How to Avoid Some Pitfalls While Interpreting Dates in Hebrew Manuscripts*
Alexander GORDIN National Library of Israel
HOW TO AVOID SOME PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS*
ABSTRACT
The Creation era, widespread among the Jews already in the Middle Ages, is usually considered clear and reliable. However in certain manuscripts the year from the Creation of the World can be ambiguous, either because of a vagueness of its num- ber indicated in the colophon, or because of an unusual variation in the year reckon- ing itself. This paper demonstrates and analyzes such examples, providing attempts for clarifying the precise date. The main results relate to the millennia indication in the chronograms, which sometimes should be dated five years earlier than was usu- ally supposed, and the reckoning based on Adam epoch in the region of Greater Iran, where colophons reveal the use of the Creation era differed in one year from the generally known system.
RÉSUMÉ
Le décompte des années selon l’ère de la Création du Monde, répandu dès le Moyen Âge, a la réputation d’être fiable et clair. Cependant, dans certains manuscrits, il s’avère ambigu, soit parce que le nombre indiqué sur le colophon est vague, soit en raison d’une variation inhabituelle dans la manière même de noter l’année. Le pré- sent article met en lumière des exemples de tels colophons ambigus, qu’il s’efforce d’analyser, et tente d’en déterminer la date effective. Des considérations relatives à l’indication du millénaire dans les chronogrammes aboutissent à faire reculer de cinq ans la datation de certains manuscrits. Il apparaît par ailleurs que, dans le monde
* Early versions of parts of this paper have been published in Russian as “Khronogrammy s oboznacheniem tysiach v kolofonakh srednevekovykh evreiskikh rukopisei” [Chronograms with Millennia Indication in the Colophons of Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts], Proceedings of the Tenth Annual International Interdisciplinary Conference on Jewish Studies, Moscow, 2003, part 2, p. 27-32, and “Epokha Adamova novolunia v srednevekovoi praktike evreiskogo letoischislenia” [The Epoch of Adam New Moon in Medieval Practice of Jewish Year Reckoning], Vestnik: International Journal for Jewish Studies and Jewish Civilization 11 (2006), p. 11-19.
Revue des études juives, 178 (1-2), janvier-juin 2019, pp. 159-184. doi: 10.2143/REJ.178.1.3286072 160 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS iranien, où il est fait usage du système de notation des années selon l’ère d’Adam, certains colophons présentent une version de l’ère de la Création du Monde avec un an de décalage par rapport au système habituellement pratiqué.
The role of colophons bearing the date of copying is crucial in manuscript studies: dated inscriptions, although relatively not so numerous in medieval Jewish writing, provide the basis for dating all the extant manuscripts and thus for the very building of Hebrew palaeography and codicology in his- torical perspective. Furthermore, the manuscript evidence can help us to interpret chronological data in rarer types of sources such as epigraphy or early printing. However the precise meaning of the dated colophons them- selves sometimes demands special examination.1 Different systems of year reckoning were in use among medieval Jewish scribes, some of them fairly exotic (for example, from the Flood or from the Exodus), but as a rule those were accompanied by well-known eras such as the Creation or the Seleucid one.2 The reckoning from the Creation of the World is the best-known era of the Jews (still in use today being mostly known as just the Jewish era). It was widespread throughout the Middle Ages, and usually we have no problems with its interpretation: it is suffi- cient to know that AM 5000 corresponds to 1239/40 CE (i.e. roughly from September 1239 to September 1240), while the average year length in both systems is practically the same.3 Nevertheless, as will be shown further, even such a reliable chronological system as the Creation era has its own problems: either of merely technical matter (the year number given in a colophon is uncertain) or of real chronological importance (the use of the era may be unusual).
1. Such an examination and especially a quantitative analysis of specific dating methods presented in this paper was possible thanks to the Hebrew Palaeography Project of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and its codicological database SfarData which is avail- able now at the site sfardata.nli.org.il (integrated within the National Library of Israel). Most of the manuscripts mentioned further are provided with their numbers in the Project (HPP). 2. The years of these two eras will be further designated by AM and AG (for Anno Mundi and Anno Graecorum) respectively. 3. The reckoning of the years from the Creation of the World is based on the Biblical chronology as it was calculated in the early Rabbinical work Seder ῾olam, on its nature see Ch. MILIKOWSKY, “Seder ‘Olam and Jewish Chronography in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods”, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 52 (1985), p. 115-139. Information about the Creation era and the calendar based on it can be found, for example, at N. BUSHWICK, Understanding the Jewish Calendar, New York-Jerusalem, 1989. For corre- spondence of the Rabbinical and the Julian dates in the Middle Ages, see E. MAHLER, Hand- buch der jüdischen Chronologie, Leipzig, 1916. PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 161
We shall put aside cases of a manuscript’s physical deficiency,4 or sus- pected forgery,5 or uncertain identification of its very characters.6 Our inter- est is in authentic and fully preserved but still ambiguous chronological indications. One of the problems here is the use of incomplete numbers with no indication not only of millennia (which is regular usage causing no prob- lem for actual dating), but of centuries as well. Thus MS Moscow, Russian State Library, Günzburg collection 133 (HPP R287), where the year is des- ignated by a chronogram representing 59, ought to be dated AM 5159 (1398/99 CE) and not a hundred years earlier, because its copyist can be identified as the so-called Bologna scribe who flourished in late 14th – early 15th century.7 In cases like this, the date – pretty obvious for the writer himself – can be highly questionable for the present-day historian. But as for the manuscripts, the divergence on such a long term as centuries is usu- ally realized on palaeographic and especially codicological grounds, whereas a few-year vagueness is easier to escape the notice of researchers. We shall consider three categories of ambivalent year numbers: those where a character can bear no numeric value at all; those where the charac- ters are obviously numeric but the exact value of one of them is uncertain; and those where the total arithmetic number is clear but it is still uncertain if it is the same number in our generally used Creation era. These three kinds usually cause an ambiguity of thirty, of five and of one year, respectively.
Abbreviations of Rachel type: Do we deal with a numerical character?
Years written fully in words are not rare in colophons, but the alphanu- merical notation, i.e. expressing numbers by Hebrew characters, was very
4. Thus MS St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia Evr. II B 124 (HPP R6) could be dated merely by the interval 941 to 1039 CE, for the year number in its colophon has only thousands and hundreds readable: M. GLATZER, C. SIRAT, M. BEIT-ARIÉ, Codices hebraicis litteris exarati quo tempore scripti fuerint exhibentes, vol. 2, Turnhout, 1999, p. 85. Obviously there is no special chronological interest in cases like this one. 5. A classical example of this sort can be the letter qoph (100) made from an original reš (200) by addition of a single stroke that presents the date as a century earlier: for instance, MS Oxford, Bodleian Library Can. Or. 78 (HPP C88), fol. 249v. 6. Such a difficulty we encounter in the colophon of MS Moscow, Russian State Library, Günzburg collection 1594 (HPP R335), fol. 21v, where it is unclear if the date has the letter ṭet (9) or a closely written nun and waw (56). However, as a whole, the year designation there is even more complicated as will be shown in the next section. 7. He was identified at the Hebrew Palaeography Project as the copyist of MS Vatican Library Urb. ebr. 46, MS Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod. Heb. 77 and MS Cam- bridge University Library Add. 378.1 (HPP E147, G16, C575), the first two dated 1397, the last one dated 1401. 