An example of Judeo-Latin magical text from theCairo Geniza. It is a quotation attributed to the 2nd-century philosopherSecundus the Silent when asked who God was: "An intelligible unknown, a unique being who has no equal, something sought but not comprehended".[1]
Judeo-Latin (also spelledJudaeo-Latin) is the use byJews of theHebrew alphabet to writeLatin.[2] The term was coined byCecil Roth to describe a small corpus of texts from theMiddle Ages.[2] In the Middle Ages, there was no Judeo-Latin in the sense of "an ethnodialect used by Jews on a regular basis to communicate among themselves", and the existence of such aJewish language under theRoman Empire is pure conjecture.[3]
The Judeo-Latin corpus consists of anAnglo-Jewish charter and Latin quotations in otherwise Hebrew works (such asanti-Christian polemics,[4] incantations and prayers).[2] Christian converts to Judaism sometimes brought with them an extensive knowledge of theVulgate translation of the Bible. TheSefer Nizzahon Yashan andJoseph ben Nathan Official'sSefer Yosef ha-Mekanne contain extensive quotations from the Vulgate in Hebrew letters.[2] Latin technical terms sometimes appear in Hebrew texts.[2] There is evidence of the oral use of Latin formulas indowsing,ordeals and ceremonies.[2]
^Gad Freudenthal,"Latin-into-Hebrew in the Making: Bilingual Documents in Facing Columns and Their Possible Function", pp. 59–67 in Resianne Fontaine and Gad Freudenthal (eds.),Latin-into-Hebrew: Texts and Studies, Volume One: Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 61 and n., who quotes an earlier version of this Wikipedia article to characterize the conjecture: "a presumed Jewish language for many scattered Jewish communities of the former Roman Empire, but especially by the Jewish communities of the Italian Peninsula and Transalpine Gaul."
