עַרְפָּד (arppad) — vampire

Etymology

The word עַרְפָּד appears once in the Babylonian Talmud, in a peculiar chain of metamorphoses described by Rabbi Elazar in a discussion about dangerous animals (Bava Kamma 16a): "A male hyena (tzavu'a), after seven years, becomes a bat (atalef); a bat, after seven years, becomes an arppad; an arppad, after seven years, becomes a thorn-bush (kimosh)..." and so on until it becomes a snake. All Talmudic commentators agree that erppad is a type of bat: the Aramaic Targum of Leviticus translates the Biblical word עטלף (bat, Leviticus 11:19) as arpada, establishing the identification directly.

The bridge from "bat" to "vampire" was built in the nineteenth century by the Hungarian rabbi and lexicographer Hanoch Yehuda Kohut. In his influential Talmudic dictionary Arukh HaShalem, Kohut added a footnote to the entry on erppad suggesting that it referred to the creature known in German as a Vampir. This identification was zoologically baseless — blood-sucking vampire bats exist only in Central and South America and cannot be what the Talmudic rabbis had in mind — but Kohut's dictionary was widely read, and the equation stuck.

The word entered literary Hebrew as a translation of the fictional vampire figure through the poet Shaul Tchernichovsky. In his 1901 poem Barukh miMagentza (Baruch of Mainz), he wrote: "And were you also there, my dove, and with you also I, before this vampire (arppad) that laps blood before my strength dries up!" This appears to be the first use of erppad to mean the undead bloodsucker of European folklore.

The folk belief in vampires runs deep across cultures, including Jewish ones. The Midrash Shmuel contains what may be one of the earliest attestations of the Greek word vrykolakas (vampire), when Rabbi Avvo's interpretation of the terafim (household idols) that Michal placed in David's bed is glossed with a Greek word for reanimated corpse. The twelfth- or thirteenth-century German Sefer Hasidim contains a vivid description of a female vampire — a shtria — who rises to attack the living. These Jewish sources predate or rival the earliest recorded European vampire accounts.

The Slavic vampire (upir in Russian-Ukrainian, upior in Polish, vampir in Serbian and Bulgarian) entered Western European consciousness through reports of vampire panics in Serbian villages that came under Austrian control after 1699. Austrian officials investigated and reported to Vienna; the accounts spread through German and French newspapers in the 1720s-30s, igniting the literary imagination. The German term Vampir eventually displaced local names, giving rise to the vampire genre from Goethe through Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). When Hebrew writers wanted a native word rather than the Yiddish vamfir, Kohut's dictionary entry and Tchernichovsky's poem had already prepared the path.

Key Quotes

"צבוע זכר לאחר שבע שנים נעשה עטלף עטלף לאחר שבע שנים נעשה ערפד." — רבי אלעזר, תלמוד בבלי בבא קמא ט"ז, א'

"וְלוּ הָיִית גַּם אַתְּ, יוֹנָתִי, וְאִתָּךְ גַּם אָנֹכִי לְעַרְפָּד זֶה יְעַלַּע דָּמִים טֶרֶם יִיבַשׁ כֹּחִי!" — שאול טשרניחובסקי, "ברוך ממגנצא", 1901

Timeline

• Talmudic era: ערפד appears in Bava Kamma 16a as a creature in a metamorphosis chain; Aramaic Targum identifies it as a type of bat
• 12th-13th century: Sefer Hasidim describes a Jewish female vampire (shtria)
• 1725-1730s: Austrian reports of Serbian vampire panics spread through European press; Vampir becomes the standard Western term
• 1897: Bram Stoker's Dracula establishes the aristocratic literary vampire
• 19th century: Hanoch Yehuda Kohut's Arukh HaShalem equates erppad with the Vampir in a dictionary footnote
• 1901: Tchernichovsky uses ערפד for vampire in poem Barukh miMagentza — first literary attestation
• 20th century: ערפד becomes standard Hebrew for vampire; also used for blood-sucking bats

Related Words

• עטלף — bat (Biblical; the creature erppad is linked to in the Talmud and Targum)
• ברדלס — hyena (first creature in the metamorphosis chain, from Greek pardalís)
• שד — demon (last stage of the chain before becoming a snake)