spin

I have this little fragment of an esoteric text:

"dellos asaron en el fuego e dellos mataron con la spada e dellos enforcaron en los maderos. E asaron los sfijos de Irrael en el fuego a Bagras el Malo, el errador de su pueblo."

Can someone help me with these words?

"asaron" burning?
"mataron" killing?
"enforcaron" hanging?
"maderos" ??
"errador" ??


tx


spin

maddog

My school Spanish is long rusted away, but I can speculate with you:

"asaron" as related to "burning" seems a good guess, inasmuch as "carne asada" is "grilled/roasted" beef(meat). The form is of a verb, probably "asar." "Asaron" is past tense (preterite?): "they (burned/roasted)"

"mataron" killing? "matar" is "to kill" "mataron" is "they killed" (past tense)

"enforcaron" hanging? I'm no help at all on this one.

"maderos" ?? "madera" is "wood," (the substance, "bosque" is the forest) but I don't know "madero" off the top of my head.

"errador" ?? not a clue. A total guess would be something like "heir," or, because an "herido" is a wound/injury, an "errador" might be "scourge"? I'm totally making this up, however.

Good luck, and may you get better help from others!

Mathetes

Wow. That looks like XV century Spanish, or something.

"Of them they grilled in the fire and of them they killed with the sword and of them they forced in the wood (they mean stakes or crosses, probably). And of them the sons (mispelled) of Israel grilled Bagras the Bad in the fire, the misleader (the one that misleads) his people."

So:

"asaron" - they grilled
"mataron" - they killed
"enforcaron" - they forced
"maderos" ?? - a wooden beam - probably refers to a cross or a stake. In XVI century mystic poetric, Jesus cross is sometimes a "madero"
"errador" ?? - Someone that errs or makes someone err - I would go for "he that misled the people"

The "of them" is a bit weird. I would say it is "some of them they grilled... some of them they killed..."

Mathetes

Actually...

I was thinking that "enforcar" was a mispelled verb for "enforzar". But looking in an old dictionary, I found that it is also an old way of saying "ahorcar" (to hang).

So you may be right, and it may refer to hanging. "Maderos" would then be the gallows here.

spin

Thanks Maddog for your effort. Got me thinking.

You got it.

I think I've got into this now. "To hang (execute)" in Spanish I've discovered is "ahorcar", and in Italian "forca". The /h/ in "ahorcar" was earlier an /f/ I'd guess. We are dealing with execution by hanging (but not by the neck in this case) on wood:

Great. This is the clincher. I'll need access to the original Hebrew when I can find it, but this has given me what I needed to know. Bagras (a transliteration of a Hebrew scribal error for what should be Bacdas, from the Greek name Bacchides) was a general of the Seleucid empire and he was responsible for, amongst other things, the death of Judas Maccabaeus. The thing that interests me is his murder of the Hasidim who came back from the wilderness, and the possibility that they were hanged, and so relating the text to a scroll from Qumran....

Thanks Mathetes. I do appreciate it.

--------

Just noticed you got to the ahorcar ahead of me...


spin

CX

Sorry for waying in late. Just got this feedback from a native Spanish speaker no warranty expressed or implied as to it's validity:

"...they roasted in the fire, they killed with the sword and forced them to the ships. And they roasted the sons of Israel in the fire ... of Evil, the (wrong? bad?) of their people (nation?)."

"e de ellos" -- is hard to explain, but it is like warning those who did the actions (killed, did wrong, forced them to ships etc.). I've seen that type of language used in biblical passages, it implies that the people who performed the actions are in trouble with God and with the followers of God, and they will be punished for that.

Mathetes

About those "ships"...

Although "madero" or "leño" may mean "ship" in some cases, especially around the XV-XVI centuries, I find it difficult to justify this here, unless the general context of the sentence is maritime travels.

spin

Definitely not. The context is concerns a Seleucid general making himself unpopular persecuting the Jews circa 160 BCE in and around Jerusalem, as a background to the celebration of Hannukah. Ships are definitely way out of context. Hanging on wood is very clear in the situation, as the Seleucids are on record as having used crucifixion on the Jews.

tx again


spin