162 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS usual, and it is here that we encounter most of problematic readings. Besides the obvious fact that in the case of a single letter it is always easier to make a mistake, there are some specific ambiguous forms even when the interpre- tation of every given character is clear. One of them is a combined abbrevia- tion: a number-like expression where not all the characters were used for their numerical value but rather some abbreviated word is also implied. For example, letter šin in the initial position can appear as the first letter of year), which makes the date three centuries earlier than in the) שנה the word case where its numerical value (300) was intended. Thus, the scribe of MS London, British Library Or. 6712 (HPP C365), written in Italy, used the not for its arithmetic value of 348, but as abbreviation of שמ״ח expression the year 48), i.e. 5048 (1287/88 CE), which is clear from another) שנת מ״ח colophon of his in the same manuscript.8 Such a use of šin in dates is known not only from manuscripts and not only with the Creation era: an interesting example is given by the Judeo-Arabic inscription at the “Mosque of the Snakes” (converted synagogue) in Aleppo, where the date is written as This case leaves no doubt: here the first letter could not be 9.שתקנ״ג לשטרות used for its numerical value not only because the year AG [1]853 for this inscription is too late historically,10 but just because of a pretty impossible combination of šin, taw and qoph making eight hundred instead of normal double taw. However the combined abbreviation that was really widely used through לפרט the Late Middle Ages is a peculiar form with the final lamed meaning (of minor reckoning, without the indication of thousands), which became popular in Ashkenazic manuscripts.11 All colophons with this form of date are recorded in the Hebrew Palaeography Project and can be found today in its SfarData database.12 Sometimes the meaning of the lamed is obvious, in MS Cincinnati, Hebrew Union קע״ו לפרט used for קעו״ל like in the case of College 675 (HPP D250). The real ambiguity appears in what can be called abbreviation of Rachel type: the final lamed preceded by only two letters Here the .(רחל with numerical values of hundreds and units (as in the name wrong choice of interpretation, whether the tens and units were just
appears on fol. 1r, and on fol. 170r an earlier colophon of שמ״ח The year given just as .8 .שנת ה׳ אלפים ומ״ז לפרט the same scribe gives the year in full form as 9. F. del RÍO SÁNCHEZ, “La inscripción en judeo-árabe de la Mezquita de las Serpientes de Alepo”, Miscelánea de estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, sección Hebrea 61 (2012), p. 151-157. 10. Ibid., p. 157. 11. M. WILENSKI, “Li-phraṭ, li-phraṭ qaṭan we-li-phraṭ gadol” [On Designation of Minor and Major Reckoning], Kiryat Sepher 22 (1946), p. 305-306. 12. Indicated by xx”l in the search of eras. PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 163
was added, entails an error of thirty לפרט transposed or the abbreviated word years. with the year number became ל[פרט] Perhaps in Ashkenaz the amalgam of so traditional that we can hardly suspect a different meaning of the final lamed. On the other hand, outside of this region we meet fairly difficult cases. An instructive example is MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France hébr. 42 (HPP B17), where the date of completion of copying is indicated ,Although the manuscript is of Italian origin .ג׳ באב שנת רג״ל by the words at the Hebrew Palaeography Project it was dated AM 5203 (1443 CE): the -seemed to be the more appro לפרט considered as abbreviated רג״ל lamed of priate reading.13 This dating was challenged a quarter of century later on the grounds of art history: the ornament of the manuscript appears to be too late for 1443, and so the year 1473 seems to be more likely solution.14 The transposition of tens and units in this particular number can be understood pilgrimage) רגל as the scribe’s intention to build a word of nice meaning festival). Still more intricate is the case of another Italian manuscript (but its scribe is of French origin) with three more or less equally possible interpretations of the year of copying. In the colophon of MS Moscow, Russian State חדש כסליו Library, Günzburg collection 1594 the date is given apparently as but the reading of the year itself is uncertain: it may be either ,רט״ל לפ״ק -As the second reading obviously implies the use of abbrevia .רנו״ל or רט״ל or ,(239) רל״ט or inverted ,(209) ר״ט ל[פרט] tion, we can see here either i.e. from 1448 to 1495 CE. On the one hand, the ,(256) רנ״ו ל[פרט] finally conglomeration of the abbreviated form with another abbreviation of ר״ט לפרט the same meaning seems to be fairly ridiculous (making it literally On the other hand, the transposition of tens and units of number .(לפרט קטן 239 seems to be less probable as it makes no meaningful word. After all, the very qualification of the scribe in chronological matters is very doubtful: יו[ם]) he dates the copying by the Wednesday of Way-yiggaš Torah reading mentioning the month of Kislev (with no exact (ד׳ פרשת לגוי גדול אשימך שם date), but the fact is that this Wednesday never falls on Kislev at all, but always on the next month Tevet. Taking all that into consideration we just ought to acknowledge the difficulty: all three interpretations of the year number seem to be possible here.
13. C. SIRAT and M. BEIT-ARIÉ, Manuscrits médiévaux en caractères hébraïques portant des indications de date jusqu’à 1540, vol. 1, Notices, Jerusalem-Paris, 1972, ms 101, note 1. 14. T. METZGER, “Exégèse de Rashi et iconographie biblique juive au moyen âge”, in G. DAHAN, G. NAHON, É. NICOLAS (eds.), Rashi et la culture juive en France du Nord au moyen âge, Paris/Louvain, 1997, p. 214, note 59. 164 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
Sometimes a similar doubt can be raised by chronograms, the rather wide- spread technique in medieval colophons, in which date is represented by a word or a phrase, usually taken from Biblical verses, used in the sense of gemaṭria, where the sum of numerical values of its letters gives the number of the year. As a rule the whole word should be taken into account, but in a few cases its initial or final letter is not a part of the chronogram: usually it is clearly marked by dots or strokes upon the letters. However in rare instances, especially when the word has a preposition written together with it, the actual dating is indeed ambiguous. This is the case of MS Paris, Bib- liothèque nationale de France hébr. 773 (HPP B160) where only four dots thus the preposition (lamed) perhaps should ,למעלה are put above the word not be reckoned (other calendar details in the colophon cannot elucidate the copyist’s intention, for Marcheshvan 29 fell on Monday both in AM 5145 and 5175). In some colophons it may not be obvious which word(s) of a verse were used for a year number or even if we are dealing here with a chrono- gram at all. For instance, in MS Parma, Biblioteca Palatina 2232 (HPP Isaiah 59:20) bearing no) ובא לציון גואל E616), fol. 37v, the colophon words special marking could be considered just a kind of eulogy, and we are able to deduce with certainty that they were used together as a chronogram only thanks to another colophon of the same manuscript clearly dated AM [5]235 (fol. 105v). But at least in medieval dates we do not encounter a practice of plucking specific letters from different words as it was used to be in a later book culture, probably under the Latin influence:15 dealing with the Hebrew chronograms before the age of printing we just ought to determine the word(s) taken into account and in some cases to pay attention to a letter (mostly a preposition) that can be left out.16
15. In Latin tradition only seven letters (I, V, X, L, C, D and M) have numerical values, and obviously they were unevenly distributed in the words chosen for a chronogram. These letters were usually marked within the words by big bold font, and a similar mode was used by the early modern Hebrew print, though there it was applied for arbitrarily chosen letters. 16. An interesting example we can see among the dates of the Hebrew tombstones from Chufut-Kale in Crimea. The funerary inscription no 98 was published as bearing the year both meaning 718, which should be interpreted ,שבע רצון accompanied by chronogram תשי״ח as 958 CE: A. FIRKOVICH, Abhne zikkaron, Wilna, 1872, p. 29. Such an early date coming from a known falsifier as Avraham Firkovich was strongly suspicious, but it was unclear what exactly has been the distortion that can be imputed to him. A proposition admissible histori- – with only three letters – šin, bet and waw הש״ח cally was to restore the year number as accounted for the chronogram: J. MANN, Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature, vol. 2, New York, 1935, p. 463, note 63. However, although the date (1548 CE) is rather acceptable in itself, the use of letters collected in such a manner is unlikely: in Crimea of the 16th century we should expect the regular medieval practice of using whole words for a chronogram. This was confirmed only recently, when the original tombstones of the PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 165
Chronograms of Aaron type: What numerical value do we deal with?
