margin of error: a search for words lost before 1784 ce by excessive trimming of folio 37 in the...

7/28/2019 Margin of Error: A search for words lost before 1784 CE by excessive trimming of folio 37 in the Kabbalah manusc

1/6

Giluy Milta B'alma(Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts weblog), gmb042 (7 April, 2013) 1

Margin of Error: A search for words lost before 1784 CE by

excessive trimming of folio 37 in the Kabbalah manuscript

Moscow-Gnzburg 775 (14-15th

century CE)

Lloyd D. Graham

The Hebrew manuscript Moscow-Gnzburg 775 (Russian State Library, Moscow)

is best known for containing the only complete copy of Ozar Hayyim,1an important

Kabbalah work by Rabbi Isaac of Acre (Israel, Spain and North Africa, 13th

-14th

century CE).

2However, the initial pages of Moscow-Gnzburg 775 (catalogued as

The Functional Names, Making Amulets, Spells, etc.: Excerpts from Practical

Kabbalah)3are independent of this work. A point of connection is that some of the

contents of the initial codex are given in the name of Rabbi Isaac, including the

earliest known description in Judaism of the seven Kabbalistic signs or seven

Seals,4a set of symbols which even today enjoys widespread popularity in

talismans from the Middle East and beyond.5

Folio 37b of Moscow-Gnzburg 775 gives the earliest known exegesis of the

Divine Name associated with each of the seven Seals, but at some point the pagewas damaged by excessive trimming that removed text close to its right-hand edge.

The angle of the cut means that the problem is more severe towards the bottom of

the page, and the overall result is the loss of several significant words and phraseswhose identity cannot be guessed (Fig. 1). It is now evident that Rabbi Abraham

Alnaqar used this page or a copy thereof as a source when, in Algiers in 1784

Fig. 1.Folio 37b of Moscow-Gnzburg 775,

optimal composite of a light and dark scan fromthe IMHM; manuscript image shown with

permission of the Russian State Library, Moscow.Progressively increasing losses from the right handmargin are accentuated by the blue line, which is

true to the vertical. Words referred to in this report

as difficult to read or interpret are also flagged

(blue asterisk and underline).


2/6


CE, he prepared his expanded edition of Rabbi Moses Zacutos encyclopedicShorshei ha-Shemot(Ms. Heb. 82454, National Library of Israel).

6Specifically, he

included material from Moscow-Gnzburg 775 f.37b in yod, item 142, an entry

describing the Divine Name associated with each of the seven Seals. Since the

damage to f.37b predated his access to it, Rabbi Alnaqar was forced to

acknowledge as missing the words lost to the knife, admissions that are preservedin the printed edition of Shorsheipublished in 1999 CE in Jerusalem.7

""""""( ", ,

,

)

,)

"]...[.)( ,)(,)(

.)

Translation:8(Aab"a9[+honorifics]: Yitathan acronym for G-d, good, living; Tathan

acronym for good, death;10Setitan acronym for agood secret, good hand; Setityah

an acronym for the secret is pure and will rise,11its goodness will ascend([last letter]

missing); Agreptian acronym for air, greatness, one-fourth, sides, good([last letter]

missing); Marom(missing); Shamrielan acronym for The Almighty watches and sees,

12and all will behold Him([last letter] missing). [] and what was written as missing

[for] every sign is not so in Shamriel, as you will see if you check).

The word listed in Shorsheias missing from the expansion of Shamriel, the seventhSeal Name, has not been lost by trimming, but rather is illegible in Moscow-

Gnzburg 775 f.37b (blue asterisk in Fig. 1). Alnaqars remark at the end of the

excerpt seems to dispute that a final word is missing, perhaps because the last twoletters of the acronym (

) occur at the start of the last legible word (

), where

they are united as a ligature. If so, he cannot have inspected f.37b in person, as the

presence of a final (but illegible) word commencing with the letter .is unmissable

Several other words in the expansion of Shamrielare also difficult to read in f.37b,and in places Rabbi Alnaqar (or the copyist of f.37b on whom he relied) either has

taken liberties in order to offer meaningful words or had access to clarifying

information from elsewhere (compare the blue underlined words in Fig. 1 with thewords

in Alnaqars text).

Since the over-trimming of f.37b occurred in or before the 18th

century CE,the event substantially predates the manuscripts inclusion in the Gnzburg library,

which was founded in the following century by Joseph Yozel Gnzburg (St.

