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Ralbag’s Milchamot Hashem Book V, Part 1, Sefer HaTechunah

July 20, 2016 Leave a Comment

מלחמות ה’, מאמר ה, חלק א, ספר התכונה של רבינו לוי בן גרשום (רלב”ג)

Milchamot Hashem (Milchamot Adonai) – The Wars of the Lord is a classic Jewish work of philosophy written by Rabeinu Levi Ben Gershom (Ralbag), otherwise known as Gersonides. He lived in Provence in the town of Bagnols in Languedoc, France, in 1288-1344. In the secular world he was known by his Provencal name, Leo de Balneolis. Until now, his book, Milchamot Hashem has been published twice. First, in Riva Di Trento in 1560 (#128 in our database) and then again in Berlin in 1923 (#148 in our database). An English translation was published by JPS in three volumes and can be purchased below.

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The Wars of the Lord

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The Wars of the Lord

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However, a key part of the work has been omitted in both editions. Book V Part 1, otherwise known by a separate name as Sefer HaTechunah (Book of Astronomy), remained in manuscript, until now.

Levi’s most important scientific achievements are contained in Sefer Tekhunah (Book of Astronomy), in fact, part 1 of the fifth book of his main philosophical work, Milhamot Adonai (Wars of the Lord). Preserved in Hebrew and Latin version, it is a lengthy work, divided into 136 chapters, which contain planetary observations and research from 1321- 1340, and is based on a profound understanding of the astronomical tradition as well as on a sound criticism of some of his predecessors, mainly Prolemy and al-Bitruji. 

Helaine Selin, Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, Springer Science & Business Media, 2013, entry Levi Ben Gerson, p. 509.

There are a few extant manuscripts of Sefer HaTechunah and many of them have been posted online.

The best preserved and complete manuscripts are from the National Library of France (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), in Paris, Hebreu 724 and Hebreu 725. In addition, there is a partial manuscript Hebreu 696.

#454) Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Hébreu 724. Dated 1397. Title: Lévi ben Gerson. מלחמות השם.

Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 - Manuscript Paris Hebreu 724 Folio 1
Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 – Manuscript Paris Hebreu 724 Folio 1

 

#455) Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Hébreu 725. Dated 1510. Title: Lévi ben Gerson. מלחמות השם.

Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 - Manuscript Paris Hebreu 725 Folio 1
Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 – Manuscript Paris Hebreu 725 Folio 1

 

#456) Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Hébreu 696. Dated 1401-1500. Title: Recueil de textes philosophiques.

Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 - Manuscript Paris Hebreu 696 Folio 1
Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 – Manuscript Paris Hebreu 696 Folio 1

 

Besides, these three, there are two more partial manuscripts, one in the British Library in London, Ms. British Museum hebr., Add 26921, and in the National Library of Naples in Italy, Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, hebr., III F.9. The Naples manuscript is not online yet, however the British Museum Manuscript hebr., Add 26921 is online and can be read on the British Library website.

a) British Library, hebr., Add 26921. Dated 1400-1499. Title: Collection of Astronomical works. Folios 12r-45r: Levi ben Gershom (לוי בן גרשום), Luḥot astronomiyim (לוחות אסטרונומיים), The astronomical tables (folios 20v-45r) follow a short exposition, which begins on folio 14r. See further Goldstein, B.R., The Astronomical Tables of Levi ben Gerson (New Haven 1974), p. 77.

Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 - Manuscript British Museum Add. 26921, Folio 20v
Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 – Manuscript British Museum Add. 26921, Folio 20v

 

b) Naples biblioteca Nazionale, hebr., III F.9, 375 folios. It includes table of contents and chapters 1-95 only. There are no tables.

The Italian libraries manuscripts get posted onto the InternetCulturale.it website, so eventually the Naples manuscript will show up there as well.

There are 2 manuscripts of the Latin translation of Sefer HaTechunah, both in the Vatican Library, Mss. Vatican 3380 and Mss Vatican 3098. So far, neither of them are online, but should be posted soon in the Latin section of the Vatican Library.

c) Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Mss. Vatican 3380.

d) Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Mss Vatican 3098.

Finally, there is a complete manuscript of Milchamot Hashem in the Berlin library, in Germany (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), Ms. or. fol. 4057, dated 1553, from Rovigo, Italy, which includes Book V, Part 1 starting on folio 53r.

#457) Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Ms. or. fol. 4057. Dated 1553. Title: Milhamot ha-shem.

Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 - Manuscript Berlin Oriental 4057, Folio 53r
Milchamot Hashem Book V Part 1 – Manuscript Berlin Oriental 4057, Folio 53r

The first 20 chapters of the The Book of Astronomy have been published in English by Bernard Goldstein and can be purchased below.