As for the numerical values of the Hebrew letters, they are well known and just follow the alphabetic order from 1 to 400 (units, tens, hundreds). Higher hundreds are designated by combinations of 400 + 100 up to 400 + 400 + 100.17 The only uncommon variant here can be the use of the for the numbers 500 to 900, but it is (ץ ,ף ,ן ,ם ,ך) five final forms of letters fairly rare and was never attested in the colophons within the dates accord- ing to the Creation era. Such a practice is known among the Karaite scribes, where it is restricted to the years of Hegira.18 An instructive example is MS St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia Evr.-Arab. I 2014 that gives both 596 Hegira and 1511 Seleucid year, where the same numeral 500 is expressed by final kaph in the Muslim reckoning, but by taw and qoph (400 + 100) in the Seleucid one.19 Even among the Hegira dates we can hardly expect a real ambiguity – both because of the peculiar position of such a final form at the beginning of a number and because of too large a difference between the possible meanings already of the letter kaph as 20 or as 500 years.20
while the השו״ם Chufut-Kale cemetery were examined in situ and the date was finally read as CE): A. (E.) FEDORCHUK and D. SHAPIRA, “The Tombstone 1586) רצון chronogram just as Inscriptions Nos. 1-326 from the Book Avnei Zikkaron by Avraham Firkowicz, according to Their Authentic Texts and with Their Real Dates: A Preliminary Report” (Hebrew), in D. SHAPIRA and D. LASKER (eds.), Eastern European Karaites in the Last Generations, Jeru- salem, 2011, p. 50. 17. In a few cases even 400 + 400 + 200 was in use instead of change of the millennia numbers: M. BEIT-ARIÉ, “An Unusual Form of Designating Date from the Creation in Manu- scripts” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 41 (1972-73), p. 116-124, 343-344; 42 (1973), p. 199. Recently the same system was found among Ashkenazic tombstone epitaphs: A. REINER, “An Unusual Rendering of Dates on Würzburg Tombstones, 1147-1346” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 79/1 (2011), p. 143-147. Although it is not a matter of ambiguity, the very possibility of such an extraor- dinary notation should be taken into consideration. 18. The four earliest examples – MSS St. Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts B231, National Library of Russia Evr.-Arab. I 73, 2014, 2074 (HPP R43, R90, R104, R105) – were presented in M. BEIT-ARIÉ, M. GLATZER, C. SIRAT, Codices hebraicis litteris exarati quo tempore scripti fuerint exhibentes, vol. 4, Turnhout, 2006, mss 96, 97, 100, 101. 19. The doubled taw in the colophon publication (ibid., p. 143), causing the Seleucid year to appear as 1911, is an obvious misprint. 20. It should be noted, however, that in earlier sources the use of the final letters for hun- dreds can be found with other eras as well. Such a practice, apparently influenced by the Arabic alphanumerical system where every hundred has its special character, seems to have been more widespread in the early Islamic period. Thus a Geonic source mentioned by Eštori :(for AM [4]564 (803/4 CE ךס״ד ha-Parḥi in Kaphtor wa-pheraḥ, chapter 51 used the form see, e.g., MS Oxford, Bodleian Library Hunt. 105, fol. 216v (in modern editions, it was hundreds], obviously because the 5] ה׳ מאות influenced by the expression הס״ד changed into form with kaph seemed incomprehensible for the publishers). In early medieval practice such designating בזעם a use of the final letters can be found even in gemaṭria of Biblical words, as the year 679 from the destruction of the Temple: M. MARGULIES, “A New Document on the 166 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
The ambiguity that we do encounter in the Creation dates is connected to millennia designation. The common way to express a few thousands in alphanumerical notation is the use of a letter for units at the beginning of number: it may be accompanied with some special mark accenting that it comes in the capacity of thousands, but often this is just obvious from its לפרט קטן initial position. In addition many colophons use the special term (“of minor reckoning”) to clarify that the year number does not include the thousands.21 Nevertheless sometimes the ambiguity remains: there are man- uscripts where we are not entirely sure if the letter he (5) designates five years or five millennia. Thus in MS Jerusalem, National Library of Israel Heb. 8º 2132 (HPP fol. 165r). This expression is) שנת הש לפ״ק ZA2) the year is indicated as fairly strange by itself: on the one hand the letter he before the hundreds should mean five thousand, on the other hand we have the clear-cut indica- tion that the number was given according to the minor reckoning (without thousands). It may be that the scribe has intended to write 5300 and just perhaps even without awareness of its exact ,לפ״ק added the abbreviation meaning (quite possible that the minor reckoning was the regular one for the scribe, but in that very year he added the letter for thousands because the number of one letter only would look too jejune). However it also may be that the scribe intended to put down the number 305 (obviously of the sixth millennium as well) and just by some whim changed the order of
Fast of the Earthquake” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 29/4 (1960), p. 339-344. Cases like this are of real ambiguity: since here the final letter mem is not in the fixed place for hundreds, its specific meaning of 600 instead of 40 could be determined only by historical context. -of major reckon“) לפרט גדול In early modern times, we encounter an analogous term .21 ing”) for the year numbers that do include thousands. Such a usage shows clearly that the has finally received a neutral meaning of a year reckoning. However originally this פרט word word (meaning a part, a detail) was used in the chronological context for an incomplete count- ing, reckoning within a millennium or even within a century: WILENSKI, “Li-phraṭ”, p. 306. for the years within a century is known already in the Talmud: BT ῾Abhoda פרטי The term פרט for the years within a millennia and פרט גדול zara 9a. Perhaps the rather logical usage of for the years within a century, which is not entirely speculative, was the original meaning קטן of this wording: Ch. J. BORNSTEIN, “Ta᾿arikhe Yiśra᾿el” [The Eras of Israel], Ha-tequpha 9 (1920), p. 246-247. But such a distinction is hardly attested in the actual medieval dating, -form can accom לפרט is usually used with hundreds, while the plain לפרט קטן where the term acquired a new פרט pany the dates which include thousands as well. Moreover, the word chronological meaning to such an extent, that some authors, for instance the 14th-century לפרט ,לפרט אדם Spanish scholar Solomon Franco, used it for any era even in constructions like ,for the Jewish, Christian and Muslim era respectively: B. R. GOLDSTEIN לפרט הגר and אדום “Solomon Franco on the Zero Point for Trepidation”, Suhayl: International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation 10 (2011), p. 81. On devel- opment of the common meaning of minor and major reckoning see also G. B. SARFATTI, “LFQ ve-LFG” [On the Acronyms LFQ and LFG], Lešonenu 35 (1961), p. 145-149. PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 167 the two letters. It is not easy to choose between 5300 and [5]305 as the year of this colophon, and even the indication of weekday and date of month is not entirely decisive: the manuscript is dated Monday, the 26th of Shevat, whereas the actual weekday for this date was Wednesday in AM 5300 and Sunday in AM 5305. Although this can be called good agreement with the 5305 choice (1545 CE), because examples of one-day discrepancy are not too rare in medieval colophons (apparently indicating copying in night time), nevertheless the transposition of hundreds and units is so unusual, that the date still remains doubtful. But for the usual form of year number such a doubt concerning minor or major reckoning is uncommon; an ambiguity like that is typical for chrono- grams. Once the order of characters is submitted to the building of a mean- ingful word, their position can not be effective for marking thousands, and that is why the chronograms with letter he are always suspicious.22 Tradi- tionally, the gemaṭria for year numbers was in use almost exclusively for the Creation era23 and, from the year 1240 CE on, we always deal with five as the number for thousands.
22. In rare instances even more than one letter could be suspected in designating millennia. Thus, in MS Jerusalem, National Library of Israel Heb. 8° 1998, fols. 2-20 (HPP A11), the year where the letters for 50, 1, 4, 200 were apparently נאדר number is given by the chronogram used for AM 5250 (both 1 and 4 meaning thousands): C. SIRAT, M. BEIT-ARIÉ, M. GLATZER, Manuscrits médiévaux en caractères hébraïques portant des indications de date jusqu’à 1540, vol. 3, Notices, Jerusalem/Paris, 1986, ms 44, note 5. The argument mentioned there is not too strong: it concerns the day of counting the ꜥomer given in the colophon that would fall on Saturday in AM 5255 (1495 CE); however, it can be explained just by writing not on Sabbath itself but close to it, as we know from other medieval colophons with a one-day discrepancy between the weekday and the date of month. The main reason for the unusual interpretation of this chronogram is the apparent origin of the manuscript from Spain before the 1492 expulsion, as is extensively discussed in the manuscript questionnaire in the SfarData database. 23. Perhaps the only medieval Jewish colophon using a chronogram for a different era is אשא found in MS St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia Evr. I 631 (HPP R238) that gives :Job 36:3) for AG [1]770. Interestingly enough, this dating is also problematic) דעי למרחוק corresponds (דתתל״ל the Hegira year 864 in the same colophon (given itself in a very odd form to AG 1771 (1460 CE), and this is supported by the exact date of copying, the 18th of Tammuz and of Ramadan (in the previous year Ramadan occurred in the month of Av). Another exam- ple of chronograms for various eras is attested in the illuminated star catalogue preserved in MS Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania LJS 57 (formerly Sassoon 823; HPP ZY64), p. 117 and MS Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. Hebr. 132 (HPP ZJ20), fol. 66r. ,for the Christian era יהושע The position of the stars is given for the year 1391 designated as for the Creation era (the same verse Isaiah המוציא for the era of Hegira and שאו מרום עיניכם 40:26 talking about the starry sky was used for the last two chronograms). This dating note is not a scribe’s colophon, but both manuscripts seem to have been copied near to the indicated year. It is worth mentioning that as late as in the nineteenth century the text was copied in Damascus with roughly sketched drawings, now MS Jerusalem, National Library of Israel Heb. 4º 418 (the chronograms appear on fol. 26v); some errors in it can indicate that MS Philadelphia was used as its model. 168 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