Petersburg and Paris, 181278 CE).13

Towards the end of the 20th

century CE,

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan included in the footnotes of some of his English-languagebooks a list of primary sources for the Seals,

14including the relevant pages of

Moscow-Gnzburg 775, but none contain the information missing from f.37b ofthat manuscript. Kaplans list includes several pages in an early copy of RabbiJoseph Tirshoms Shoshan Yesod ha-Olam(Bibliothque de Genve, Comites

Latentes 145),15

a work composed in Ottoman Turkey or Greece in the 15th

-16th

century CE.16

The recent digitization of this manuscript and its full publicationonline by the Bibliothque de Genve

17have made it possible to re-examine the

work in its entirety. It turns out that page 141 in this manuscript, although not listed


3/6


Fig. 2.Shoshan Yesod ha-

Olam(Bibliothque de Genve,

Comites Latentes 145), p.141.

From http://www.e-

codices.unifr.ch/en/bge/cl0145/141/large, reproduced here

under the Creative Commons

licence CC BY-NC 3.0.

by Kaplan, also describes the Seals; indeed, it presents essentially the same

information as Moscow-Gnzburg 775 f.37b and does so without any omissions

(Fig. 2). This page either preserves information transcribed from f.37b before thetrimming accident or relies on a source independent of Moscow-Gnzburg 775.

Since the last word of the expansion for Shamriel(which may always have been

illegible in Moscow-Gnzburg) is clear in Shoshan, the latter is somewhat morelikely.

18

In Fig. 3, the lost words have been restored to Moscow-Gnzburg 775 f.37b,and the perceived meanings of the affected sentences both before and after the

restoration of the wayward words are shown in Table 1. The expansion of thesixth Seal Name, flagged as missing by Rabbi Alnaqar, is also absent from theShoshanpage and has not been lost from it by misadventure. Accordingly, it seems

that this Name is not regarded as an acronym but simply as the Hebrew wordMarom, which alludes to extreme height as a Divine attribute (Micah 6:6, Jeremiah17:12). Elsewhere in the Shoshanpage, there are subtle shifts in meaning which

seem to reflect word substitutions arising from misreadings of letters in f.37b.


4/6


Fig. 3. Lost and illegible

letters/words restored to the lowerpart of Moscow-Gnzburg 775

f.37b. Those based on the

corresponding text in Shoshan

Yesod ha-Olam(Bibliothque deGenve, Comites Latentes 145,

p.141) are shown in red.Interpolated words not from

Shoshanare in green. Meaningfulreplacements in Shorshei ha-

Shemotfor problem words (as

discussed in this report) are shown

in blue. Manuscript image shownwith permission of the Russian

State Library, Moscow.

Table 1. Perceived meanings of the affected sentences.

Seal Name Guess before restoration After restoration

4 Setityah [G-d made a ladder with] twosteps from cold and heat to satiate

the world.

[G-d made a ladder with] two steps to/levels for the sun, and from cold and

heat to satiate the world.

Expansion of

acronym

The secret of good is pure and will

rise; its goodness will ascend [last

word missing].

The secret of good is pure and will

rise; its goodness will elevate its being.

5 Agrepti [missing] created His world withfour elements, fire, wind, water,

and earth; coldness and winter.

The Holy and Blessed One created Hisworld with four elements, fire, wind,

water, and earth; cold and heat, winter

and summer.

Expansion of

acronymAir, greatness, one-fourth, sides,good, [last word missing].

Air, greatness, one-fourth, sides, good,G-d.

6 Marom A ring, master of every circle O A ring, master of every circle [in] theworld, and this is its shape: O

7 Shamriel The inclination of the seventh signis like this

Understanding and searching allthe world and all the thoughts,which are a great perfection.

The seventh sign is a crooked mem,

like this

Understanding and searching all theworld and all the thoughts, with

weeping are exposed the deep and

secret things.

Expansion of

acronym

The Almighty [word illegible]

watches [and sees, and all will

behold]aHim [last word illegible].

The Almighty watches and sees, and to

Him hearts are revealed.

aUsing the words from Shorshei ha-Shemot(above and Fig. 3), since those in Moscow-

Gnzburg 775 f.37b (blue underline, Fig. 1) resist identification.


5/6


So what have we learned from this manuscript detective story? The over-trimmingof Moscow-Gnzburg 775 f.37b occurred before the manuscripts acquisition for the

Gnzburg library. Rabbi Alnaqar, when editing Shorshei ha-Shemot, had access to the

contents of the compromised f.37b, most likely in the form of a transcript made earlier by

someone else. He did not know of the material in the later manuscript Comites Latentes145 p.141, which preserves the lost text, and which probably derives from a source other

than the pre-accident f.37b. Use of the Shoshantext to repair the omissions in f.37b

means that, while the earliest explanations of the Seal Names and the expansions of theiracronyms remain mysterious and cryptic, they are at least and at last complete.

