Peeglitagusel maal. Kreeklased muinas-heebrea rahvakirjanduses

Abstract

A number of Hebrew and Aramaic riddles or enigmatic tales can really be understood only when juxtaposed with certain puns and word plays in another language, namely Greek. It is important to mention that Greek became the common language of the Middle East after the conquests of Alexander and the growing domination of Hellenistic culture in the wake of his rule, throughout the periods of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties in the area. Unlike philologically and historically oriented scholars, who tend to pin-point inter-cultural communication as a one-to-one relationship between this text and another, folk narrative study reveals a wider, admittedly less exact, scope of the same phenomenon. The author calls the phenomenon a narrative dialogue between cultures. The methodology includes pointing out inter-textual relationships based on the traditional concepts of tale type and motifs. The present example is, of a more close textual character, on the level of words.