Avvakum

Fri Nov 2 12:39:08 UTC 2007

Will, many thanks for all your references from which many of us will greatly benefit and I am planning to start benefiting asap. (I know well only Taube's work, besides Arkhipov's, but then again, my knowledge in the field is only tangential, only when it comes to the history of exegesis for the purposes of Russian Church mentality and auto-pilot hermeneutics). I am especially grateful for your reference to your own work on Maimonides. Beautiful. Will read carefully. Do you happen to know the work of Mira Mikhailovna Geffen (Gefen? Rozhanskaia, by her husband's name--what a name! Miriam-the-Vine!--her daughter, who is an excellent poet with a great ear, really savors and appreciates the name) in Moscow, on the history of mathematical terminology as derived from Arabic, or as compared to Arabic? The scholars at the Institut Istorii Nauki (including her) have some interesting insights here.
o.m.

----- Original Message -----
From: William Ryan <wfr at SAS.AC.UK>
Date: Friday, November 2, 2007 7:04 am
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Avvakum

> Perhaps I should have been more specific and said that it was the 
> direct 
> borrowing of Hebrew biblical names _for use by Russians as 
> baptismal 
> names_ which would be surprising. The question of the appearance of 
> Hebrew words in specific texts is another matter - I avoided 
> mentioning 
> the 'Judaizer' texts referred to by Olga since they are a special 
> case 
> with very limited circulation in most cases, and forms found there 
> can 
> hardly be described as loan words. An exception might be the 
> Tainaia 
> tainykh and the extract from it which is known in lechebniki as 
> Nauka 
> Moiseia Egiptianina - but without checking exhaustively I can't say 
> if 
> the relatively wide availability of this text actually led to any 
> lexical loans. For colleagues interested in this topic, Arkhipov 
> has 
> indeed made good contributions to this study; see also important 
> studies 
> and editions by Moshe Taube, some in conjunction with Horace Lunt, 
> and, 
> more controversially, some of the older work by N. A. Meshcherskii. 
> On 
> the lexical material, including Hebrew and Arabic via Hebrew, in 
> the Old 
> Russian translation of the Hebrew version of the medical works of 
> Maimonides, which are interpolated in the Tainaia tainykh, see my 
> own 
> article 'Maimonides in Muscovy: Medical Texts and Terminology', 
> Journal 
> of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 51, 1989 (in JSTOR).
> Will Ryan
> 
> Olga Meerson wrote:
> > Will is correct about this particular name. For the direct Hebrew 
> borrowings in OR and OCS, and R, however, see the research on the 
> Judaizers (zhidovstvuiushchie) and their texts and translations, 
> e.g., the Psalter. The best work done so far, I believe, is by 
> Andrey Arkhipov, the greatest scholar of the problem known to me, 
> sadly and scandalously currently unemployed. I don't believe he is 
> on SEELANGS but I can give his email to anyone interested in these 
> etymological questions.
> > o.m.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: William Ryan <wfr at SAS.AC.UK>
> > Date: Thursday, November 1, 2007 9:18 pm
> > Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Avvakum
> >
> >   
> >> Not from Hebrew directly but from the late Greek Abbakoum, from 
> the 
> >> Septuagint Ambakoum = Habacuc (the 8th minor prophet) in the 
> >> Vulgate and 
> >> Habbakuk in the King James version. Beta in Greek is regularly 
> >> rendered 
> >> as v in Church Slavonic. The phonetic progression of mb(mv) to 
> >> bb(vv) is 
> >> unproblematic. A direct borrowing of a biblical name from Hebrew 
> in 
> >> Old 
> >> Russian or Church Slavonic would be very surprising since few if 
> >> any 
> >> Orthodox Slavs knew Hebrew but did of course know the Church 
> >> Slavonic 
> >> translations of the books of the Septuagint.
> >> Will Ryan
> >>
> >>
> >> Margarita Orlova wrote:
> >>     
> >>>> Avvakum = AVVA + KUM
> >>>>         
> >>> cf. English ABBA: In the Old testament, 'Father',  In the New 
> >>> Testament, 'God'.
> >>>
> >>> [  from Late Latin "abb", from Greek; from Hebrew 'father', cf. 
> >>> English  "abbot"]
> >>>  However, in the Middle-Age Greek, the phonetic transformation 
> >>> happened: [b->v], thus, the word came into Slavic languages as 
> >>>       
> >> AVVA, 
> >>     
> >>> [Old Slavonic = "Otche", Vocative of "Otetc" = 'Father']
> >>>
> >>> Hebrew root [qum] included in the word formations, which are 
> >>> signifying the act of 'bending' to somebody.
> >>>
> >>> Just my two cents.
> >>>
> >>> Margarita
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Thursday, November 1, 2007, at 10:42  AM, Katz, Michael wrote:
> >>>
> >>>       
> >>>> Dear colleagues:
> >>>>
> >>>> A student asked me about the origin/etymology of the name 
> >>>>         
> >> Avvakum. Can
> >>     
> >>>> anyone enlighten me so I can pass the information along?
> >>>>
> >>>> Michael Katz
> >>>> Middlebury College
> >>>> mkatz at middlebury.edu
> >>>>
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