Quick post today.
Language and its use interests me deeply, language snobbery, as well as why people are so obsessive about one language being superior to another, when clearly each language has certain words which describe something unique not expressed in any other language.
The Tôrā was certainly not written with such snobbery in mind. In it are numerous words from other languages such as Aramaic and Egyptian.
There are numerous translations of the Tôrā, one which in Rabbinic Judaism, that is, the one that follows the laws as set forth in the Babylonian Talmûdh, is regarded highly, that being the Aramaic translation or Targûm of Onqelos the Roman convert to Judaism. This translation is regarded so highly that in fact Jews are commanded to read it alongside the Tôrā.
The Hebrew linguist, Yehûdha ibn Qurayᵉšh, took this a step further, inspired by the verse:
וְהַחוּט֙ הַֽמְשֻׁלָּ֔שׁ לֹ֥א בִמְהֵרָ֖ה יִנָּתֵֽק
and a threefold cord is not quickly broken
he wrote an Aramaic-Hebrew-Arabic dictionary showing that all three languages are related, and that knowledge of each of these contributes to a deeper understanding of the words of the Tôrā.
The point here is that no single language is superior in God's eyes, that the Tôrā was given in Hebrew, was only the case because the Hebrews were the ones receiving it at the time. The same truths could have been communicated in any language.