In a few colophons, the chronogram of major reckoning is specially accentuated either by contrast mark for the letter he, or by a statement in words: MS New York, Jewish Theological Seminary 2469 (HPP D116) marked by a separate dot over each of the ארכה provides the chronogram first three characters but by a combination of strokes over the final he; in MS Parma, Biblioteca Palatina 2443 (HPP E278) the chronogram with the is immediately accompanied by an explanation that the he is five רנה word thousand. However does it mean that in the absence of any special instruc- tions a chronogram is bound to be of minor reckoning? A rather widespread opinion in Hebrew book research indeed attributes such a meaning to every (or almost every) chronogram with letter he not in the initial position, if only the colophon does not contain distinct elucidation of the opposite. This prin- ciple was formulated for the first time by Malachi Beit-Arié in a footnote of the voluminous publication of the Hebrew Palaeography Project.24 Refer- ences on it appeared since then in publications on Hebrew incunabula where the five-year difference may be of greater importance for historians,25 and, as happens not infrequently, an idea once expressed by the leading scholar in due course turns into the standing rule. While Beit-Arié, in dating the Zamora printing of Samuel ben Musa, carefully wrote no more than that “the date should very likely be calculated without the thousands when the word does not start with the letter he”26 some years later, Shimon Iakerson already called the very possibility of the major reckoning in a similar case in Faro ברנה just “speculative” and maintained concerning the chronogram printing of Samuel Porteiro that its he “is the final letter in a word and, consequently, cannot be arbitrarily interpreted as the first letter of the without additional indications.”27 This categorical position (ה׳רנ״ב) gemaṭria was not shaken even by the fact that the date of minor reckoning falls a fortnight after the decree on the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal. However, it is rather the denial of major reckoning on grounds of an abstract reasoning or pure aesthetics that seems to be speculative and arbitrary. The idea that one and the same principle can be attributed to the common year numbers and to the chronograms sounds fairly attractive: if, in the common form, the meaning of he depends on its position, being 5000 at the beginning
24. SIRAT and BEIT-ARIÉ, Manuscrits médiévaux, vol. 1, Notices, ms 117, note 1. 25. For instance, A. K. OFFENBERG, Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections: A First International Census, Nieuwkoop, 1990, p. xx. 26. M. BEIT-ARIÉ, “The Relationship between Early Hebrew Printing and Handwritten Books: Attachment or Detachment”, Scripta Hierosolymitana 29 (1989), p. 14, note 47. 27. Sh. M. IAKERSON, “An Unknown List of Hebrew Books”, Manuscripta Orientalia 4/1 (1998), p. 20. PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 169 and 5 elsewhere, this very rule for the chronograms seems to be clear, rea- sonable and unambiguous. The only question that remains is whether the medieval scribes and early printers were of the same opinion. As will be shown below, quite the opposite is true: in both mentioned incunabula, as in many manuscripts with similar chronograms, the letter he should rather likely be reckoned as five thousand. Apparently, the only empirical analysis of medieval sources directed to clear up this ambiguity is still the observation made by Beit-Arié more than forty years ago. Being based on the chronograms that can be dated with certainty either due to concord of weekday and date of month, or owing to another, indubitable date in the same manuscript, its method is rather prom- ising. However, the data provided there can hardly help to elucidate the problem: although we do find there a few instances of chronograms with initial he designating thousands, there is no basis for the conclusion that in any other position this letter should mean five years only, because the most examples provided for the minor reckoning are the chronograms containing no letter he at all.28 What can be learned from these cases is only the absence of such an odd system of chronograms, where the number of thousands is somehow hidden within the other letters. It should be noted that even this conclusion is not absolute: an example of the kind was provided in a later volume of the same publication – MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de was dated – (289) בעזרי France hébr. 616 (HPP B124) with chronogram there AM 5284 on basis of the weekday and the date of the month given in the colophon.29 Here we deal with letters that should be summed up and then, pretty artificially, the number five should be subtracted from the sum on account of thousands. Such an unusual sort of chronogram without the letter he but with a note on major reckoning sometimes can be found in later Hebrew printed books.30 No doubt that in the medieval manuscripts this practice is extremely rare.31
28. Among the six examples of the chronograms according to the minor reckoning (SIRAT ,דרך ,קטן and BEIT-ARIÉ, Manuscrits médiévaux, vol. 1, Notices, ms 117, note 1) four are .ibid., mss 71, 120, 125, 162) without the ambiguous letter) ארן ,באורך 29. SIRAT, BEIT-ARIÉ, GLATZER, Manuscrits médiévaux, vol. 3, Notices, ms 74, note 1. 30. See for instance in the catalogue of I. YUDLOV, The Israel Mehlman Collection in the שנת ותר״א אותו כי :Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, 1984, p. 179, no 1099 .שנת וטעמו כצפיח״ת בדבש לפ״ג :p. 197, no 1221 ;טוב לפ״ג 31. Probably the only other example among the manuscripts described at the Hebrew Palaeography Project is MS Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Neofiti 5 (HPP E213) with chron- which does not match the date and weekday for AM 5234, but does match (234) ידרך ogram AM 5229. 170 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
As for the chronograms that do contain letter he, they are rather numer- ous, and today thanks to the SfarData database we have much easier access to the medieval colophons for a quantitative analysis.32 After choosing there all the manuscripts bearing a chronogram, those having a letter he but not in the initial position were examined. Some of them are still ambiguous, but a considerable amount have an inner indication of the minor or the major reckoning, either by means of an ordinary year number, or by the weekday and the date of month that can jointly correspond only to one of the two options of the year.33 The results are 31 manuscripts with chronograms according to the minor reckoning and 32 manuscripts with the major one. The last number does not include the cases of special accentuation of the thousands at the chronogram itself (as in above mentioned MSS HPP D116 and E278), but includes manuscripts with an ordinary year number in the same colophon. The details concerning the investigated chronograms are provided in the following tables.
Minor reckoning (he is for 5)
HPP Library and call-number Chronogram AM & CE year Script Sephardic (1264) 025[5] יהי R44 Moscow, RSL Günzburg 198 Ashkenazic (1342) 102[5] אמונה C149 Oxford, Bodleian Opp. 161 Sephardic (1355) 115[5] סנה; יעלה C383 London, BL Add. 27557 Ashkenazic (1393) 153[5] צהלה חדוה R285 Moscow, RSL Günzburg 606 Ashkenazic (?) (1414) 175[5] למעלה B160 Paris, BNF hébr. 773 Italian (1422) 183[5] עמי בנוה G55 Munich, BSB Cod. Heb. 201 Ashkenazic (1430) 190[5] מנה יפה G141 Hamburg, SUB Cod. Levy 18 Ashkenazic (1439) 199[5] צדקה T15 Prague, NL VII 10 Italian (1438/9) 199[5] צדקה (E533 Modena, Estense γ.G.7.19(242 Sephardic (1439) 199[5] צדקה E386 Parma, Palatina 2207 Sephardic (1441) 201[5] בצדקה G161 Hamburg, SUB Cod. Hebr. 70 Sephardic (1452) 212[5] וראה E557 Parma, Palatina 2096 Sephardic (1454) 214[5] ואברה[-ם] B150 Paris, BNF hébr. 740
32. All known Hebrew manuscripts bearing in their colophons a date up to 1540 CE are included in the database. 33. Mentioned in the previous section, MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, hébr. למעלה is also included here despite the two possible interpretations of its chronogram 773 (with or without the preposition taken into account), for both of them are possible only for minor reckoning. PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 171
HPP Library and call-number Chronogram AM & CE year Script Sephardic (1455) 215[5] והדר; ורבבה B26 Paris, BNF hébr. 110 Sephardic (1455) 216[5] אריה E30 Florence, BML Plut. 88.52 Sephardic (1456) 216[5] יראה (YY84 Sotheby’s auction (1993 Sephardic (1458) 218[5] ביראה E202 Vatican, BAV Neofiti 4 Italian (1467) 227[5] ברכה E613 Parma, Palatina 2343 Sephardic (1473) 234[5] ואברכה R263 Moscow, RSL Günzburg 926 Sephardic (1476) 236[5] אל הר C283 Oxford, Bodleian Kennicott 1 Sephardic (1476) 236[5] אל הר G175 Hamburg, SUB Cod. Hebr. 310 Italian (1478) 238[5] יזהירו E73 Verona, Biblioteca Civica 344 Sephardic (1480) 240[5] ברוך הוא B143 Paris, BNF hébr. 722 Italian (1482) 242[5] והוכן בחסד כסא F18 Leiden, University Or. 107A Sephardic (1485) 245[5] רמה A7 Jerusalem, NLI Heb. 8° 2065 Sephardic (1485) 245[5] רמה C68 Oxford, Bodleian Laud. Or. 84 Sephardic (1485) 245[5] רמה E37 Florence, BML Gaddi 155 Italian (1494) 255[5] [ב-]רנה L14 Zurich, Zentralbibl. OR. 158 Sephardic (1506) 267[5] ונהרו D80 New York, JTS MS 4074 Sephardic (1525) 285[5] רפה A4 Jerusalem, NLI Heb. 8° 492 Sephardic (1535) 295[5] רצה E312 Rome, Casanatense 3128
