Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Hebrew prayers to Mary from 1759.

Here's a polyglot version of the Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis from 1759 (Prague). The prayers are in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Here is the motto after the title page:



Here is the first prayer to Mary:



Another sample page:



4 comments:

  1. I first read that as "btulah m'orasah."

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  2. Did anyone ever pray this, actually, in Hebrew? It is VERY odd to see a Hebrew version of "Hail, Mary, full of grace (etc.)" directly followed by the verse that opens the Amidah! Was someone trying to provide liturgy for some early version of "Jews for Jesus"?

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  3. My guess is not really, at least not on a regular basis. As for the oddity, bear in mind that it is a verse from the Bible, Psalm 51:15, so while it is very associated with the Amidah, it is a biblical verse.

    There were some attempts to render Christian liturgy into a format comfortable for Jews, but I'm not sure if this is such a thing.

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  4. This is amazing. Thank you for posting these. It may seem odd for us today but it was their ways in the ancient times.

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