Il toponimo aramaico Gamlā' e il bilinguismo di Flavio Giuseppe

The paper concerns a difficult passage in Flavius Josephus’ Jewish War, a very accurate chronicle of the bloody conflict between the Roman troops, led by Vespasianus and his son Titus, and the Jewish rebels from 66 to 73 A.D. In Bellum Judaicum 4, 1, 5 the author yields a curious explanation of the etymology of the Aramaic toponym Gamla’, the name of a small town north of the Lake of Galilee, conquered after a long siege by the Roman legions. Flavius’ words seem paradoxically to contradict his well-known bilingualism, namely his almost perfect competence of both Aramaic (his mother tongue) and Greek koiné. According to his opinion the inhabitants named the site Gamla’, because it was «like a camel in figure, […] although the people of the country do not pronounce it accurately» (ed. Whiston). The last sentence prima facie does not make sense. The modern commentaries argue that Josephus is here referring to the Greek translation of Aram. gamla’, i.e. Gr. kámelos, and to the pronunciation of Aram. /g/ in spite of Gr. /k/. But this statement is absurd from a linguistic point of view. Firstly, a close exploration of the Rabbinic sources written in Jewish Aramaic helps us to identify another meaning of gamla’, not only “camel” but also “yoke”. Secondly, on the ground of our knowledge of the archaeological site of Gamla’, recently discovered and excavated by Gutmann on a narrow ridge in Northern Galilee, the meaning “yoke” seems perfectly consistent. Thirdly, the analysis of the Greek text in the Bellum Judaicum excludes any ‘phonetic’ interpretation of the disputed passage. Actually Flavius’ gloss simply remarks the difference between his own etymology (< Aram. gamla’ “camel”) and the (folk)etymology of the inhabitants (< Aram. gamla’ “yoke”), both of them motivated by different visual perspectives of the rocky site of the Jewish town. We could call our hermeneutical proposal a sort of ‘Wörter und Orte Etymologie’.