Help with Hebrew

[ecosophia]

I'm currently doing a lot of work on the writings of John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I's court astrologer. He's of interest partly because I translate Latin the way some people do crossword puzzles -- it's a relaxing game, and that's something I've had some need for in recent months -- and partly out of a great deal of dissatisfaction with the existing translations of his two early works, the Propaedeumata Aphoristica ("Aphorisms on Astrology and Magic") and the Monas Hieroglyphica ("Hieroglyphic Monad").

My new translation of the first of those, with detailed commentary, has just gone to the publisher and I'm busy on the second, with good results so far. One of the awkward details, though, is that none of the scholarly translations bother to translate the one short passage of Hebrew in the text. Here it is, scanned from a copy of the original:





I know there are people who read me who have a working knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, and some may also know people who are scholars of that language.  If any of my readers can translate this into English, I would be most grateful! Thank you in advance for your help.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

If someone could type the phrase in Hebrew (vs an image), you might be able to copy it into Google Translate and get an idea of what it says.
Probably better to get a scholar to read it though...

[ecosophia]

Half the challenge is that, as with most Renaissance and early modern Hebrew texts printed by gentiles, the letters aren't very clear. Mixing up hehs with cheths, vaus with reshes, and so on was painfully common.

[k_a_nitz]

I assume you have seen this where someone else asked the same question and got some answers along the lines of it being gibberish in hebrew.

[ecosophia]

Yes. I'm not satisfied with that claim. I don't think Dee would have written gibberish.

Taking a jab

[foursidedcircle]

JMG,

I am fluent in modern hebrew, and have some working knowledge in biblical hebrew. This does not seem like it was taken out of the bible, but looks like a lot of hebrew from Europe. Witout context I can try to break down the literal meaning.

What's in the parenthesis says "Or with another litroVinium that is poured form above".

The font of the other sentence is a little confusing for me to read because the font is not competently legible, but I assume the letters are:
"המלח תמידי ששם נשום קרם"

I am mainly confused about if the ד is in fact a ר
Also, נשום could possibly be read נשות
I am almost sure המלח is with a ה at the initial letter, but looks like a ח because the ה looks connected but I thought I´d mention it.

Given a better scan I might be able to know for sure.

So, "המלח תמידי ששם נשום קרם", if those are the letters, המלח means "The salt", תמידי "eternal, as in always existing / there", ששם means "the place where", נשום is not a word I am familiar with, but it seems to come from the same root נשם, which is a family of words the word "to breath" for example belongs to, but also נשמה, the soul. Intuitively, נשום sounds to me as the past tense of to breath, so right now I´d translate it as "inhaled", but in modern hebrew inhaled is a different word, from a different root, but that's the best guess I have right now.

קרם means cream, but many greek and christian scholars use this word to mean oil, because in greek cream means oil. Jesus Christ for example, Christ means he was annoited with oil to become the massiah (משיח in hebrew, literally "the annointed one". It might have a similar meaning here, but I don't know without context.

So, to summarize, a possible translation would be "The salt is eternal where cream / oil was inhaled".

Another thought that might help: could the המלח (the salt) be in fact המלך (the king)? Those sounds are so similar this is a common spelling mistake with kids, and I take it Hebrew was not this guy's mother tongue?

I hope this helps,
Four Sided Circle

Re: Taking a jab

[(Anonymous)]

Just a thought, following up on Four-Sided Circle's scholarship:

Brown-Driver-Briggs 6374 offers an extended meaning for the root nun-shin-mem whose basic meaning is breathe, pant: "seek a thing with labour and perseverance." That sounds alchemical!

Gray Hat

Re: Taking a jab

[ecosophia]

Hebrew was certainly not John Dee's native language -- he was an English-speaking Welshman -- but he had a decent working knowledge of it. "Salt" is much more likely from context, too, because he seems to be writing about alchemy. Here is the context:

Hoc tamen erit considerandum, a, sui muneris obeundi captare occasionem, ex secretissimum brevissimoque spiraculi artificio: et (hebrew text here) tyronibus operis expeditissimum eliciet primordiale specimum:

This also is to be noted, that a is waiting for an occasion to perform its duty, and by the very secret and brief artifice of a breathing-hole (hebrew text here) will bring forth a primordial specimen most convenient for beginners in this work:

a, here is the Greek letter alpha, and represents a piece of glassware.

