא תֹאכְלוּ מִמַּעֲלֵי הַגֵּרָה וּמִמַּפְרִיסֵי הַפַּרְסָה הַשְּׁסוּעָה אֶת הַגָּמָל וְאֶת הָאַרְנֶבֶת וְאֶת הַשָּׁפָן כִּי מַעֲלֵה גֵרָה הֵמָּה וּפַרְסָה לֹא הִפְרִיסוּ טְמֵאִים הֵם לָכֶם:

There are difficulties with the identifications of many Biblical animals, and looking at the identities provided by various Geonim and Rishonim indeed yields a lot of machlokes. The shafan is one such example. In seems that some meforshim who lived in Spain identified it as a rabbit. But Rav Saadia Gaon, who lived in closer proximity to Eretz Yisrael, and Rabbi Maryonis {=Rabbenu Yonah Ibn Janach} identified it as the hyrax. The behavior of the hyrax matches closely with descriptions of the shafan as found in Tehillim and Mishlei, while the behavior of the rabbit is not as consistent. And in the Ekhili dialect of Arabic, the hyrax is called thufun, a cognate of shafan. That is a lot of good evidence in favor of this identification.

The difficulty, though, is that the hyrax does not actually chew its cud, as far as we know. If so, what are we to make of the pasuk?

Recall that Aristotle thought that the hare was a true ruminant. He was wrong, but this demonstrates ancient belief. Presumably he (or some other ancient zoologist) saw the mouth motions of the hare (continuous chewing motions) and thought that they ruminated. The same is true for the hyrax, even though Aristotle did not specifically discuss it. There is an observed behavior of hyraxes which appears like rumination.



(Note that this might actually be merycism, which involves regurgitation, and which certain opponents of the hyrax identification have said that the hyrax does not practice. But at the very least, we can see how ancient zoologists might have thought that the hyrax was a ruminant.)

If so, there are at least three explanations of the verse, assuming we adopt hyrax as the translation of shafan:

1. The Torah is not Divine, but reflects only mankind's flawed knowledge of nature. Moshe Rabbenu did not know that the hyrax did not ruminate, and so he encoded an error in the Torah. I include this because it is intellectually honest to do so, and to stress that we cannot exclude an interpretation which has this rather strong support just because we will end up reaching a conclusion we do not like. This option cuts off many of the objections to hyrax-shafan opponents.
   .
2. The Torah is Divine, but it is not a science book. It is willing to accept, and work within, the mistaken assumptions of the time. This is dibra Torah kilshon benei Adam, according to some Rishonim. Maybe. Or maybe this is an extension of their conception of dibra Torah. Therefore, it is willing to call a shafan a maaleh geira even though it is not actually a ruminant.
   .
3. Maaleh geira is a noun phrase, not a verb phrase. As Ibn Ezra writes elsewhere, there is no real present tense verb in Hebrew. Rather, the noun is co-opted for this task. Hu Shomer can mean "he is watching", or it can mean "he is a watchman". Ki Maaleh Geirah Heimah can mean "for bringing up the cud they are" or "for ruminants are they". By ruminants, one would include whatever in antiquity people considered a ruminant, even if they were wrong about the actual act of rumination. A tomato is called a vegetable because it is not so sweet in the fruit sense, and we would put it in a vegetable salad. Speaking from the perspective of a botanist, it is a fruit. A whale would be considered a dag or daga, according to the classification in ancient times of dag as a sea-creature. The Torah is saying that it is a ruminant (a noun), where the definition is that of the speech of contemporaries. This is different from a claim that it ruminates (a verb).

Now, need there be a single consistent definition for maaleh geirah? After all, it is one expression applying in the pasuk to the gamal, arneves, and shafan. I don't see this as a requirement. There need not be a consistent, single, definition of maaleh geirah, just so long as each can be described as a maaleh geirah. For instance, the gamal practices true rumination. If the rabbit and hare are to be considered maaleh geirah because they practice cecotrophy (poop-eating), then this can be said to comprise a multiple definition.

But, it turns out that we can adopt a single definition. Considering the three possibilities above:

(1) That it actually ruminates. But, the Torah was wrong about it.
(2) That ancient people, contemporary with Matan Torah all the way down to Rav Saadia Gaon, and perhaps even much later, thought, correctly or incorrectly, that it ruminates.
(3) The same as (2), more or less. It was called a maaleh geirah by ancient people.

Now, there is a midrash which possibly demonstrates that Chazal actually thought it possessed a single physical sign of Kashrut:

ויקרא רבה (וילנא) פרשה יג ה' ד"ה א"ר שמואל

את השפן זו מדי, רבנן ור' יהודה ברבי סימון, רבנן אמרי מה השפן הזה יש בו סימני טומאה וסימני טהרה, כך היתה מלכות מדי מעמדת צדיק ורשע, אמר רבי יהודה ברבי סימון דריוש האחרון בנה של אסתר היה טהור מאמו וטמא מאביו.

It has the signs of tumah and it has the signs of taharah. Great. That is what the pasuk itself says. But perhaps this can be taken to refer to physical signs. We know the sign of tumah. What of the sign of taharah?

Well, besides trying to reinterpret that midrash and the meaning of simanim, we could say that it still refers to the hyrax, and that Chazal were among the ancient people, just like Aristotle, who had incorrect zoological knowledge about hares and hyraxes. Just the other day, we saw that Chazal thought that cats and foxes deliberately inject venom into their victims via claws. And we don't then say that we must not know the chatul. Chazal believed in spontaneous generation. We don't say that we must not know what Chazal really meant when they spoke of worms and lice. Chazal spoke of snakes as having a gestational period of seven years, and a man's spine turning into a snake. We don't say that Chazal must have been talking about different creatures called adam and nachash! This works with options (1, 2, 3) above. (Note: See also here, which is the partial prompt for this post. See also a chapter from Rabbi Natan Slifkin's old book, which discusses hyraxes as shafan. And you can purchase his newly republished (and modified) book, The Camel, the Hare, and the Hyrex here. See also Rabbi Slifkin's post for today, Hyrax Day.)

There could also be other definitions of maaleh geirah which the Torah deems sufficient to classify it as a maaleh geirah. Thus, for example, in the Living Torah, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan writes:

hyrax
  Hyrax syriacus or Procavia capens syriaca. Shafan in Hebrew; chiorogryllios in Greek, (Septuagint); tafan in Arabic. The hyrax is a small mammal, around 20 inches long, living in the Negev mountains. It has short feet, covered with elastic, a flexible tail-less body, and pads. It nests in the clefts of rocks (Psalms 104:18), and lives in small groups (Proverbs 30:26). Since it has a maw like a ruminant, it is considered to 'bring up its cud.'Saadia similarly translates it into the Arabic wabr, denoting the hyrax or rock badger (cf. Malbim). Other sources translate it as a coney or jerboa.

I am not sure if by 'maw' like a ruminant he means jaw or stomach. The hyrax has both features like a ruminant. And once the Torah deems it sufficiently like a ruminant, it would say that it is maaleh geirah. Indeed, then, the midrash in Vayikra Rabba can be taken literally and as correct, that the simanim of maaleh geirah are in it.

This is just by way of illustration, that there are people who know their stuff who translate shafan as hyrax, and who have ways of explaining the pasuk.