Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: November 21, 2017 01:58AM
Unless I've missed something, Nelson's story is true.
Maimonides (most familiarly known as the Rambam (an acronym)...
...who was born, lived, and died under Muslim rule, in present-day Spain and in northern Africa...(as physician, philosopher, communal leader, Talmudist, and Halachist), is one of the most important, and among the most prolific, people in Jewish history.
"In his mid-20s, he began authoring numerous volumes on the Mishnah, which he completed around ten years later. His intent was to assist those who could not understand the Mishnah's Hebrew and often cryptic text, and for that reason, THE COMMENTARY WAS WRITTEN IN ARABIC BUT WITH HEBREW LETTERING."
So the LANGUAGE was Arabic, but the characters were Hebrew. (Like writing out Japanese conversation, or Chinese street signs, in English letters.)
I am looking at a photo of one of the Rambam's original pages, and I can phonetically read the Hebrew letters (most of them, anyway), but I can't understand what he is saying because it is in Arabic.
For the most part (although he did, of course, write SOME of his works in Hebrew, using Hebrew characters), he was not writing Hebrew (the language), he was writing Arabic (the language), and to write Arabic, he used Hebrew characters...
...so Nelson is correct.
There is an article on the Chabad website which is easy to understand: "Maimonides: His Life and Works," by David Zaklikowski.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/75991/jewish/Maimonides-His-Life-and-WorksEdited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2017 02:05AM by Tevai.