Stefan Goltzberg will give a lecture at the University of Hamburg on « Examination of Maimonides’ terminology in his justification of the decision to compile, codify and/or write down the Mishna (Oral Law). »
The Mishna (Oral Law) explicitly prohibits pronouncing by heart a written text and, more importantly for our discussion, writing down (K.T.V.) an oral text. And yet, the Mishna (Oral Law) was written down. This decision to write it down, attributed to Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi, seems contra legem. Maimonides explains why and how this extremely important decision was made. I will examine and compare two texts of Maimonides : one text written in Hebrew (Mishne Tora) and one text translated into Hebrew by Ibn Tibbon (Perush HaMishna). I will focus on the very terminology used in both texts, in particular the different verbs used in Hebrew and Arabic to denote writing down and/or compiling the Oral Law.
The conference will take place on 5-7 April 2016 in Hamburg.