Major reckoning (he is for 5000)
HPP Library and call-number Chronogram AM & CE year Script Byzantine (1380) 5140 צנה E137 Vatican, BAV ebr. 170 Sephardic (1441) 5201 ראה C187 Oxford, Bodleian Opp. 146 Sephardic (1448) 5209 טהר D263 Toronto, UTL, Friedberg 5-002 Byzantine (1449) 5209 טהר R49 St. Petersburg, NLR Evr. I 246 Sephardic (1449) 5210 והדר C242 Oxford, Bodleian Hunt. 513 Byzantine (1451) 5211 אריה E666 Vatican, BAV ebr. 530, frag. 3 Byzantine (1452) 5212 בהיר R313 Moscow, RSL Günzburg 1346 Sephardic (1453) 5214 טהרה C439 London, BL Add. 18687 Byzantine (1463) 5223 אברכה B218 Paris, BNF hébr. 965 Byzantine (1467) 5227 זכרה J22 Vienna, NB Cod. Hebr. 81 Byzantine (1479) 5239 לטהר R155 St. Petersburg, NLR Evr. I 647 Byzantine (1480) 5240 רמה G44 Munich, BSB Cod. Heb. 36 Sephardic (1482) 5242 ברמה R329 Moscow, RSL Günzburg 43 172 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
HPP Library and call-number Chronogram AM & CE year Script Sephardic (1482) 5243 אברהם (E529 Modena, Estense α.R.8.8(0.30 Byzantine (1484) 5245 מהרה R358 St. Petersburg, NLR Evr. I 343-344 Byzantine (1486) 5246 מהרו B213 Paris, BNF hébr. 950 Sephardic (1486) 5247 זמרה C543 formerly: London, Jews’ College 7 Sephardic (1487) 5248 אזמרה E223 Vatican, BAV ebr. 166 Sephardic (1489) 5249 ברוך ייי׳ E655 Florence, BML Plut. 88.27 Byzantine (1489) 5250 רנה C643 Cambridge, Trinity College F.12.24 Sephardic (1490) 5250 רנה D178 Boston, Countway Med. Ms. Heb. 5 Sephardic (1491) 5251 אהרן B238 Paris, BNF hébr. 1069 Sephardic (1492) 5252 ברנה D4 New York, JTS L. 6 Byzantine (11–1510) 5271 ארעה D166 New York, JTS MS 3429 Byzantine (1511) 5272 [ו-]ערבה D219 New York, JTS MS 1270 Sephardic (1518) 5278 וערבה A89 Jerusalem, NLI Yah. Heb. 94 Italian (1522) 5282 נברך יה A54 Jerusalem, NLI Heb. 8° 6740 Sephardic (1532) 5292 בצרה B29 Paris, BNF hébr. 152 Sephardic (1534) 5294 וארפאהו C240 Oxford, Bodleian Poc. 208 Sephardic (1534) 5294 וארפאהו C516 London, BL Add. 26922 Sephardic (1534) 5294 צרדה F20 Leiden, University Cod. Or. 4770 Byzantine (1537) 5297 והארץ F21 Leiden, University Cod. Or. 4762
Although the collected data speak for themselves, the overall amount of the manuscripts examined here is too modest for talking about statistics or making elaborated conclusions from the exact number of these or those chronograms. Too many factors might influence definitiveness, beginning with the manuscripts that did not come down to us, through the possible inaccuracy in the database, and finally the questions of methodology of counting itself (for instance, some scribes have copied more than one manu- script and perhaps it would be more appropriate to compare the number of writers than the number of writings). But what is really important is the clear picture of fairly comparable quantity of the minor and the major reckoning among the chronograms with non-initial letter he. Among the colophons presented in the table of major reckoning there are many cases where the year is given in the full form, usually in words, while next to it we see a chronogram with a mere decorative or mnemonic role. Besides 14 manuscripts with such an unambiguous indication, there are two ליצירה more that contain a hint: the chronogram is followed by the word which usually, although not always, is used with the major reckoning (for PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 173
would be more expected). Thus allowing for לפרט the minor one the word these 16 cases, even the strictest approach retains other 16 colophons with apparently questionable chronogram, which interpretation according to the major reckoning became possible only due to a calendar investigation.34 The abundance of clearly explained colophons is not a reason to see the major reckoning in such chronograms as something exceptional that demands a special indication. Analyzing the chronograms of minor reckoning we receive the same picture: among the 31 cases, there are 12 manuscripts with the fully written year and 10 more where the chronogram is followed by an לפרט unequivocal explanation of the reckoning within the millennium (like After all it was only natural to add such .(מוסף על חמשת אלפים or האלף הששי an explanation either for minor or for major reckoning when both methods were used in chronograms. Doubtful cases were avoided in the tables, and the major reckoning was treated in an especially strict way. In all the manuscripts included here on the grounds of their weekdays and dates of month combination, the other interpretation of the chronogram would lead at least to two days of discrep- ancy (as was mentioned above, a one-day disparity is known in many medi- eval colophons and these cases should not be seen as problematic). Rather questionable are the dates we encounter among the Karaites, who did not follow the fixed calendar but began every month with the actually visible new moon, so in their manuscripts the day of month might not be the same day as in the Rabbinical system, and the comparison with the weekday would be of little help. That is why the manuscripts of evidently Karaite origin in which year of copying was not indicated explicitly were not included into the table of major reckoning: even in the cases of MS Jerusa- lem, National Library of Israel Heb. 8° 1052 (HPP A110) and MS London, is attached to ליצירה British Library Or. 1104 (HPP C511), where the word -respectively), the major reckoning interpreta פרה and יטהר) the chronogram tion is not entirely reliable. One more example is MS Oxford, Bodleian Library Kennicott 5 (HPP C288): interpretation of its date according to the major reckoning is highly probable although not free from doubts. The year of copying is given here ,and the day is called the 5th of Sivan, Sunday אברהם by the chronogram however in AM [5]248 this date falls on Thursday. The solution proposed by the catalogue is to exclude the initial aleph from the letters used for the year number, and thus the manuscript was dated AM 5247 (1487 CE) when
34. MAHLER, Handbuch is the classical tool for checking the dates of medieval Rabbinical calendar and their correspondence to the weekdays. 174 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS the date of month fits the weekday named.35 Although certain cases of rejecting the first letter from a chronogram are known in medieval colo- phons, such a choice is used to be clearly marked, however here the letters of the word and the dots upon them are not arranged with much accuracy. In view of the results collected in the tables, another solution inevitably comes to mind: in AM 5243 (1483 CE) the 5th of Sivan also fell on Sunday. A striking result is the geo-cultural distribution of the data. It is easy to see that all the Ashkenazic and most of the Italian scribes used the chrono- grams according to the minor reckoning, all the Byzantine scribes implied the major one, while in the Sephardic tradition both systems were more or less equally used. The type of the script does not always correspond to the actual region of the copying, thus rather many Sephardic scribes presented in the tables worked in Italy or in the Byzantine-Ottoman area. Among the expressions that can be used for chronograms of major reck- oning, the most suspicious are those that could be built from the letters of the regular full year number, a suitable name for them could be chronograms number). Such a form הרנ״א is an anagram of אהרן of Aaron type (the name just suggests itself, and we see that the majority of the chronograms in the אהרן second table follow this model. MS HPP B238 copied in the year of provides a nice example of an approach to the chronogram: it has three but ,הרנ״א colophons, in two of them the year is given in the regular way as after copying the third text the scribe paid attention for a nice opportunity of playing with these letters and expressed the year number by the known Biblical name. Still more natural is the use of anagrams when the common year number seems like a meaningful word with negative connotation. Thus, MS HPP R313 was written in the year the number of which would com- and this can be read as the word ‘quarrel’; no ,הרי״ב monly be written as .’meaning ‘serene ,בהיר wonder that the scribe preferred the form Certainly not all the chronograms are so simple, sometimes we find very peculiar expressions. Perhaps the most unusual is the case of MS HPP E655 where the indication of the five millennia is hidden as deep as in the Sacred Name which as usual was not fully written but substituted by special graphic form with three letters yud. Here the Tetragrammaton was not only used for
35. Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: Supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda to Vol. I (A. Neubauer’s Catalogue), compiled under the direction of M. BEIT- ARIÉ, Oxford, 1994, col. 453. PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 175 numerical purpose, its letters even received diverse meaning: one of its two he indicates five thousand.36 Realizing that the major reckoning is not just a neglected exception among the chronograms, we could revise the dates of the two incunabula mentioned above, both with chronograms of Aaron type. Even for the com- mentary of Rashi on the Pentateuch, published in the year designated as in Zamora, the dating according to the major reckoning seems rather זמרה plausible.37 But the Talmudic treatise Giṭṭin, published in the year desig- in Faro, almost certainly appeared five years earlier than its ברנה nated as widespread dating, for the assumption of Jewish printing after the official expulsion from Portugal sounds fairly extravagant.38 Comparison with MS Parma, Biblioteca Palatina 2443, with its emphasized record of the major cannot serve as evidence that without ,רנה reckoning next to the chronogram such an accentuated explanation this very word cannot be interpreted in the same sense:39 we see that MSS HPP C643 and D178 used this word for chronogram without any mention of the millennia indicated in it.
Occurrence of Adam reckoning: With which Creation era are we dealing?
