Re: CHAT: Citrons (was: Danny Wier's PIE (was: Vocab #5))

On 30 April, Steg wrote:

> On Tue, 30 Apr 2002 00:03:43 -0000 Lars Henrik Mathiesen
> <thorinn@...> writes:
> > > The word |etrog| (citron) doesn't occur in the Bible, although it
> > occurs
> > > in the Aramaic translation of the "fruit of the beautiful tree"
> > verse,
> > > and it occurs many times in the Mishna (first post-Biblical Jewish
> > legal
> > > compendium, c. 200 CE) when discussing the fruit needed for the
> > holiday
> > > of Sukkot.
>
> > So we can be sure that citrons were used when that was written down
> > --- after the fall of the Temple. Is it known where it was
> > compiled?
> -
>
> Somewhere in Israel... if i remember correctly, probably the Galilee
> area.
    Correct.
    After the fall of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin relocated to a small
village in the western Galilee (IIRC, because it was the home-village of
the then-head of the Sanhedrin).
Rabbi Judah Hanasi (135 CE - 219(220?) CE), who compiled
the authoritative written version of the Mishna, moved the Sanhedrin
from there to other locations in the Galilee, ending up, IIRC, in Tiberius
(which is by the Sea of Galilee).

    As far as I can tell, the word |etrog| is a borrowing from
Persian , where it is called something like [turundZ].
    According to my dictionary, |erez| (= cedar) has cognates
in Ugaritic, Aramaic, and Arabic.

    BTW: Here in Israel, the term
|pri hadar| ( = beautiful fruit)
is a general term referring not only  to the etrog,
(citron),  but also to the  lemon, orange, grapefruit,
and any other type of citrus fruit. (But only the
etrog is used for the festival of Sukkot.)


Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.