A Dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCIlI, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2003) 629-630 Abraham Tal. A Dictionary ofSamaritan Aramaic. Handbuch der Orientalistik , erste Abteilung: Der nahe und mittlere Osten. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000. Vol. 1: pp. xliii + 446; vol. 2: pp. xliv + 524. The Aramaic preserved in Samaritan manuscripts has long been one of the most poorly known of the various late Aramaic dialects. Grammatical studies, dictionaries, and reliable editions of many of the texts have all been lacking until recently. Due largely to the work of the Israeli scholar Zeev Ben-Hayyim and his student, Abraham Tal, the lacunae have gradually been filled. (A substantial but controversial grammar was prepared by R. Macuch and appeared as Grammatik des samaritanischen Aramaeisch, Berlin, 1982.) Ben-Hayyim worked for many years preparing a dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic, whose target language was Modern Hebrew. The addition of Tal to the project ultimately led to the appearance of this two-volume work under his name alone. Although its title is English, this is still a Hebrew work, paginated and typeset from the right, with awkward and incomplete English glosses and many typographical errors in both the Hebrew and the English. These features are not choices destined to win approbation for the editorial department of E. J. Brill. The following major texts are treated in this dictionary: first, the Samaritan Targum, in its two major and distinct types (J and A) as delineated by Tal in his The Samaritan Targum of the Pentateuch (Tel-Aviv, 1983). Second , the midrashic text Memar MarqaJTibat Marqe, as recently edited by Ben-Hayyim in his 1988 Hebrew edition. Third, the liturgical texts, as first published by A. Cowley, The Samaritan Liturgy (Oxford, 1909), and studied by Ben-Hayyim in volume 3b of his monumental The Literary and Oral Traditions of Hebrew and Aramaic amongst the Samaritans (Jerusalem , 1957-87). Fourth, The Chronicle of Asatir, also previously published by Ben-Hayyim (in Tarbiz 14 [1943]: 104-125, 174-190; 15 [1994]: 7187 , 128). The language of many of the later texts is mixed, combining Hebrew and Arabic terms and phrases with Aramaic material. The dictionary explicitly includes such material, as well as obvious scribal errors. But with care the user should still be able to extract authentic Aramaic vocabulary. The organization of the dictionary is highly conservative. All words are arranged under their supposed roots, even loanwords, resulting in some very strange phenomena. On p. 680, for example, a lemma, 'twa, is glossed as "receptacle for liquid," and underneath the actual entry appears: "cup, pot pnv ,