Five main geo-cultural regions are distinguished in Hebrew codicology, and it seems that the chronological problems are justly distributed among them. While the abbreviations of Rachel type were mostly in use in Ashkenaz and to lesser extent in Italy, and the chronograms of Aaron type are usually connected to Byzantine-Ottoman and Sephardic regions, in the Middle East we encounter a real chronological problem: not just a form of year indica- tion but the reckoning itself can be ambiguous. In contrast to other parts of the Jewish world, in the Oriental region the reckoning from the Creation was not the main chronological system. It is the Seleucid era – usually known among the Jews as the era of contracts
36. The year of MS HPP A54, included in the table, is expressed in a similar way, while the very letters are explicitly written there. Although provoking grave halakhic questions, the use of sacred names for chronograms is known even in later printed books: Y. S. SPIEGEL, ‘Amudim be-toledot ha-sepher ha-‘ibhri: be-ša‘are ha-dephus [Chapters in the History of the Jewish Book: On Title-pages of the Printing], Jerusalem, 2014, p. 273-295. 37. For description of its only known copy, see A. K. OFFENBERG, A Choice of Corals: Facets of Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Printing, Nieuwkoop, 1992, p. 139-140. 38. Rich bibliography of opinions concerning its dating is given by IAKERSON, “Unknown List”, p. 20. 39. Contrary to IAKERSON, ibid. 176 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
(li-šṭarot, le-šiṭre) and also as the years of the Greeks or of Alexander the Great – that was the most widespread in the East. Being well documented in a lot of sources in different languages, this era starts with the reconquest of Babylon by Seleucus Nicator in 312 BCE, so its year 1311 corresponds to 999/1000 CE (in other words, AM 5000 should be AG 1551). Although in antiquity the precise beginning of the Seleucid year depended on this or that local calendar and could fall not only in early Autumn as in Macedonian use but also in early Spring as in the Babylonian calendar,40 such a variance can hardly be expected in medieval Jewish chronology when the year begin- ning with the month of Tišri has been well established.41 But sometimes we do encounter an apparent contradiction between the Seleucid era and the reckoning from the Creation of the World: in certain Hebrew sources, when both these eras are used together, they demonstrate a one-year divergence.42 Already Solomon Judah Rapoport in the mid- nineteenth century collected many examples of this sort from Rabbinic lit- erature in his encyclopedic work Erech Millin and came to conclusion that here the Seleucid era had a second variant: starting not from Tišri but from Nisan, according to the ancient Mesopotamian tradition.43 However this idea is not only unlikely by itself,44 it fails to explain the phenomenon. Indeed, the problem at all the known medieval examples is that the AG number is bigger by one than its expected value, whereas the ancient Seleucid reckon- ing from Nisan had begun half a year after the Macedonian beginning of the same year; thus even if this Babylonian system had remained until the Mid- dle Ages this could not solve the observed discrepancy between the Creation and Seleucid chronology but would rather double it.45
40. E. J. BICKERMAN, Chronology of the Ancient World, London, 1968, p. 71. 41. For the years of the Seleucid era, the beginning from Tišri is explicitly mentioned already in the Talmud: although according to the Mishnah the years of kings begin on the 1st of Nisan (Ro᾿š ha-šana 1, 1), the Gemara attributes this rule to the kings of Israel only, while the years of the gentile kings should begin on the 1st of Tišri: BT ῾Abhoda zara 10a. 42. Detailed analysis of the Jewish eras and the problems of their conformity was given almost a century ago by BORNSTEIN, “Ta᾿arikhe Yiśra᾿el”. But today this work seems to be rather neglected and some of his main conclusions should be repeated. 43. S. J. L. RAPOPORT, Erech millin: Opus encyclopaedicum, vol. 1, Prague, 1852, p. 73-76. 44. It is sufficient to mention the use of the year type (qebhi‘a) formulae all over the Ori- ent, for they give the weekdays of the 1st of Tišri and the 1st of Nisan half a year later. For instance, AG 1799 in the colophon of MS Ramat Gan, Bar Ilan University Library 1001 (HPP See further, note 61, for .בסימן גכה :A65), copied in Bukhara, is accompanied by its year type more details on the structure of these formulae. 45. Already BORNSTEIN, “Ta᾿arikhe Yiśra᾿el”, p. 315, wondered in his florid style how מרוב שמחתו של הגאון על המציאה:such a great scholar as Rapoport could err in so simple issue slightly) שמצא לא הרגיש כי לא זו היא האבדה אשר הוא מבקש וכי במחילת כבודו איוב באויב נתחלף לו PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 177
Nevertheless, as long as the year reckoning according to the Creation era continues to be considered unquestionable and self-evident, the Seleucid era deviating from the usual correspondence would be inevitably treated as somehow abnormal, be it connected to its Hellenistic history or not. A strik- ing example of this approach is demonstrated in such a landmark publication in Jewish manuscript studies as the Monumenta Palaeographica Hebrew series: the Seleucid era is declared here unreliable and varying among dif- ferent scribes, while the main clue for the true dating is seen in the Creation era which is presented as knowing no disagreement.46 This position seems fairly strange, because an unprejudiced examination of the discrepancy between the two chronological systems used in the Oriental manuscripts would rather make us prefer the Seleucid era as more reliable: it was both the most widespread in the Jewish sources of this region and also well- known among other peoples. Moreover, in fact it is the Creation era that is well attested as having two variants: the divergence between the so-called Eastern and Western tradi- tions of the Creation chronology has been described by classical medieval authors such as Abraham Bar Hiyya and Isaac Israeli.47 The distinction can be explained by different approaches to the very reckoning of the years and not as disagreement on the traditional time of the Creation. In the both sys- tems, the first year of the era began on the 1st of Tišri, but in the Land of Israel it was the year that contained the calculated Creation, whereas in Babylon the era started with the first year of the world already created, which means one year later. The original tradition perhaps implied that the world was created in Nisan,48 but even for the Creation in Tišri the earlier beginning of the era received its reason: the 1st of Tišri was the sixth day, when Adam was created, while the first five days of the world history deserved their own year number. So the later epoch of the era is known as free translation: overjoyed at his find the master did not feel that this is not the loss he is looking for and that, with all due respect, chalk and cheese were mixed here). 46. M. BEIT-ARIÉ, C. SIRAT, M. GLATZER, Codices hebraicis litteris exarati quo tempore scripti fuerint exhibentes, vol. 1, Turnhout, 1997 (Monumenta palaeographica medii aevi, Series Hebraica), p. 14. 47. ABRAHAM BAR HIYYA, Sepher ha-‘ibbur, ed. H. FILIPOWSKI, London, 1851, p. 96-98 (pt 3, ch. 7); ISAAC ISRAELI, Liber jesod olam seu fundamentum mundi, 2, eds. B. GOLDBERG and L. ROSENKRANZ, Berlin, 1848, fol. 26r-v (pt 4, ch. 14). 48. Discussion on this matter is presented in the Talmud: the world was created in Nisan according to R. Joshua but in Tišri according to R. Eliezer (BT Ro᾿š ha-šana 10b-11a). Traces of both conceptions are visible in the traditional Jewish calendar: the vernal equinox (tequphat nisan) of the first year falls exactly on the beginning of Wednesday (the day of luminaries created), while the New Moon of the next Tišri falls exactly on 14 hours of Friday (the day man was created). 178 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS the Adam New Moon (molad adam), and the earlier one (generally used today), corresponding to a conventional time preceding the Creation, received the name of the Chaos New Moon (molad tohu). The Adam epoch can explain, for instance, the apparent contradiction in the famous Exilarch’s epistle (MS Cambridge University Library T-S 8G7.1) whose year is given as AG 1147 and AM 4595: the astronomical data men- tioned in this document is a clear evidence of correctness of its Seleucid era, which means that the Creation year was reckoned from the Adam New Moon.49 But in 836 CE, when questions of the very structure of the Jewish calendar were still a mater of hesitation, everything seemed possible. More intriguing is that such a practice was not limited to the ninth century: some Oriental manuscripts reckon the years from Adam even in the Late Middle Ages. One such example can be seen in a Biblical dictionary from the Iranian region, MS London, British Library Or. 10482 (formerly MS Gaster Heb. 77; HPP C533), its dated colophon was published already by Wilhelm Bacher at the end of the nineteenth century:50 תם אלאגרון בד׳ בשבא דהוא י״ד יומי לירח אדר ראשון <...> שנת אתשע״א לשטרות אלכסנדרון מגדון וליצירה הרי״ט שנה The dictionary has been completed on Wednesday which is the 14th of the first month of Adar <…> the year 1771 of the contracts of Alexander the Macedo- nian and, from the Creation, the year 5219.