19

1IMHM record 000069801 (Moscow-Gnzburg 775, f.39b-276a).2Eitan P. Fishbane, 2009,As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist, Stanford

University Press, Stanford, CA.3IMHM record 000069800 (Moscow-Gnzburg 775, f.5a-39a).4Aryeh Kaplan, 1985,Meditation and Kabbalah, Red Wheel/Weiser, San Francisco, p.138 & 266; also

Aryeh Kaplan, 1997, Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, Red Wheel/Weiser, San Francisco, p.169& 172. Note that Kaplans folio numbering differs slightly from that used by the IMHM and in this

report.5Hans A. Winkler, 1930, Siegel und Charaktere in der Mohammedanischen Zauberei, Walter de Gruyter &

Co., Berlin; Tewfik Canaan, 2004, The Decipherment of Arabic Talismans, In:Magic and

Divination in Early Islam, ed. Emilie Savage-Smith, Ashgate Variorum, Aldershot, p.125-177, at 169-

172; Edmond Doutt, 1908,Magie et Religion dans lAfrique du Nord, Adolphe Jourdan, Algiers,

p.155-156; Lloyd D. Graham, 2012, The Seven Seals of Judeo-Islamic Magic: Possible Origins of theSymbols, online at https://www.academia.edu/1509428/The_Seven_Seals_of_Judeo-

Islamic_Magic_Possible_Origins_of_the_Symbols.6J.H. Chajes, 2011, Rabbis and their (In)Famous Magic: Classical Foundations, Medieval and Early

Modern Reverberations, In:Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority,

Diaspora, Tradition, eds. Raanan S. Boustan, Oren Kosansky, Marina Rustow, Univ. Pennsylvania

Press, Philadelphia, p.58-79, fn 73 (p.356); and J.H. Chajes, 2012, Too Holy to Print: Taboo

Anxiety and the Publishing of Practical Hebrew Esoterica,Jewish History26, 247-262, fn 3 (p.258).7Moses ben Mordecai Zacuto (the RaMaZ), 1999, Shorshei ha-Shemot, Hotzaat Nezer Shraga, Jerusalem.8English translations in this report are by www.EverBurningLight.org, Translation Services USA, Babylon

Human Translation and the author.9Presumably " (I, Ab"a, ); at the start of his glosses, Abraham Alnaqar habitually identifies

himself as Ab"a bar Yoel, as explained in IMHM records 000062654 and 000077375. Alternatively,

the acronym may be a contraction of " (as for example in IMHM record 000060869).10Moscow-Gnzburg 775, f.37b gives a three-word expansion (translating as good, death, was) of the two-

letter Seal Name , as if the Name had been .; Alnaqar drops the superfluous final word11Moscow-Gnzburg 775, f.37b again gives an additional word in the expansion, as if the Seal Name had

been ), reducing the first part of the Name) ; Alnaqar again does not include the extra word

to The secret is pure and will arise.12Moscow-Gnzburg 775, f.37b again gives an additional word in the expansion, so that two words

correspond to

, the second letter of the Name. The additional word is unclear.13A.I. Katsh, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_13210.html.14See note 4. Shorshei ha-Shemotwas not included in the list, presumably because entries relating to the

Seals focus on the Names rather than the symbols.15IMHM record 000133810.16Meir Benayahu, 1972, Sefer ShoshanYesod ha-Olamle-Rabbi Yosef Tirshom,Temirin, vol. 1, 1sted.,

Mossad HaRav Kook, Jerusalem, p.187-269; Jeffrey H. Chajes, 2003,Between Worlds: Dybbuks,

Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism, Univ. Pennsylvania Press, PA, p.65; Kaplan,Meditation and

Kabbalah, p.157.


6/6


17Online at http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/bge/cl0145.18Further to notes 10-12, it is worth remarking that supernumerary words in the expansions of the Seal

Names in Moscow-Gnzburg 775, f.37b are absent from Shoshan Yesod ha-Olam, just as they were

omitted by Rabbi Alnaqar. The insertions in the fourth and seventh Names in f.37b (notes 11-12)

may simply represent false starts on words that were rendered correctly on the second attempt.19

A paper containing a full analysis of the Seals symbolism and uses is forthcoming.

margin of error: a search for words lost before 1784 ce by excessive trimming of folio 37 in the...

Documents