Premodern Philosophic and Scientific Hebrew Terminology in Context. An Online Thesaurus (PESHAT in Context)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Giuseppe Veltri
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: since 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 240326541

In the past three years the “PESHAT in Context” long-term project has seen a quantitative and qualitative growth, making it a first address in the digital universe for the study of Hebrew philosophical and scientific terminology. While the sheer amount of documented lemmata and definitions grew by 60%, the project’s database attained even more public attention in the scholarly community, tripling the number of its registered academic users. Collaborations in Digital Humanities leading to the implementation of additional arithmetical and medical Hebrew terminology to the PESHAT corpus in cooperation with the Mispar project and with Gerrit Bos and Brill underline the importance of an integrative technological approach to facilitate the understanding of the impact of the cultural transfer, which stood behind the formation of Hebrew as a technical language for science and philosophy in the premodern period.While focusing on the Tibbonide and pre-Tibbonide translations from Arabic as a formative period in the development of Hebrew terminology in its first phase (2014–16), and the diversification of terminological traditions among their contemporaries and ultimate successors in the 13th century in the second phase (2017–19), the third phase (2020–22) dealt with the late 13th and 14th centuries which saw knowledge of Arabic weakened and the Hebrew language gaining an independent status as an idiom for the study and discussion of philosophy and science.In its final phase translations from Arabic made in Provence in the 14th century, from Spain at the turn of the 15th century and authors from 15th- and early 16th-century Italy will be explored and their terminology documented. In this period a final shift towards Latin literature and the Latin-oriented cultural and intellectual environment took place.“PESHAT in Context” will see a continuation and ultimate completion of its long-term goal to form a platform for collaborative research efforts and a single point of entry. A refinement of existing technological features of its database will lead to enhanced digital accessibility and connectivity of its data sets for external data transfer and future re-use and collaboration with comparable research projects. The final phase of its development will see a quality assurance initiative, securing the uniformity of documented data and maintenance and sustainability measures, which will be in close cooperation with the University’s Computational Center to prepare the technical prerequisites to enable the long-term administration and hosting of the database and its website.The project will host its fourth conference on “Terminological trends in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries” in Hamburg in 2024 and publish the three final volumes of its proceedings in the Officina Philosophica Hebraica series in Brill.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel, Netherlands
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Reimund Leicht; Dr. Resianne Smidt-van-Geldern-Fontaine