Normally, AM 5219 should correspond to AG 1770, but Bacher following Rapoport saw here a peculiar local variant of the Seleucid era, and so the manuscript was dated 1459 CE according to its AM date. He paid little attention to the first Adar mentioning, although there was just one and only Adar in 1459: the clear indication of AM date should make any further examinations unnecessary. The correct dating is certainly 1460 CE, for this is the year when the 14th of the first Adar fell indeed on Wednesday (in 1459 the 14th of Adar fell on Sunday). And even if a skeptic may suspect here a mere slip of the pen (an absent- minded copyist could indicate just the previous Creation year), the use of the Babylonian chronology in a systematic way can be demonstrated by means of the Qal‘a Barqa prayer-book. It came down to us in MS Oxford,
49. S. STERN, Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar, Second Cen- tury BCE – Tenth Century CE, Oxford, 2001, p. 180-181 and 277-283. 50. W. BACHER, “Ein hebräisch-persisches Wörterbuch aus dem 15. Jahrhundert”, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 16 (1896), p. 201-202. PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 179
Bodleian Library Poc. 262 (Neubauer 896; HPP C139) and was brilliantly described by Shlomo Zucker and Efraim Wust, who demonstrated its origin not from Barca in Libya, as was previously considered, but from a place called Qal‘a Barqa in Kurdistan.51 The manuscript provides a very interest- ing formula for announcement of the year:52 נסכה הכרזה לסנתנא הדה והי סנה דתתקס״ב ללכליקה, וסנה גש״ו ללמבול, וסנה בתקי״ד ליציאת מצרים, ושנת אתקי״ד לחתום חזון ונביא והו תאריך אלאסכנדר, ושנת אקל״ד לחרבן הבית, ואלסנה אלסאדסה [...] שמטה, ואלסנה אלי״ב פי אליובל, ואלסנה אלו׳ פי מחזור [ ...] שלתקופה, ואלסנה אלג׳ מן מחזור רסב אלמולד גכק״ס [רב]אטהא הכ״ז, וללתאריך אלערבי תקצ״ט. Formula of announcement of our year which is the year 4962 from the Crea- tion, and year 3306 from the Flood, and year 2514 from the Exodus from Egypt, and year 1514 from the conclusion of prophecy and revelation, that is the era of Alexander, and year 1134 from the destruction of the Temple, and the 6th year [of the] sabbatical cycle, and the 12th year of the Jubilee, and the 6th year of the cycle […] of seasons (tequpha), and the 3rd year of the cycle 262, its New Moon (molad) time is 3;20;160, its acronym (year type) is 5-kaph-7, and for the Arabic era it is 599.
This text deserves a detailed analysis. As Zucker and Wust justly noted, the main chronological systems that were in use among the Oriental Jewry – the Seleucid and the Hegira years – are in full accord here, and these are the eras that should be used for actual dating of the announcement. Both AG 1514 and the 599 Hegira year correspond to AM 4963 of the usual Jewish reckoning (1202/3 CE).53 The problem consists in the mention of the Crea- tion era in the text itself: it is given as AM 4962. And this number cannot be a mere mistake, for it is supported by the solar and lunar cycles: 4962 is
51. S. ZUCKER and E. WUST, “The Oriental Origin of ‘Siddur R. Shlomo b. R. Nathan’ and Its Erroneous Ascription to North Africa” (Hebrew), Kiryat Sefer 64 (1992-93), p. 737-746. 52. Fol. 262v. The text in an abridged form, without the New Moon and year type data, was published by ZUCKER and WUST, ibid., p. 746. Today at the digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk site, the scanned image of the complete manuscript is available. Part of the text was damaged by water, and some words are fully or partly illegible (marked by square brackets). The word for the year type (usually known in Hebrew as qebhi‘a) is not entirely readable but it could be with the possessive suffix: its meaning “initials” and an example of its use רבאט restored as with acronyms of year types is given in J. BLAU, A Dictionary of Medieval Judeo-Arabic Texts, Jerusalem, 2006, p. 236 (I am grateful to Ofir Haim who drew my attention to this explanation). 53. It is also a rather rare case of complete coincidence of the Islamic and the Jewish years: the month of Muharram corresponds to that of Tišri (and both years have only 12 months). 180 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS indeed 6th in the period of 28 years and third in that of 19 years.54 This is exactly what is known about the Eastern practice of reckoning the Creation years: the cycles are reckoned accordingly, and as a result the leap years are not numbered 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, 19 in every lunar cycle, but rather 2, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 18, while the benediction of qidduš ha-ḥamma is pronounced not on the first but on the last year of the solar cycle.55 Other year numbers in this text are not so informative: in the Middle Ages the era from the destruc- tion of the Temple knew a few variants,56 still more ambiguous was the reckoning of the sabbatical and Jubilee years.57 But the New Moon and year
54. These cycles, well known in the calendar practice, are also rather widespread in manu- script colophons. The 19-year (so-called lunar) cycle is used for determining the leap years: 235 lunar months make 19 years, and seven among the years of every such cycle have an additional month of Adar. The 28-year (so-called solar) cycle is used for calculation of con- ventional seasonal points, and once in 28 years when tequphat nisan falls on beginning of Wednesday (Biblical day of creation of the luminaries), a special benediction qidduš ha-ḥamma is pronounced. It is easy to see the accordance of the AM and the cycle years, since 4962 = 261 × 19 + 3 = 177 × 28 + 6. The number of the current solar cycle (178) could have been written at the place now illegible (at least on the scanned image). 55. Cf. variant reading in Rashi’s commentary: “tequphat nisan at the end of 28 [years] when the major solar cycle returns” (BT Berakhot 59b), where the traditional Talmud editions provide marginal “at the beginning” instead of “at the end.” 56. The year from the destruction is distant 3828 from AM (and 67/68 years from CE) in most of the medieval sources, and this is the correlation usually mentioned in general studies on Hebrew manuscripts, such as C. SIRAT, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, Cam- bridge, 2002, p. 219. But sometimes, in better accordance with historical date of the destruc- tion of the Temple, this distance can reach 3829 or 3830 (68/69 or 69/70 from CE), for example, in MS New York, Jewish Theological Seminary Rab. 701 and MS Oxford, Bodleian Library Hunt. 563 (HPP D45 and C99) respectively. In our case the year 1134 from the destruction is called AM 4962, which formally gives the usual difference of 3828, but as we shall see it corresponds to the 68/69 years between the destruction and the Christian eras. 57. The reckoning of the sabbatical years is itself connected to the Temple destruction, which according to the common tradition occurred on a year after sabbatical: BT ‘Arakhin 11b. But the precise meaning of this connection is not universally accepted, thus Maimonides, although keeping the same wording, actually described the year of the destruction of the Second Temple as sabbatical: Mišne Tora, Hil. šemiṭa we-yobhel, 10, 4. In addition already in the Talmud the very procedure of the reckoning also knew two possibilities: one based on 50-year Jubilee cycles with reckoning every seventh year within the fifty (according to the Sages) and another based on a regular sequence of seven-year periods, while every Jubilee year is counted both as the 50th of one 50-year cycle and as the 1st of the next one (according to R. Judah): BT Nedarim 61a. In our case, since the year 1134 from the Temple destruction is called the sixth in the sabbatical cycle, both the possibilities are conceivable: the reckoning of the Sages with the beginning of the destruction era after a sabbatical year (1134 = 22 × 50 + 4 × 7 + 6) as well as the reckoning of R. Judah with the beginning of the destruction era already from a sabbatical year (1134 – 1 = 161 × 7 + 6). However, the possible interpretations are limited here by the Jubilee cycle indication, thus although ZUCKER and WUST, “Oriental Origin”, p. 746, are formally right saying that the number in the sabbatical cycle meets the directions of Maimonides, this year, according to his method (Mišne Tora, ibid.), would be 48th and not 12th from Jubilee. Actually, the very combination of 6th year in PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 181 type values are of high importance: they show with certainty that the year under consideration was reckoned from the molad adam.58 The conventional New Moon (molad) times are based on the mean month value known from Ptolemy’s Almagest and goes back to Babylonian astron- omy: 29 days, 12 hours and 793 parts, where the part is 1/1080 of an hour (three seconds and a third). The time for every molad is traditionally repre- sented by a three-part number which includes weekday, hours and parts (which week is under consideration is not a matter of doubt), so each molad is distant 1;12;793 from the previous one (groups of full seven days are cast away). Thus the conventional New Moon for the first year of our usual AM reckoning is known as molad baharad which is the alphanumerical expres- sion for 2;5;204 (second day of the week, i.e. Monday, 5 hours and 204 parts). The knowledge of the initial molad time and of the mean month value of 29 days, 12 hours and 793 parts is sufficient for determining any required molad: all we need is just to add to the initial time the mean month value multiplied by the number of months passed since then. Thus the New Moon of the second year (the first year according to Adam reckoning), twelve
