Just now I came across this article, so permit me to jump in a little late. The point I want to make is that Shadal did *not* claim that R. Yossi was from Bavel. He clearly states that R. Yossi was from Tzippori, in the Galil, a region where Hebrew was not carefully preserved:
אבל ר' יוסי שהיה מציפורי שהיא בגלי[ל], ואנשי גליל לא הקפידו על לשונם ונשתבש הלשון אצלם, הִרְגִיל עצמו שלא לסמוך על מנהג ההמון
Thus, where Shadal says later in his comment that R. Yossi came from a מדינה where Hebrew was not well preserved, he was referring to the Galil and not to Bavel.
1) Rabbi Yossi is a Tanna so doesn't really have to deal with braytot but rather contemporaries. Berachot 22a has a statement about chartzan by Rabbi Yoshiya. But Rabbi Yoshiya was really part of a different scholastic social circle. He's part of Rabbi Yishmael's academy, which is why while Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Yehuda appear in the Mishnah, Rabbi Yoshiya and Rabbi Yonasan do not.
2) It depends on what attributes you want to optimize for. Shadal here has constructed a neat Eretz Yisrael / Bavel split, where those in Eretz Yisrael are always consistent, and it is the Babylonians who are erroneously reconstructing a false definition.
But I think that it is more than that. We have to admire what Shadal is accomplishing here. Because at stake is not just the particular definition, and semantic history, of the words zag and chartzan. Rather, these are *polemics*. Zag and Chartzan form the tip of Gousset's spear to challenge and undermine faith in ALL of Chazal's word definitions. Thus, from Wikipedia:
"As a Hebraist Gousset was identified with the view that the Hebrew language was the language of divine revelation.[8] He rejected the need for historical or comparative study of the language in order to read the Bible.[9] Gousset published a Hebrew lexicon: Commentarii linguae ebraicae (1702), later editions as Lexicon linguae hebraicae.[3]"
Here was a non-Jew, of a different religion, who cast aspersions on Jewish tradition / masorah. And who wrote an entire lexicon where he used sevara and perhaps argument from context to assert new meanings of words.
What Shadal then did is brilliant. First, unlike you and me, he's not going to have an explanation where some aspect of the word's definition was forgotten by everyone. Second, Rabbi Yossi as the foreigner is too clever, והתחכם לפרש מדעתו (where והתחכם often is used a bit sarcastically), who invents an explanation from his own mind rather than referring and deferring to tradition, is parallel to Jacques Gousset himself, who invents new definitions throughout his own dictionary. Such an erroneous approach is to be ignored.
I don't understand Shadal's point, wouldn't Rabi Yose be familiar with different baraitot that used the word חרצן? Even if he didn't know the word, wouldn't he just ask someone?
Anyway, I have an alternative explanation. In Rabbinic-era Hebrew, חרצן means a squeezed out grape i.e. a skin with the seed, but in the Torah it means either the skin or the seed. Presumably this happened by process of metonymy, which is more common than the meaning of words switching. So the question is which part of the squeezed out grape was originally the חרצן, and the other one must be זג. There are two options and no real way to know (without modern philological techniques), so two opinions.
Just now I came across this article, so permit me to jump in a little late. The point I want to make is that Shadal did *not* claim that R. Yossi was from Bavel. He clearly states that R. Yossi was from Tzippori, in the Galil, a region where Hebrew was not carefully preserved:
אבל ר' יוסי שהיה מציפורי שהיא בגלי[ל], ואנשי גליל לא הקפידו על לשונם ונשתבש הלשון אצלם, הִרְגִיל עצמו שלא לסמוך על מנהג ההמון
Thus, where Shadal says later in his comment that R. Yossi came from a מדינה where Hebrew was not well preserved, he was referring to the Galil and not to Bavel.
Thanks for pointing that out!
In fact, I should have seen it when I quoted it in Hebrew, but I was being careless in my translation.
Well, we all make mistakes, even if we aren't from Galil or Bavel ;-)
But I did enjoy the article.
That's a nice idea!
To defend Shadal a bit, a few points.
1) Rabbi Yossi is a Tanna so doesn't really have to deal with braytot but rather contemporaries. Berachot 22a has a statement about chartzan by Rabbi Yoshiya. But Rabbi Yoshiya was really part of a different scholastic social circle. He's part of Rabbi Yishmael's academy, which is why while Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Yehuda appear in the Mishnah, Rabbi Yoshiya and Rabbi Yonasan do not.
2) It depends on what attributes you want to optimize for. Shadal here has constructed a neat Eretz Yisrael / Bavel split, where those in Eretz Yisrael are always consistent, and it is the Babylonians who are erroneously reconstructing a false definition.
But I think that it is more than that. We have to admire what Shadal is accomplishing here. Because at stake is not just the particular definition, and semantic history, of the words zag and chartzan. Rather, these are *polemics*. Zag and Chartzan form the tip of Gousset's spear to challenge and undermine faith in ALL of Chazal's word definitions. Thus, from Wikipedia:
"As a Hebraist Gousset was identified with the view that the Hebrew language was the language of divine revelation.[8] He rejected the need for historical or comparative study of the language in order to read the Bible.[9] Gousset published a Hebrew lexicon: Commentarii linguae ebraicae (1702), later editions as Lexicon linguae hebraicae.[3]"
Here was a non-Jew, of a different religion, who cast aspersions on Jewish tradition / masorah. And who wrote an entire lexicon where he used sevara and perhaps argument from context to assert new meanings of words.
What Shadal then did is brilliant. First, unlike you and me, he's not going to have an explanation where some aspect of the word's definition was forgotten by everyone. Second, Rabbi Yossi as the foreigner is too clever, והתחכם לפרש מדעתו (where והתחכם often is used a bit sarcastically), who invents an explanation from his own mind rather than referring and deferring to tradition, is parallel to Jacques Gousset himself, who invents new definitions throughout his own dictionary. Such an erroneous approach is to be ignored.
I don't understand Shadal's point, wouldn't Rabi Yose be familiar with different baraitot that used the word חרצן? Even if he didn't know the word, wouldn't he just ask someone?
Anyway, I have an alternative explanation. In Rabbinic-era Hebrew, חרצן means a squeezed out grape i.e. a skin with the seed, but in the Torah it means either the skin or the seed. Presumably this happened by process of metonymy, which is more common than the meaning of words switching. So the question is which part of the squeezed out grape was originally the חרצן, and the other one must be זג. There are two options and no real way to know (without modern philological techniques), so two opinions.