מבחר חידושי לשון בספר בן סירא: תרומתו של כתב יד ו מגניזת קהיר

In this article I present a number of linguistic innovations found in the text of the book of Ben Sira, based solely on MS F from the Cairo Geniza, which was discovered in 1982 by the Hungarian scholar Alexander Scheiber. Some of these innovations are unique to Ben Sira, while others are common to Ben Sira and to the Hebrew of the Second Temple period. The two verses examined in this article contain no fewer than four innovations with respect to classical or Standard Biblical Hebrew (SBH of the First Temple period)—one involving the root קמ"ע, two relating to morphology (the nouns חדווה and נגשה) and one unique form (טס). Some of these are also innovations with respect to Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH) of the Second Temple period. Of the four, the post-Exilic Biblical books contain only the noun חדווה. None of the four are attested in the Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls. Three of them occur in Rabbinic Hebrew and are also known in Aramaic: the nouns חדווה and טס and the root קמ"ע. The noun נגשה/נגשה is unique to Ben Sira.