13 New meanings for lexemes which occur in Classical Hebrew.The nominal lexicon in Ibn-Tibbon’s translation of Duties of the Hearts I believe that the analysis presented below indeed refutes this assumption, or at least suggests a different perspective on this impression. The analysis of the nominal lexicon used by Ibn-Tibbon in his translation of Duties of the Hearts serves as a useful source of confirmation or refutation. In the prefaces to two of his translations, Ibn-Tibbon reveals to the reader the changes he had to make in the lexicon, and he is apologetic for these actions.Ĥ Considering the arguments and efforts of these authors and translators, one might expect that the lion’s share of the lexicon in their writings would consist of neologisms of different kinds (both morphological and semantic neologisms). 11 On different occasions, he derived new lexemes from roots and other lexical stems taken from classical literature, and occasionally he shifted the meanings of biblical and rabbinic lexemes. Therefore, Ibn-Tibbon decided to combine Biblical Hebrew, Rabbinic Hebrew, liturgy, and previous medieval Hebrew works - both syntactically and lexically.
5ģ None of the previous periods of Hebrew was sufficient on its own to be used as a source for structures and lexicon to create a whole translation. His translation was not as popular as Ibn-Tibbon’s, and perhaps that is why we have only a small remnant of it today. One was Judah Ibn-Tibbon’s translation, under the title Sefer Ḥovot ha-Levavot, which was more widely known and consequently is available today in many manuscripts and printed editions. 4 Originally, there were two separate translations of the book. 3 This was due mainly to the early Hebrew translation of the book only seventy years after it had been written. 2 For centuries, it was the most widely known work of Jewish ethics in the Jewish world. I am cu (.)ġ Rabbi Bahye Ibn-Paquda wrote his Al - Hidāya ilā Farāʾiḍ al-Qulūb (‘Guide to the Duties of the Heart’) in Judaeo-Arabic at the end of the eleventh century. 5 Eliezer Schweid, Our Great Philosophers (in Hebrew Tel-Aviv: Yediot Ahronot, 1999), p. 60.4 Yosef Qafiḥ, Torat Ḥovot ha-Levavot: The Origial Arabic Text with a New Hebrew Translation (in Hebr (.).It is possible that this is the main reason for the fact that we know so little (.) 2 Israel Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, vol.1 This article is based on some of the findings presented in my PhD dissertation, supervised by Matth (.).