Abstract:
The present work that fits in the recently flourished field of Irano-Talmudica, examines a Talmudic narrative (Qiddushin 70a) that includes a number of foreign words (non-Aramaic/non-Hebrew). This work aims to investigate the aforementioned words and analyze them philologically in order to identify the language or languages that were common in Sasanian Mesopotamia. There are a number of Pahlavi (Middle Persian) words in the narrative as well, and it worth mentioning that in some cases various pronunciations of certain Pahlavi words are attested. In conclusion, the presence of a common language like present-day Farsi that contains words borrowed from Semitic languages, Greek, etc. is being suggested.
Machine summary:
By examining a narrative from the Babylonian Talmud (Treatise Kiddushin 70a) which includes several non-Aramaic/non-Hebrew words, it attempts to use etymological studies to examine and analyze the mentioned words and, through lexical analysis, to identify the language or languages and dialects used in the Mesopotamia region during the Sasanian era as much as possible.
Of course, it is necessary for Iranologists, and especially Iranian Iranologists, to enter this field and produce works, and also to examine the issue of the influence of Sasanian Iranian religion and culture on the Rabbis who produced the Babylonian Talmud (and the Jewish community living in Mesopotamia in general), an issue that is currently largely neglected by Western Talmudic scholars because most researchers in this field today are Jewish Talmudists, and their focus is on investigating the influence of Middle Persian texts on the Talmud.
The words that Rabbi Yehuda proposes as loanwords from the language of "the people (אינשי)" are "istawba," "etroga," and "anpak/anpaq," among which the two Middle Persian words etrog and anpak are words that Rabbi Nachman also uses but with a different pronunciation (etronge and anbange), which, likely considering the narrative and the personality we know of Rabbi Nachman, are formal or literary pronunciations; and the word istawba is a non-Persian word that is among the Semitic loanwords of the native language of the Babylon region (according to Jastrow, Chaldean), from which the form mostaba is still in Persian A etymological study of a narrative from the Babylonian Talmud (Responsa Kiddushin 70a) has 7 applications, and it can be one of those Semitic (Arabic-Aramaic) words that entered the Persian language before Islam and from the Sassanid era.
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