The rabbis are creative Greek authors. In this paper, I home in on one specific strategy the rabbis employ to dislodge standard semantic values of Greek words and reinscribe them with a new meaning that is dependent on the Hebrew and Aramaic context in which these lexemes appear: Interlingual homophony. The phonetic overlap between Greek and Hebrew/Aramaic functions as philological justification for positing novel interpretations of Greek words. In order to articulate the full range of this discursive strategy, I focus on two particular types of interlingual homophony. Part one interrogates the ways the rabbis of Bavli Avodah Zarah reclaim pagan cultural objects. Greek words that had signified a pagan deity or holiday betray a Jewish origin once their true identity is revealed through interlingual homophony. Part two turns to Moses Margolies (Pnei Moshe), the 18th century commentator of the Yerushalmi, a text replete with Greek words. Ignorant of Greek yet determined to thoroughly comment on nearly every word of the Yerushalmi, Margolies turned to interlingual homophony as a heuristic strategy for defining Greek words. Although nearly all of his definitions of Greek words are incorrect, Margolies’ thorough commentary on the Yerushalmi functions as a repository of creative philology.
