American Orientalists Entertained by Dropsie

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

Members of the American Oriental Society were the guests of the Dropsie College yesterday at a luncheon arranged in their honor at which Dr. Cyrus Adler presided. The second day’s session of the annual meeting of the Society, which is being held here, took place throughout the day at Dropsie College.

The Jewish participants in the discussions of the day were Professor William Rosenau of Johns Hopkins University and Dr. Julian Morgenstern, President of the Hebrew Union College.

Professor Rosenau spoke of Judah Ibn Tibbon as translator who, he said, should be known beyond the circle of students of Rabbinical literature. Apart from his acquaintance and compilation of medieval and later Jewish information along the lines or religio-philosophical thought, by means of his translation from the original Arabic into Herew, Ibn Tibbon may be said to have created, through three Aral linguistic influences, a new lexicography of syntax for the Biblical language. This is true when strange Hebrew forms are explained in the light of Arabic terms and idiomatic expressions.

Dr. Morgenstern. President of the Hebrew Union College, discussed the Passover Matzoth Festival in the Biblical period. “Scholars.” he said, “have generally recognized the Biblical Passover Festival developed out of a combination of two festivals originally independent of each other. The Passover festival, rooted in primitive pastoral life, beliefs and practices of the early Nomadic Israelites and the Matzoth Festival indigenous to the agricultural life and religious beliefs and practices from the pre-Israelite Canaanite inhabitant of Palestine. The original Passover Festival was celebrated in connection with the appearance of the new moon. The original Matzoth Festival was celebrated at the time of the spring equinox. Ultimately these two unrelated Festivals were combined.” Dr. Morgenstern also discussed the possible time when this combination took place, under what circumstances and for what purposes. That beer and wine were favorite beverages from the earliest times and that a supply of both made up part of Noah’s cargo in the Ark was disclosed by Paul Haupt. Professor of Assyriology at John Hopkins University.

These facts were substantiated through the translation of a tablet found in Ninevah by George Smith of the British Museum and restored by Professor Haupt. This tablet had previously been deciphered, but Dr. Haupt said his recent translation was more comprehensive.

The translation relates how Noah cut down trees in the jungle and laid the frame of his ark. The ark consisted of six decks, divided into seven compartments.

“The tablet read,” said Professor Haupt. “For our food I slaughtered oxen and killed sheep day by day. With beer and brandy, oil and wine, I filled large jars as with water of a river.”