<i>SARDÎSTÔN</i>: A NEW TERM FOR AN OLD CONCEPT IN RABBINIC LITERATURE

Abstract Sardismos is the name, in several Latin works of literary criticism, for a combination of more than one language or dialect in a sentence. Quintilian (first century c.e. ) uses the term disparagingly; the Christian author Cassiodorus (sixth century c.e. ) uses it positively. A similar term, sardîstôn , is found in the rabbinic work Exodus Rabbah 2, created in the sixth-century Byzantine empire. This article is a short study of this term, the history of its misinterpretation and reinterpretation, its meaning in context, and its relationship to sardismos .