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The Astronomy of Levi Ben Gerson

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The Astronomy of Levi Ben Gerson

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2 main Septuagint Manuscripts online

July 16, 2016 4 Comments

The Septuagint (from the Latin septuaginta, “seventy”) is a translation of the Hebrew Bible and some related texts into Koine Greek. The title (Greek: Ἡ μετάφρασις τῶν Ἑβδομήκοντα, lit. “The Translation of the Seventy”) and its Roman numeral acronym LXX refer to the legendary seventy Jewish elders who solely translated the Five Books of Moses into Koine Greek at the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, (285–247 BCE) for the library in Alexandria, Egypt and the Jewish Community of Alexandria in general, most of whom did not speak Hebrew. The story of the elders being invited  to Egypt and writing the translation is mentioned in The Letter of Aristeas, Josephus (Ant. Jud., XII, ii), Philo (De vita Moysis, II, vi), and the Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 9a-9b).

Today, there are three main manuscripts of the Septuagint, in existence: Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. The manuscripts include all of the Tanach and some additional apocryphal books that used to be in the Hebrew Bible, but were removed from it during the Talmudic period. Two out of the three manuscripts, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus are available online now.

1) Codex Sinaiticus (dispersed between 4 libraries)

Description of Codex Sinaiticus from the British Library Website:

What is the Codex Sinaiticus?

The literal meaning of ‘Codex Sinaiticus’ is the Sinai Book. The word ‘Sinaiticus’ derives from the fact that the Codex was preserved for many centuries at St Catherine’s Monastery near the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt.

The Codex is the remains of a huge hand-written book that contained all the Christian scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, together with two late first-century Christian texts, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas. This book was made up of over 1,460 pages, each of which measured approximately 41cm tall and 36cm wide.

Just over half of the original book has survived, now dispersed between four institutions: St Catherine’s Monastery, the British Library, Leipzig University Library (Germany), and the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg. At the British Library the largest surviving portion – 347 leaves, or 694 pages – includes the whole of the New Testament.

All the texts written down in the Codex are in Greek. They include the translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint. The Greek text is written using a form of capital or upper case letters known as Biblical majuscule and without word division. The pages of the Codex are of prepared animal skin called parchment.

Who made the Codex Sinaiticus?

Modern scholars have identified four scribes as responsible for writing the Greek text. Trained to write in very similar ways they, and their contributions to the manuscript, have been distinguished only after painstaking analysis of their handwriting, spelling and method of marking the end of each of the books of the Bible.

As is the case with most manuscripts of this antiquity, we do not know either the names of these scribes or the exact place in which they worked. Successive critics have argued that it was made in one of the great cities of the Greco-Roman world, such as Alexandria, Constantinople, or Caesarea in Palestine.

During the production of the Codex each of the scribes corrected their own work and one of them corrected and rewrote parts by another. These corrections contain many significant alterations and, together with further extensive corrections undertaken probably in the seventh century, are some of the most interesting features of the manuscript.

How did the Codex come to the British Library?

The 694 pages held by the British Library were purchased for the British nation in 1933. Over half of the price paid, £100,000, was raised by means of a public fund-raising campaign. The seller, the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin, sold the Codex to obtain desperately needed foreign capital.

2) Codex Alexandrinus (British Library, Royal MS 1 D VII)

So far the British library put online only the text of volume 4 which contains only the New Testament. The Septuagint itself is still not online.

Description of Codex Alexandrinus from the British Library Website:

The Codex Alexandrinus contains the Septuagint (the Koine Greek version of the Old Testament) and the New Testament, in addition to a few additional pieces of text that do not appear in standard Bibles, such as part of the Epistles of Clement. The beginning lines of each book are written in red ink and sections within the book are marked by a larger letter set into the margin. Words are written continuously in a large square uncial hand with no accents and only some breathing marks. It contains 773 pages, 630 for the Old Testament and 143 for the New Testament. Each page measures 32cm x 26.5 cm.

3) Codex Vaticanus (Vatican Library, Vat, Gr. 1209)

Description of Codex Vaticanus from Wikipedia:

Codex Vaticanus is one of the oldest extant manuscripts of the Greek Bible (Old and New Testament). The Codex is named after its place of conservation in the Vatican Library, where it has been kept since at least the 15th century. It is written on 759 leaves of vellum in uncial letters and has been dated palaeographically to the 4th century.

