Any Information on 1879 Russian(?) Jewish Book?

I found this yesterday at a local thrift. I believe it's Russian Jewish related because while most letters/words appear to be in Hebrew the last couple by the 1879 date appear to be Russian/Cyrillic?
What is this book - a bible/torah?
PS - Also if you look inside the cover/spine where it's torn it looks like the book itself's spine is covered with letters or words; did they use extra pages to finish the spine of a book (before adding the covers)?
Thank you for any information

 

I think it's in Yiddish. I googled BAPIIIABA and that's the publisher in Warsaw. Warsaw plus Hebrew writing implies Yiddish.

 

Interesting, where do you guys see Yiddish. I see Hebrew but maybe I am not seeing every thing. Oy vey es mer.
Paging @komokwa

 

sorry pearls,,,don't wish to help here..

 

Sorry Komo. My mistake.

 

You can try typing what you see into an online Hebrew keyboard & then pasting that into a translator. I usually use this one:

https://www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/hebrew.htm

Remember to go right to left.

 

I'll give it a try thanks

 

Yes, Варшава (Varshava in the Latin alphabet) is Warsaw. I can't figure out the first word above that. The second word looks like it might be the word for "Volume" -- followed by the number 3, it may be Volume 3. During the time this was published, Warsaw was under Russian rule, which is why they used the Cyrillic alphabet.

 

They didn't get out until the end of WWI. My grandfather was born in Poland, and had to use Russian in elementary school.

 

Interesting that you have such a close connection to that.

 

It is most likely religious right? But if vol 3 then not a bible/Torah (I think that's what they call the Jewish bible(only old Testament)?

 

Hi folks, I can help with the Cyrillic script but not with the meanings

Apart from Hebrew (which I have no idea about) the last words in Cyrillic say "Хумешъ - Томъ 3 Варшава 1879" - "Humesh - Volume 3. Warsaw 1879". I have no idea what Humesh is, the rest Figtree3 has explained perfectly.

Eurika! After brief research - Humesh is the Torah consisting of 5 volumes:

https://www.livelib.ru/book/1002163395-humesh-humesh-te-pyatiknizhie-moiseya-tom-3-vtorozakonie

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Пятикнижие

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah

So it is Volume 3 (Second Commandment Book if I translate it well) of the Torah, published in 1879 in Warsaw.

From the source in livelib.ru in Russian:

Названия этих Книг: Берешит (Бытие), Шемот (Исход), Ваикра (Левит), Бемидбар (Числа) и Дварим (Второзаконие)

The names of the five books of the Torah are: Bereshit (Being), Shemot (Exodos or Exit), Vaikra (Levit), Bemidbar (Numbers) and Dvarim (Second Law Book or Second Comandment Book).

 

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Dueteronomy IOW.

 

Thanks, evelyb30, I have negligible knowledge about the Jewish religion in either language The above is a literary translation of the names in Russian which usually does not work well. I cannot change now, though.

The bottom-line is that it is indeed the Torah book (one of its volumes) as the topic starter suggested in the beginning.

Ref. to the translation, interesting for me is that in Russian (also in Bulgarian, b.t.w) the first book is called not "Creation" or "Beginning" or something related to starting/creating something new (like the English version "Genesis" - origin or beginning which comes from Greek) but literary "Being" - Бытие́. Must have some sophisticated religious reason

Also the name of the last volume 5 in English comes from Greek not translated (Deuteronomy (Greek: ΔευτερονόμιονDeuteronómion, lit.'second law')
while in Russian it is translated - второзаконие or literary "second law book"

 

Genesis means "beginning", so it's just another imperfect translation of the same word in Hebrew. A better translation for Deuteronomy in English might be Second Book of the Law. It picked up a Greek name somewhere along the road for no good reason I know of. Komo or Pearls might know better than I do though, not having the handicap of being a heathen Gentile.

 

evelyb30, I did not get it - you mean that the Hebrew word which was translated in Greek as Genesis (beginning) and then entered English as it is, actually should be translated differently in Greek/English?

In Russian it is translated as "Being" or "Existence" (Бытие́) which is different from Beginning. The same in Bulgarian. The translation in Bulgarian was made from sources in Greek as we adopted Christianity from Byzantian Empire in 864 A.D. and all religious books were translated in Cyrillic around that time (some tens of years later), so they have nothing to do with the English ones - I mean that they were translated independently, although probably from the same sources. The Kiev Russians were baptized 100 years later and used the same translations, so the names are identical in Bulgarian and in Russian.

 

English is... weird. If we don't have a word for something, the language tends to adopt wholesale words from other languages. (hence our spelling contests, something other languages neither have nor need.) Sometimes the spellings are changed and sometimes not. At other times, the words are changed out of recognition. How it should have been translated...dunno ... even native English speakers are confused by it sometimes.

I was raised with Bibles translated directly from the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. They did keep the traditional English names in the translations I'm familiar with - too confusing otherwise. Translating Genesis as Being/Existence makes perfect sense to me.

 

Thanks, evelyb30, got it. As I have no knowledge in religious matters and in ancient languages, I cannot judge about translations of religious books in English. Thanks for sharing!

What I know fairy well is the Slavic history especially in Cyrillic writing countries like Russia. Actually, there was just one language in which all holy books were translated in Cyrilic at the end of 7th century - the old Bulgarian language which gained popularity as Church Slavonic. Imperial Russia, selling itslef as "The Third Rome", could not afford to admit that they were not the driving force/creators of these translations but were given the holy books by another country, small and insignificant like Bulgaria. Which is merely the truth, back then Bulgaria was not either of it.
This is just to explain why the names are the same in Bulgarian and in Russian - it is not a different translation, it is one and the same. I suppose that the names of the Old Testament books were properly translated in Bulgarian as the translators were very knowledgeable, being educated in Constantinopole's best academy at the time and thus being savy both in religious matters and in ancient languages.

 

Probably so. I'm told Russian priests no longer read Slavonic, and I bet a lot of things are presumed lost as a result. (they don't know enough to ask the Bulgarians)