# Help defining a word from an old text...



## Michael Zwingli

Below find a bit of text from a fabulous enough old volume cryptically entitled, apparently in a rather strange form of Latin, "mischnah attorah uehih iad khazacah le arrambam" (perhaps a type of "Commentary on Mishnah by Rambam?) and apparently subtitled "id est repititio legis sine manus fortis // authore Rabbi Mose Maimonis", in which Maimonides' name is evident as the author. Read, if you like, the snippet of text following:

...יאנה *עםוח* חמן רבחיבוהעיר שושונבוכה רב מתנה אמר מחכא'בימי גוי

All that I am immediately wondering regarding this, is the identification of the word in boldface. It looks like in transliteration it would be _'amoakh_, but I cannot find or understand such a word. Maybe derived from _עם_ ('am "a people, a nation)? Maimonides wrote much (or all) of his work in Judeo-Arabic, but in Hebrew script, so I assume this might be Late Medieval Judeo-Arabic, but I am unsure what we might be exactly dealing with here...

A bit of a mystery story!


----------



## Abaye

"mischnah attorah uehih iad khazacah le arrambam" is weird spelling of "Mishneh Torah aka Yad Hakhazaka of Harambam", the greatest book of Maimonides.

יאנה *עםוח* חמן רבחיבוהעיר שושונבוכה רב מתנה אמר מחכא'בימי גוי is apparently OCR (computer reading of old paper book into digital text) fragment of Talmud Bavli, Megilah 11:1: יאנח עם זה המן דכתיב והעיר שושן נבוכה רב מתנה אמר מהכא כי מי גוי (mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic).


----------



## Drink

Can you link to where you found this? Even with the correct interpretation of the bad OCR, it doesn't make sense that a quote from Talmud Bavli would be found in the Mishneh Torah.


----------



## Michael Zwingli

Thanks, @Abaye. Then, עם זה means "this people"?


----------



## Michael Zwingli

Drink said:


> Can you link to where you found this?


I will try to find it again. Give me until the morrow, and I'll try to re-create my search. I can tell you that it was in a very old book on Google Books.


----------



## Abaye

Michael Zwingli said:


> Then, עם זה means "this people"?


יאנח עם = "the people mourn" (Proverbs 29:2, King James Version)
זה המן = "is Haman" (Haman - the wicked minister of the Persian king, from the book of Esther).

This Talmud page describes situations in which the people is/are glad / sad, based on biblical quotations. The text you posted starts in the middle of the sentence so may seem out of context.

Added: you can find English translation here, look for the 2nd instance of sentence starting with "But when the wicked beareth rule the people sigh".


----------



## Michael Zwingli

Abaye said:


> זה המן = "is Haman" (Haman - the wicked minister of the Persian king, from the book of Esther).


Ah, yes...Haman, that uncouth fellow. I am quite familiar with the story, as I was quite attracted to the biblical narratives in my childhood. Good stuff for passing an evening away from the "boob tube".


----------



## Michael Zwingli

Hey, @Drink. How are you today? I have found the link that you requested. It is to one of the many very old books to be found within Google Books. Please find it below:

משני תורה

In retrospect, you seem to be quite right in stating that...



Drink said:


> it doesn't make sense that a quote from Talmud Bavli would be found in the Mishneh Torah.



But then, I am a guy who used to think that "Mishneh Torah" was a synonym for "Mishnah"!


----------



## Drink

Michael Zwingli said:


> Hey, @Drink. How are you today? I have found the link that you requested. It is to one of the many very old books to be found within Google Books. Please find it below:
> 
> משני תורה


Thanks, but this doesn't seem to contain that quotation of yours, even though it does have a different word that is misscanned as עמוח.


----------



## Michael Zwingli

@Drink,
I double-checked, and that's definitely the hit that I got, though. It is an old volume of the Mishneh Torah, and is written in both Hebrew and Aramaic? The title page is a marvellous mix of Latin and something undefinite. The Latin subtitle has what seems to be a characteristic misspelling (apparently, a common typeset error of yesteryear) which a friend indicated to me: _id est repititio legis *sine* manus fortis _should properly be _id est repititio legis *sive* manus fortis_, meaning "that is, the repetition of the law *or* the strong hand". Also, the indication_ authore Rabbi Mose Maimonis_ is notable for the use of the name _Maimon_ in the Latin genitive case in order to render Maimonides' surname. _Maimonis_ would mean "of Maimon", so it is a fair replacement for both Greek _Maimonides_ and Hebrew _Ben Maimon_, both, of course, meaning "son of Maimon". This is the first time that I have encountered such a use of the Latin Genitive case in a surname (the ancient Roman way was to use the adjective forming suffix _-ius_, which rendered the sense of "belonging to"). Anyways, I digress...


----------



## Drink

I see. It could be that after you saw עםוח there, you searched for for עםוח and found it somewhere else too.


----------