The manuscript is believed to have been housed in Caesarea in the 6th century, together with the Codex Sinaiticus, as they have the same unique divisions of chapters in the Acts. It came to Italy – probably from Constantinople – after the Council of Florence (1438–1445).

The manuscript has been housed in the Vatican Library (founded by Pope Nicholas V in 1448) for as long as it has been known, appearing in the library’s earliest catalog of 1475 (with shelf number 1209), and in the 1481 catalog. In a catalog from 1481 it was described as a “Biblia in tribus columnis ex membranis in rubeo” (three-column vellum Bible).


If you would like to read the Septuagint in English you can purchase the translation by Lancelot Brenton or by Oxford University Press below.

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The Septuagint with Apocrypha

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A New English Translation of the Septuagint

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The Septuagint with Apocrypha

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Buy This Book from Book Depository, Free Delivery World Wide

A New English Translation of the Septuagint

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London Codex Masoretic Tanach Manuscript Or 4445

July 12, 2016 Leave a Comment

London Codex Masoretic Tanach Manuscript Or 4445 is online on the British Library’s website. I have quoted the description from their website:

Torah: Pentateuch with vowel-points and accents, masorah magna and parva, aka London Codex. Folios 1-28, 125, 128, and 159-186 were added in 1539/1540, while the rest of the volume can be dated to the 10th century (920-950). The upper perpendicular stroke of the letter lamed is considerably lengthened out in the first line of a page. The left side of the columns is irregular, the scribed not having used the elongated letters. Verse-divisions were originally altogether absent in this codex (whereas they are regularly employed in Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus, which marks the difference between these two manuscripts). Parts of letter aleph are generally used to fill up the line, perhaps to show that the name of the scribe began with that letter (there is no sufficient certainty on the point). The punctuation, which seems to be contemporary with the consonantal text, is not the super-linear system used in Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus, but the ordinary system associated with the Tiberian school. The text of this manuscript is identical with the Palestinian or Western recension on which the textus receptus is based, and differs from the Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus, which contains many readings attributed to the Babylonian or Eastern recension. There is considerable divergence between this text and the commonly accepted masoretic recension with regard to the open and closed sections (petuḥot and setumot). The number of verses in each book and each weekly section are given at the end of the books and sections respectively; no simanim or mnemonic devices are used, and there are also some divergences from the numbers as given in the masorah. The simanim are only marked twice, but the beginnings of the weekly sections are indicated by a later hand in the margins. Both masorah magna and parva were probably written up to a century later that the text. The later annotations seem to prove the Persian affinities of the manuscript. The masorah parva does not generally indicate קרי in the margins. The masorah magna frequently has a different way of expressing the masoretic statements than the one found in Ginsburg’s ‘ The Massorah’ (London, 1880). There are several references to masoretic authorities, including Ben Asher (see folio 40v, 106r). On folio 40r there is a statement indicating that there once existed a whole Bible written by the same scribe and punctuated by the same punctuator. Colophon : Folio 186v: נשלם ביום ג’ בשבת דהוא י”ז יומין לירח מרחשון דשנת אלפא ותמני מאה וחמשין וחד שנין למניין שטרות אנ”ס וכתב הצעיר מכל ישראל יועץ ש[?ל?] ודורש עזרת ה[?אל? …] מפחו בן [ … בן מ[…].

Babylonian Talmud Manuscript Munich Codex Hebraicus 95

July 8, 2016 Leave a Comment

Babylonian Talmud Manuscript Munich Codex Hebraicus 95 has been posted in the database. The description has been quoted from the World Digital Library and linked to their website:

# 452) Babylonian Talmud Manuscript Munich Codex Hebraicus 95

Located at: Bavarian State Library, BSB shelfmark: Cod.hebr. 95

Munich Codex Hebraicus 95 is the only surviving manuscript in the world that contains, with the exception of two missing leaves, the complete text of the Babylonian Talmud including some extra-canonical tracts: Derekh Eretz zuta, Pirkei Azzai, Kallā, Sôferîm, and Gērîm. In addition, the manuscript contains some texts that do not relate directly to the Talmud. Numerous entries of the names of owners make it possible to trace the history of the manuscript, which was written in France in 1342. According to an entry in a manuscript of a Bible now preserved at the State and University Library of Hamburg, this Talmud was in the possession of the Jewish merchant family Ulma in Pfersee near Augsburg in the year 1772. Some time later it was sold to the Augustinian priory of Polling (Upper Bavaria). After the dissolution of the monastery in 1803, the manuscript was transferred together with other valuable books to the Munich Court Library, which became the Bavarian State Library, where it is now preserved.

It can also be viewed on the Bavarian State Library website here.

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