Why does the talmud etymologize totafot as being a pormenteau of other words from different languages if the bible was written before these languages were spoken?
I'm not going to get into the question of when the Bible was written. But I don't think there is any obligation to believe it "was written before these languages were spoken". Certainly there was a significant period of time between the Tower of Bavel and Mt. Sinai!
I think that Rabbi Akiva was probably just using an asmachta (support) for the head tefillin having four sections.
But I do think it's interesting how those who take Rabbi Akiva's statement at face value got very nervous by the insinuation that there could be foreign words in the Bible. (Again, I don't see any religious issues with accepting foreign words.) Some commentaries on Rashi take a rather extreme, Mozeson-like view that all words *must* derive from Hebrew.
I've always found that view somewhat troubling. If God really mixed up the languages at Bavel, why wouldn't the job be complete enough that we couldn't trace all words back?
Thanks for such a quick response.
What does Histakel BeOrayto Ubara Alma mean to you?
It's a very good question. I don't know if anyone of can possibly know what that means on the divine level. But I don't believe that orayto here means the actual words of the Chumash. If the words of the Torah were written before the events therein, that pretty much takes away the free will of our Biblical heroes. And no free will means that what they did wasn't so remarkable.
So what does it mean? Perhaps the moral message of the Bible was the plan for the world.
Even on the asmachta level, what kind of credence is gained by saying that a hebrew word is better defined -because if I disect that word, (in 2 disparate languages!), I can come up with a definition?
In other words, if I want to translate galumphing, I can use alternate English vocabulary to reasonably claim that it is derived from galloping and triumphantly. :) But were I to claim that gal is rock/pile in Aramaic and umph is an English sound and hence the word means "exhaling after being struck by a rock", would I have credibility?
I can suggest three possibilities to Rabbi Akiva's reasoning:
a) He felt that totafot was really a foreign word in the Torah and that perhaps it was somehow a compound of both languages, like we have English words which are a compound of Greek and Latin.
b) He felt the word was Hebrew, but the two component words were related to Hebrew - as we would today with Arabic, Akkadian, etc.
c) He really didn't feel that either language was connected to Hebrew, and he felt totafot was a Hebrew word, but his quote was a way to remember that the tefillin shel rosh has 4 sections. Kind of like the way people connect Yiddish words of Germanic origin with Hebrew roots with the special foods eaten on Rosh HaShana.
Realistically, the talmud doesn't know of etymology. So what is being described here is not an etymology, but a midrashic derivation of the practice from the text. The fact that Rabbi Akiva here chooses a particularly unusual method is interesting, but not particularly strange as regards other connections between text and halakha in the talmudic literature.
I once saw (in JUDAISM journal) the theory that Totafot came from gods named Thoth and Ptah: one the god of wisdom/learning, the other the creator.
The shape reflects amulets of these gods.
Commenting by HaloScan