Re: Taking a jab

[(Anonymous)]

Just putting together some concepts here. FourSidedCircle mentions "the salt is eternal / where cream/oil is inhaled" -- and this sounds like in the context of "the very secret and brief artifice of a breathing-hole " (where oil is inhaled in place of the eternal salt) or (inhale the eternal salt in place of oil). Breath/breathing-hole, an artificial "aspiration" (sounds a lot like the breathing-in of Azoth to me, but I'm no alchemist and I might be mungling the ideas). Maybe there's an "anointing" of spirit in place of oil?

At any rate, that's what I'm seeing here that seems somewhat related. Hope it's more helpful than confusing!

- V.O.G

Re: Taking a jab

[ecosophia]

Okay, this is becoming clearer -- I've done some work chasing down the meanings of individual words. Many thanks! If you don't mind, could you type out your best guess at the words in the paretheses, the ones that work out to "Or with another litroVinium that is poured from above"?

With regard to the rest of it, I'm increasingly sure that Dee used a dictionary without having an adequate command of Hebrew. "Eternal salt" is as close as he could get to "fixed salt," a standard alchemical term for a precipitate that doesn't break down when exposed to heat. So it's an alchemical recipe in which vitriol is added to the fixed salt, producing an oil which is then used to anoint. This would make sense.

Re: Taking a jab

[foursidedcircle]

I'm glad I could be of help. The text in the parentheses is actually much more legible, so I am fairly certain about those words. This is what I read:


או [ליטרוביניום] אחר ממעל נמזג

Hebrew and Latin letters do not play well together on a computer, so what's in the brackets is the litroVinium.

או means or
אחר - another
ממעל - from above, מעל is above, the מ add the "from"
נמזג - poured

Re: Taking a jab

[ecosophia]

Thank you very much for this!

Re: Taking a jab

[(Anonymous)]

Do you have any thoughts about *which* dictionary he might have used?

There weren't very many available in his time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hebrew_dictionaries

I don't know whether these were all Hebrew-->Latin or any included Latin-->Hebrew lookups.

It might shed some light on the problem to see what the three 16th-century dictionaries offered for the Hebrew words in question. I am sure the Ecosophia community could help out, if scans of these old books are available online.

Gray Hat



Gray Hat

Another thought

[foursidedcircle]

The word נשום, since the ם is not closed, I think נשום is likely נשוח, which is basically the second body plural of למשוח, as in "we will annoint". This makes the sentnece a little more understandable.

המלח תמידי ששם נשוח קרם
The salt is eternal where we shall annoint oil / cream.

Four Sided Circle

[hwistle]

I certainly don't know any Hebrew, but it appears you're not the first in wondering what this means...

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/hebrew-characters-in-john-dees-monas-hieroglyphica.2500435/

Tantalising also this blog post, though unfortunately password-protected...

https://gerardgil.com/decrypting-the-monad-the-hebrew-riddle-in-theorem-xxii-of-john-dees-monas-hieroglyphica-and-the-unveiling-of-the-lunar-mercury

Good luck!

[linden_matryoshka]

Good Morning JMG,
I hope you find a better translator. I'm not a Biblical scholar and Hebrew is not my mother tongue, but just in case, here is what I read word by word:
or litro Vinium after from above merged) the tall king from there served cream)
Kirsten

[ecosophia]

Thank you, everyone, for your help.

I'm a little closer to a solution -- just a little -- in that "litroVinium" is a pretty transparent anagram for "in Vitriolum", Latin for "in vitriol." I gather that Dee's Hebrew dictionary didn't have an entry for vitriol (copper sulphate), a common ingredient in alchemical processes.

[open_space]

Its a nice trick that Dee left the V capitalized to hint at an anagram

[isaac_hill]

Just here to say, looking forward to that translation!!! Nice.