Judeo-Latin

Judeo-Latin (also spelled Judaeo-Latin) is the use by Jews of the Hebrew alphabet to write Latin.

[2] The term was coined by Cecil Roth to describe a small corpus of texts from the Middle Ages.

[2] In the Middle Ages, there was no Judeo-Latin in the sense of "an ethnodialect used by Jews on a regular basis to communicate among themselves", and the existence of such a Jewish language under the Roman Empire is pure conjecture.

[3] The Judeo-Latin corpus consists of an Anglo-Jewish charter and Latin quotations in otherwise Hebrew works (such as anti-Christian polemics,[4] incantations and prayers).

[2] Christian converts to Judaism sometimes brought with them an extensive knowledge of the Vulgate translation of the Bible.

An example of Judeo-Latin magical text from the Cairo Geniza . It is a quotation attributed to the 2nd-century philosopher Secundus the Silent when asked who God was: "An intelligible unknown, a unique being who has no equal, something sought but not comprehended". [ 1 ]