The Emergence and Evolution of the West Karaim Bible Translation Tradition: Manuscripts, Translators, and Copyists.

• Author: Nemeth, Michal

INTRODUCTION

The East European Karaims of today, residing mostly in Poland and Lithuania, are the representatives of Karaite Judaism. Their native tongue is Karaim, a vernacular that belongs to the Kipchak-Turkic branch of Turkic languages and which existed in three main variants: East (Crimean) Karaim and the Northwest and Southwest subdialects of West Karaim. Today, the only surviving dialect, Northwest Karaim, is in danger of extinction. What makes Karaims a unique minority is that they are the followers of Karaite Judaism, the essence of which lies, unlike mainstream Rabbinic Judaism, in its recognition of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) alone as the supreme authority in religious law and theology; they do not consider the Talmud to be an authoritative interpretation of the Torah. It is, however, quite worrying that today this fundamental component of Karaim identity is almost completely lost, given that this minority has no comprehensive edition of the Hebrew Bible in its own language. This is because over time the Karaims evolved into a Turkic-speaking ethnic group that used Hebrew script to record their written heritage, while for centuries Hebrew was their liturgical language. However, due to the gradual extinction of their culture, most members of Karaim communities have lost the ability to read Hebrew script and as a consequence are unable to access the content of either their biblical manuscripts or most printed editions. This process began during the 1920s and 1930s and swiftly gained momentum after the Second World War. The only nearly complete edition (minus 1-2 Chronicles) of the Hebrew Bible that is potentially available today is a printed edition from Eupatoria/Yevpatoriya--an extremely rare publication from 1841 (Tiriskan 1841), published in Hebrew script in a particular variety of the now extinct East Karaim, which is barely intelligible to present-day Karaims. As a consequence, the members of this minority have had no choice but to use non-Karaim (mainly Polish, Lithuanian, and Russian) translations of the Hebrew Bible, which has accelerated not only their ethnic and cultural assimilation but also the extinction of their native language.

Interestingly, the tradition of translating the Torah into Karaim has a long history. The question is, however, how far this story goes back. Seraya Shapshal (1873-1961), a learned leader of the Crimean and later the Polish-Lithuanian Karaim communities, declared that the entire Hebrew Bible was translated into Karaim as early as the eleventh century (SapSal 1918: 6). This opinion was shared by Musaev (1964: 8), who claimed that the Hebrew Bible had already been translated into Karaim between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. In turn, two Karaim-born Polish Orientalists, A. Zajaczkowski (1964: 793) and W. Zajaczkowski (1980: 161), asserted that the oral tradition of translating the Bible into Karaim can be traced back to the twelfth or even the eleventh century. On the other hand, W. Zajaczkowski (1980: 162) contended that the oldest written translations of the Bible originate from the sixteenth century and that they were recorded in Southwest Karaim (which he termed the Halych dialect), whereas the oldest Northwest Karaim translations first saw the light of day in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Although it is true that the latter fact accords with our present-day knowledge, we have no evidence of any sixteenth-century Southwest Karaim biblical texts referred to by Wlodzimierz Zajaczkowski, or by Omeljan Pritsak (1959: 323). Jan Grzegorzewski (1916-1918: 270-72, 279-87) published a copy of a Southwest Karaim translation of Psalm 142 and Psalm 143 with extensive commentaries. He claimed it was transcribed by Josef ha-Mashbir (born ca. 1650, died January 13, 1700, see JSul.II.02: 52 r[degrees]), which, at least in in theory, brings us closer to the sixteenth century. However, there are two key circumstances we must be aware of. First, Grzegorzewski provides no information about the manuscript on which he based his copy. (1) He simply reprinted the text in Hebrew characters. Second, as we know today, the native dialect of Josef ha-Mashbir was, in fact, Northwest Karaim (Nemeth 2018a: 86-92).

GENERAL REMARKS

At the moment of writing we know of ca. 150 Karaim biblical manuscripts, including East (Crimean) Karaim texts. They are kept in various collections, the most important being Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian private archives owned by Karaim families, the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Vilnius, the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg. Further manuscripts are stored in other libraries, such as the John Rylands Library in Manchester, the Cambridge University Library, and the Edinburgh University Library.

No comprehensive catalogue of Karaim biblical texts exists. The data presented in the present paper are based on the authors' own archival research, personal correspondence, and the works of the following authors (arranged in chronological order): Steinschneider 1871; Harkavy and Strack 1875; Poznanski 1909-1910, 1912-1919, 1916, 1918-1920; Kowalski 1929; A. Zajaczkowski 1931, 1931-1932, 1964; KarRPS 1974; Dubinski 1979, 1985; W. Zajaczkowski 1980; Medvedeva 1988; Sklare 2003; Vasileva 2003, 2014; Walfish 2003; Shapira 2006; Jankowski 2009, 2018, 2019; Csato 2011; Walfish and Kizilov 2011; Olach 2013; and Aqtay 2016; see also A. Sulimowicz 2015a, 2015b; and Nemeth 2016b.

