The Corpus of Vernacular Glosses (le‘azim) in Ya‘ăqoḇ al-Ŷieni’s Commentaries (Fourteenth Century)

Abstract

The Hebrew term la‘az, often found in medieval Hebrew texts, generically designates any language other than Hebrew, and more specifically, European vernacular languages derived from Latin. Within this second, more restricted designation, le‘azim (pl. of la‘az) are short annotations in vernacular that translate and explain Hebrew words and phrases. They may appear between the lines, in the margins or within the body of the text. We find them in a variety of works, but particularly often in biblical codices, grammatical treatises, glossaries and commentaries all of which are works meant to facilitate the learning of the biblical text. Scholars in the history of translation and Romanists alike highlight the value of le‘azim in Old French, Occitan, Catalan, Castilian and other neo-Latin Romance languages for the study of biblical translation and Romance linguistics. le‘azim in Old French, in particularly those included in the biblical and talmudic commentaries of the eleventh-century French exegete Šelomoh ben Yiṣḥaq (Rashi), of great value because of their early date and high number of occurrences, are well known and have been thoroughly studied. In recent times, scholars have also brought to light and analysed other corpora in Occitan and Castilian. This article presents the study of over fifty le‘azim and other observations on the use of the Hebrew language vis-a-vis Romance (and often Arabic). These are interspersed in the biblical commentaries of the fourteenth-century exegete Ya‘ăqoḇ al-Ŷieni, on whose life and whereabouts very little is known beyond the evidence provided by his own works. The analysis of this small corpus allows us to venture into a field -that of le‘azim in the Iberian vernaculars- which has been neglected in the history of biblical translation in the Iberian Peninsula.