Joshua Blue

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Joshua Blau , also Yehoshua Blau ( Hebrew יהושע בלאו; born September 22, 1919 in Cluj , Romania ; died October 20, 2020 in Jerusalem , Israel ), was an Israeli Arabist . He was a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and winner of the Israel Prize . The main focus of his research was the characteristics of Judeo-Arabic and Christian-Arabic as well as work on Semitic studies in general.

Joshua Blue

biography

Joshua Blau was born in 1919 in Cluj- Napoca, Transylvania, into a Hungarian-speaking Jewish family, the son of the dealer and journalist Pinchas Paul Blau. His sister Clara Heyn (1924–1998) became a botanist .

After attending a Jewish elementary school in his hometown and a private Jewish grammar school in Budapest , at the age of 12 he moved with his family to Baden in Austria, where he obtained an excellent high school diploma in 1937 . In Vienna Blue then began studying Arabic at the city's university and at the same rabbinic studies at the rabbinical seminary .

After Austria was annexed to National Socialist Germany , the family was forced to emigrate. In June 1938 she came to Trieste in Italy and from there after a few weeks to Palestine , where she settled in Tel Aviv . The son immediately began studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . In the spring of 1941 he obtained a master’s degree in Arabic language and literature as a major and in Hebrew and Bible studies as a minor. From 1942 to 1955 Joshua Blau was a high school teacher in Jerusalem and in 1945 married the teacher Shulamit Haviv, with whom he had a son and a daughter.

In 1950 he received his doctorate from the Hebrew University with a dissertation on the grammar of the Judeo-Arabic dialect of the Middle Ages , under the supervision of David (Hartwig) Zvi Baneth. After a brief period as a lecturer at Tel Aviv University from 1956 to 1957 , he returned to Jerusalem University, received a professorship for Arabic in 1966 and stayed there until his retirement in 1987.

Joshua Blau was visiting professor at various universities, for example at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan , Yeshiva University in New York City , University of California, Berkeley , Lorand Eötvös University in Budapest, at Harvard and at the Institute for Jewish-Christian research at the University of Lucerne . He died in October 2020 at the age of 101.

Research work

Manuscript from the Cairo Geniza , partly written in Judeo-Arabic. Letter from Abraham, son of Maimonides , beginning of the 13th century.

In his research, Joshua Blau set two priorities: on the one hand, research into Central Arabic , especially the Judeo-Arabic dialects, and on the other, the origin and historical development of Biblical Hebrew.

In researching the Arabic used by Jews under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages, which is a special form of Middle Arabic, Blau was one of the world's experts. Middle Arabic is an intermediate form between the classical Arabic common in the Koran , which has a strongly synthetic language structure, and the Arabic dialects , which have always been reserved for oral use and are much more analytically structured. This split goes back to the Islamic expansion in the 7th and 8th centuries. To this day, every new generation of Arabic speakers is born into this diglossia .

As part of his work in the field of comparative Semitic studies, Blau introduced the term pseudo-correction . This includes erroneous attempts at improvement by the medieval Judeo-Arabic and Christian-Arabic authors in an effort to improve the, in principle, colloquial style. In this context, Blau published On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages .

A commemorative publication was published for Blau's 70th birthday with a list of his 349 published books and articles.

Publications (selection)

  • Syntax of the Palestinian peasant dialect of Bir-Zet : based on the folk tales from Palestine by Hans Schmidt and Paul Kahle . Walldorf-Hessen, 1960.
  • The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic: A Study of the Origins of Neo-Arabic and Middle Arabic . Oxford University Press 1965. 2nd edition 1981. ISBN 965-235-010-9 .
  • Responses of the Rambam . 3 volumes. Jerusalem, 5718–5721 according to the Jewish calendar .
  • A Grammar of Christian Arabic: based mainly on South-Palestinian Texts from the First Millennium . Leuven, 1966-1967. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium , Vol. 267, 276, 279.
  • On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages . Jerusalem, Israel Academy of Sciences, 1970.
  • A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew . Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, first edition 1976, 2nd edition 1993, Porta linguarum Orientalium , vol. 12.
  • An Adverbial Construction in Hebrew and Arabic . Jerusalem, 1977.
  • The Beginnings of the Arabic Diglossia: a Study of the Origins of Neoarabic Malibu, Undena Publications, 1977.
  • The Renaissance of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic: Parallels and Differences in the Revival of Two Semitic Languages Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981.
  • On Polyphony in Biblical Hebrew . Jerusalem, 1982.
  • Studies in Middle Arabic and Its Judaeo-Arabic Variety . Jerusalem. Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1988.
  • A Melkite Arabic Literary Lingua Franca from the Second Half of the First Millennium Bulletin of the School 'of Oriental and African Studies 57, 1994.
  • Topics in Hebrew and Semitic Linguistics Jerusalem, 1998. ISBN 9-65493-006-4 .
  • A Handbook of Early Middle Arabic . Jerusalem, Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002.
  • A Dictionary of Medieval Judeo-Arabic texts . Academy of the Hebrew Language, Jerusalem 2006.
  • Autobiography: From Transylvania to Jerusalem (מטרנסילוואניה לירושלים, Hebrew). Jerusalem, 2000.

Memberships and offices

  • from 1968: Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences
  • 1981–1993: President of the Academy for the Hebrew Language
  • from 1983: Corresponding member of the British Academy
  • 1989–1995: Head of the Humanities Department at the Israel Academy of Sciences
  • Founding President of the Society for the Study of Judaeo-Arabic in the Middle Ages
  • Honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society
  • Honorary President of the International Society of Central Arabic
  • Honorary member of the International Society for Comparative Semitic Studies

Honors

literature

  • Bengt Knutsson: Studies in the Text and Language of Three Syriac-Arabic Versions of the Book of Judicum, with Special Reference to the Middle Arabic Elements . Brill, 1974. Partial online view

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hanan Greenwood (חנן גרינווד): חתן פרס ישראל פרופ 'יהושע בלאו הלך לעולמו. In: Israel HaYom . October 20, 2020, accessed October 20, 2020 (Hebrew).
  2. ^ Bengt Knutsson: Studies in the Text and Language of Three Syriac-Arabic Versions of the Book of Judicum. Brill, 1974, p. XI.
personal data
SURNAME Blue, Joshua
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blue, Yehoshua; יהושע בלאו (Hebrew)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli Arabist and Semitist
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Cluj , Romania
DATE OF DEATH 20th October 2020
Place of death Jerusalem , Israel