As far as we know, the following twenty publications contain scholarly edited Karaim biblical texts: Grzegorzewski 1916-1918; Danon 1921; Kowalski 1929; A. Zajaczkowski 1931-1932, 1934b; J. Sulimowicz 1972 (only Dan. 9:9-11); Firkovi&us 1994, 2000; Jankowski 1997; Csato 2011; Olach 2013, 2017; Shapira 2013, 2014; Nemeth 2014b, 2015a, 2016a, 2021; Jankowski, Aqtay, Cegiolka, Culha, and Nemeth (2019); and Kobeckaite 2019. (2) Additionally, digital editions are available online, for which see the final bibliographical section.

Before we begin our discussion, the status of ms. Evr I Bibl 143 ought to be clarified. Although it was catalogued by Harkavy and Strack (1875: 167-68), it remained almost completely forgotten for more than 140 years--Shapira gave it only a brief mention (2006: 270; 2018: 309) without any linguistic commentary. In 2017, a palaeographic examination of this source was carried out that showed--based on the existing watermarks--that the material it was written on originates from the fifteenth century (Grishchenko 2018: 172). The Yevano-Karaitic-type Hebrew script (resembling Mashait style writing) we find here is similar to the fourteenth-century sample presented by Birnbaum (1954-1957: pi. 391) and Birnbaum et al. (2007: 720, 726, fig. 35).

It contains a translation of a large part of the Pentateuch (Exod. 21:11-Num. 28:15), written in a Turkic tongue. However, even though it is in Hebrew script and is very likely of Crimean provenance (as was also claimed by Harkavy and Strack 1875: 168), it still must be ascertained whether it was written in Karaim and whether it belongs to the Karaim Bible translation tradition. Some researchers suggest the contrary. As far as the language of this manuscript is concerned, Jankowski (2018: 39-40) argues that there are grounds for classifying it as Chagatay, (3) whereas Shapira (2019: 289-93; 2021) judges that this translation "was made within a Rabbanite community, not a Karaite one." In this case we must be careful not to repeat the mistake once made with regard to the short Turkic fragment (a refrain of a hymn; the hymn itself is a translation into Modern Greek) found in the Karaite Hebrew prayer book Siddur (1528/1529): for decades, it was believed to be the oldest written record of Karaim, but then Jankowski (2008: 163-64; 2012: 53-54) proved that it was actually recorded in Crimean Turkish.

A preliminary comparison of Evr I Bibl 143 with the text of ADub.III.73 (the oldest datable West Karaim translation of the Torah; see below) and BSMS 288 showed that the textual similarities between them are more then striking, which suggests that East and West Karaim translations in all probability share a common root with Evr I Bibl 143. This, of course, is not proof in itself that Evr I Bibl 143 is a text created by Karaims, but increases the likelihood that it indeed was. Also, settling the question whether its language is a Middle Kipchak variety, Early Middle Karaim, or early Chagatay is quite a challenge given the heterogeneous nature of Chagatay. (4) For instance, the chapters edited so far lack the ablative suffix in -Din often used in Chagatay texts, cf., e.g., the sources edited by Boeschoten (al-Rabghuzi 2015) or Karoly (2015). It also exhibits lexemes characteristic of Kipchak Turkic (including Karaim), e.g., asa- 'to eat', bar- 'to go', barca 'all', copla- 'to collect', jyraq 'far (away)', key 'wide', koni 'right, guiltless', kop 'many', oyurla- 'to steal', ozge 'other, different', or iinda- 'to call', but this type of observations cannot be decisive (typically Kipchak lexemes or the ablative in -DAn were used also in Khwarezmian Turkic and Chagatay) and therefore a thorough analysis is needed to establish a proper linguistic affiliation. (5) Interestingly, it also contains typically Karaim lexemes, e.g., caspa-, 'to destroy', or ickertin, 'inside'. Table 1 gives two verses as a sample.

Given that this paper focuses on the Karaim contribution to the tradition of biblical translation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, our focus here will be on the West Karaim practice in this field. Nevertheless, since West and East Karaim Bible translations share a number of commonalities, a number of issues relating to Crimean Karaim Bible translations will also be addressed below. Finally, we should also mention here the fact that the history of the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Karaim from the...