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1. Transliteration of Hebrew Words Compared with Hebrew

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1. Transliteration of Hebrew Words Compared with Hebrew How Much Hebrew Did Herbert Know? 23 CHAPTER ONE HoW MUCH HEBREW DID HERBERT KNOW? 1. Transliteration of Hebrew Words Compared with Hebrew-Latin psalters from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries or with the polyglot Bibles from the early modern period, our copy of the Psalterium seems, at first glance, disappointing. Not a single Hebrew character can be found in the manuscript. Yet the work contains more than a hundred Hebrew words, all of which appear in Latin translit- eration. As Dahan shows in his overview of medieval Latin texts dealing with the Hebrew language, this is not at all unusual during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Anti-Jewish polemical works such as William of Bourges’ Liber bellorum Domini incorporate transliterated Hebrew into their argumentation for the purpose of providing Christians who were unable to read the Hebrew alphabet with ammunition in their disputations against the Jews.1 The biblical commentaries of Andrew of St Victor, Herbert’s contemporary, also include Hebrew words in transliteration only. This total absence of Hebrew characters in his works has been one of the factors which led some scholars to conclude that Andrew knew only the rudiments of the Hebrew alphabet and grammar.2 While this assessment of Andrew’s grasp of the language seems correct, it is unclear whether medieval Hebraists in general used transliterations instead of Hebrew characters out of necessity or out of choice. In a time when knowledge of Hebrew (and Greek) among Christian theologians in the West was rare, the inclusion of non-Latin characters could severely limit a work’s reader- ship. Not only did it render the work less accessible for those who were unable to read non-Latin scripts but it also made a text more prone to copyists’ errors, which diminished its value even for readers who could have understood the Hebrew (or Greek) it contained. Beryl Smalley, con- vinced that Herbert’s motive for using transliterated Hebrew was not igno- rance of the Hebrew alphabet but rather concern for his readership, calls it “a wise precaution”.3 1 Dahan, Intellectuels chrétiens, 250-51. 2 Olszowy-Schlanger, Hebrew Scholarship, 108n5. 3 Smalley, “A Commentary”, 47; see also Dahan, Intellectuels chrétiens, 251. 24 chapter one The lack of Hebrew script in the Psalterium makes it impossible to judge Herbert’s knowledge of Hebrew orthography directly, but, intriguingly, the spelling system used in his transliterations gives us some idea of his grasp of the language and may also indicate, to some extent, how Hebrew was pronounced in Western Europe at the time. Yet before we treat Herbert’s transliterations as accurate reflections of contemporary Hebrew phonetics or as direct proof of Herbert’s linguistic abilities, we have to consider two factors. First, since the only extant manuscript of the Psalterium is not an autograph, it is possible that some transliterations, looking unfamiliar to a Christian scribe, were corrupted in the copying process. Second, Hebraists of the twelfth century, including Herbert, heavily relied on the translitera- tions, spellings and etymologies of Hebrew words found in the works of earlier ecclesiastical authors. Jerome’s treatises on the Hebrew Scriptures, dating from the fourth century, and Pseudo-Jerome’s commentaries on the Old Testament, dating from the ninth, were among the most influential. Even more than is the case with the spelling of Latin, the manuscript’s transliteration of Hebrew is not consistent: we find eloym (58v) and eloim /מִ נְחָ ה elohim (“God”); minha (88r) and minaha (40v) for’/אֱֹלהִ ים 97r) for) ,(”ḥets (“arrow/חֵ ץ minḥah (“gift”, “sacrifice”); hetz (112r) and hez (112r) for to name only a few examples. Whether this variation occurs because of the lack of standardisation in Latin orthography, or because of hesitation on Herbert’s part about the correct spelling, is unclear. Certain is, that when he spells out a Hebrew word using the names for the Hebrew letters con- ḥets: “arrow”) this way in) חֵ ץ cerned, he is usually correct. He explains Psalm 90 (91): 5: [it] is the name of a demon, here “Arrow”. In Hebrew one says [space] which is written with two letters, namely het and zazi, and it means “arrow”.4 A marginal gloss on the same line as the space reads hetz.5 In the Ysagoge ts: tsade/ṣade) as hez) צ ḥ: ḥeth) and) ח in theologiam Odo transliterates and tadi respectively.6 4 [ …] est nomen demonis. Sagitta hic; Hebraice dictus [space] quod scribitur per duas litteras, scilicet het et zazi, et sonat sagitta. 5 While it is possible that the open space in this sentence was meant to be filled later with a rendering of the word in Hebrew characters, it seems more likely that it was supposed to contain a Latin transliteration in red ink. This procedure of transliterations in differently coloured ink occurs also with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in alphabetical Psalms 110, 111, and 126. All of these contain marginal glosses of the transliterated letters as well. 6 Landgraf, Écrits théologiques, 128-29..
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