[MR] Re: Fw: [MK-SCRIBES] hebrew (fwd)

[Craig Levin]

Abel:

> Just curious-
> Historically if the scroll was created/presented in Jerusalem- what could  
> have been the languages (granted there is a lot of play as to who was in control 
>  of the city)?

That would depend, naturally. Devora & I own a book of Ottoman
Turkish court documents relating to the Jewish community in
Jerusalem near the end of the SCA's period. All of them are in
Turkish, written in the Arabic alphabet, as was the typical case
until the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. 

For what it's worth, an AOA is a public document, written by
royal command for all of the realm to see. It's a bad idea to put
it in a language that most of the populace doesn't understand,
IMO.

Also, from the end of Judaean independence until the rise of the
modern state, Hebrew was reserved for sacred use. Even ketubot
are actually not in Hebrew, but Aramaic-the common language of
the Near East in the days of the Roman Empire. For documents of a
secular nature, Jews around the world usually preferred to use a
vernacular languge or a close derivative (Ladino for Castilian &
Portuguese, for instance).

Pedro