sabbatical and 12th in Jubilee cycle could puzzle, because the common beginning of the Jubilee period and its first sabbatical cycle demands that the 12th year from Jubilee would be the 5th from sabbatical year. The same correlation we notice in a letter from the Genizah, MS Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College 1007, where the year 1010 from the destruction of the Temple is called 1st in sabbatical and 35th in Jubilee cycle: M. ASIS, “A Response on Deter- mining the Year 4838 from the Creation (1077/78 CE)” (Hebrew), Hebrew Union College Annual 49 (1978), p. 1-27 (Hebrew section). As the only conceivable explanation of this discrepancy Asis proposed an independent reckoning of the seven-year and the fifty-year cycles: a practice mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud and then described in detail by the famous Muslim scholar Al-Biruni (ibid., p. 14). However this is not the only possibility. The Al-Biruni procedure can obviously explain any combination of the numbers, but the same one-year divergence between the two cycles in the Cincinnati letter and the Qal‘a Barqa formula makes us assume a possible common system in both sources. This may be the reckon- ing according to R. Judah with a specific numeration within the Jubilee cycle: the Jubilee year is the first in sabbatical cycle, the following will be the second from sabbatical and the first from Jubilee and so on. If so, it is easy to see that the two texts are in accord: their Jubilee years are distant three times 49 one from another. However it is important to note that this concord is in terms of the era from the destruction of the Temple, the first year of which should have been sabbatical and 6th from Jubilee, while the connection of this era to the actu- ally used Seleucid one is not the same in the two sources: instead of 380 the Cincinnati letter implies 379 years of difference between these eras. 58. ZUCKER and WUST, “Oriental Origin”, p. 746, proposed here just a combination of data from two different years. Indeed it seems to be the only possible explanation of the announcement, when the Creation era is considered strictly within the accepted (Western) tradition. 182 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS months distant from molad baharad, falls on 6;14;0 and accordingly is known as molad wayad (alphanumerical form of six and fourteen).59 As for the Qal‘a Barqa manuscript, the given value of the conventional New Moon time (3;20;160) is not entirely acceptable: the calculation pro- vides 4;20;160, so it is either an arithmetic mistake or a peculiar form of writing that indicates not the weekday of the New Moon itself, but rather the quantity of the days already passed from the beginning of the week (just as 20 does not mean the 20th hour of the day, but 20 whole hours, followed by the parts of the 21st hour).60 Anyway, what is really important here is the fact that this slightly corrected value, 4;20;160, corresponds to the begin- ning of the year 4962 from the Adam epoch, i.e. AM 4963 of the usual Creation era, while the molad value of the AM 4962 reckoned from molad baharad is totally different: 5;22;651. The year type provides additional evidence: in the announcement it is indicated by 5-kaph-7, i.e. the 1st of Tišri and of Nisan fall on Thursday and Saturday respectively, while the autumn months are of regular length (29 days in Marcheshvan and 30 days in Kislev).61 This is exactly the characteristics of AM 4962 from Adam (AM 4963 of the era generally used today), while the year type for AM 4962 in the usual sense (from molad baharad) should be 7-ḥet-3.62 The provided examples show that the Creation era is not determined by only one way in all the medieval Jewish sources: at the easternmost regions, such as Iran and Kurdistan, its years can be reckoned from the Adam epoch
59. Such a round number (whole hours), especially connecting the first man with the 6th day of the Creation, clearly demonstrates that it is the Adam New Moon that was the initial basis of the Creation era, while the Chaos New Moon was counted back from this point. 60. Although the possibility of such a peculiar form of weekday indication could please the compiler of the announcement saving his formula from error, it does not look rather likely, for the very expressions baharad and wayad were too widespread. 61. The year type (qebhi‘a) provides complete information on the dates and weekdays for every year. Each type is traditionally expressed in three-letter form: the first and the last letters are used as weekday numbers, the second one designates the length of the autumn months. In the fixed Jewish calendar only four weekdays are possible for the 1st of Tišri (so the first letter of the type can be bet, gimel, he or zayin) and only two months have a variant length: besides the regular order of 29 days in Marcheshvan and 30 days in Kislev, these months can also have 29 days each or 30 days each. By the actual length of these two months every year would be called ḥasera (defective), ke-sidra (regular) or šelema (complete), which is designated by the second letter of the year type (ḥet, kaph or šin respectively). Still another ambiguity is the overall number of the months in the year, if it has one month of Adar or two (ordinary or leap year). This information is revealed by the third letter of the year type which gives the weekday of the 1st of Nisan (and of the Passover holiday exactly two weeks later) and can be aleph, gimel, he or zayin. The structure of the fixed Jewish calendar permits only 14 year types, seven for ordinary and seven for leap year (detailed explanation can be found at BUSHWICK, Under- standing, p. 87-89). 62. MAHLER, Handbuch, p. 611. PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 183 even in the Late Middle Ages. Although in the lands of Greater Iran the Creation era was rarely used at all, it can be stated that all the known cases of parallel AM and AG dating in the manuscripts copied there show the two-years difference in their units. In such combinations the Creation era should be interpreted according to the Babylonian system, as was clearly demonstrated by the sources with additional inner information. It seems also that the very divergence in two units between the AM and AG numbers could serve as an indication of the manuscript origin from Greater Iran.63 Thus, MS Oxford, Bodleian Library Poc. 96 (Neubauer 1225; HPP C720), dated in the colophon to Marcheshvan AM 4951 and AG 1503,64 was undoubtedly copied in October-November of 1191 CE.65 Its origin from the Iranian (or perhaps Mesopotamian) region based on codicological and tex- tual grounds66 can now be confirmed by the chronological system used in its colophon. Actually, the real ambiguity in the Creation era is rare in this region. As a rule an AM designation does not appear alone but together with the much more common here AG, making the reckoning from the Adam epoch rather
63. This geo-cultural term seems to be appropriate here: it should include Iran, Kurdistan, most of Mesopotamia, Transoxiana and perhaps some other bordering regions. The actual evidences of the Babylonian reckoning of the Creation era came down to us in the manuscripts from Iran and Kurdistan, but we may suppose that in some part of Iraq and certainly in Tran- soxiana the same system had to be known in the Middle Ages (the SfarData database provides examples from the territory of modern Iran and Eastern Turkey, but not any Creation year indicated on the territory of modern Iraq or Uzbekistan). In other regions of the Middle East, including Syria or Yemen where the Babylonian and Persian influence can be expected, we do not meet the reckoning of Adam years: the Seleucid era, usually provided in the colophons, demonstrates that the Creation chronology here follows the Western system. 64. The colophon also indicates this year as 1123 from the destruction of the Temple. The correlation between it and the AG fits the Talmudic rule of 20 years within a century between the two eras (BT ῾Abhoda zara 9a), but this would not clarify which system of the Creation era was used here. As for the Talmudic chronology, we see that it is rather acceptable histori- cally: the 1st year of the era of the Temple destruction is AG 381 (69/70 CE). However, in the later widespread use of this era its years were reckoned from 68/69 CE, with a 21-year distance within a century between it and AG. This mistake can be explained by the intermedi- ate role of the Creation era, which was not understood correctly because of the confusion between its Eastern and Western systems: BORNSTEIN, “Ta᾿arikhe Yiśra᾿el”, p. 324-328. 65. The right CE year was given already in the nineteenth-century catalogue: A. NEUBAUER, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford, [I], Oxford, 1886, col. 433. Its modern redaction is in question, providing both possibilities (1190 or 1191): Catalogue of the Bodleian Library Supplement, col. 200. Finally, the Monumenta palaeographica volume follows its method of dating according to the usual Creation era and gives the incorrect year 1190 CE: BEIT-ARIÉ, GLATZER, SIRAT, Codices, vol. 4, p. 94 (ms 87). 66. Those are its quiring, the type of script of additional texts and perhaps the pronuncia- tion tradition revealed by its vocalization system: BEIT-ARIÉ, GLATZER, SIRAT, ibid. 184 PITFALLS WHILE INTERPRETING DATES IN HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS clear (such a dating can look unwonted but it is fairly definite). What indeed can be ambiguous is the use of the Creation era without the Seleucid one. On the one hand, the very choice of the era of the Creation as the main (or only) chronological system is typical for the regions of the Western tradi- tion, of our usual reckoning from molad baharad. On the other hand, the geo-cultural origin of a manuscript can point eastwards. This is the case of MS Oxford, Bodleian Library Heb. f. 56, fols. 105-119 (Neubauer-Cowley 2821/32; HPP C331). Its date, the month of Adar AM 5176, aroused no suspicion: no additional eras and no weekday or date of month are men- tioned in the colophon, so the manuscript was dated 1416 CE.67 But the place of copying indicated as Tel Ya‘qūb in the Mardin district (Kurdistan)68 can question the accuracy of the dating: it seems that we deal here with the Adam reckoning which means the year 1417 CE. Although the colophon evinces no true proof for such a conclusion, it contains a certain hint: the date seems natural for 1417 when there was only one month of Adar, how- ever in 1416 because of the leap year we should expect a clearer indication, either First or Second Adar. Dealing with Oriental manuscripts of uncertain geographical origin, we should pay more attention to their dating. The very possibility of the Eastern reckoning, differing in a year from the usual one, should be taken into con- sideration when the colophon is dated by the era of the Creation alone (or accompanied by the year from the destruction of the Temple). Among the colophons with exact calendar information we can see an example in MS Cambridge, CUL T-S 8 Ca. 1 (HPP C691) dated to Monday, the 25th of Shevat AM 4765. The inner non-conformity here was mentioned in its publication: in that year Shevat 25 fell on Thursday, at least according to our regular calendar.69 However, a simple explanation can be proposed here in the field of year reckoning rather than calendar structure: in the next year, 4765 from Adam, this date fell on Sunday,70 thus the exact day of copying should be not the 8th of February 1005 but rather the 27th of January 1006 CE.
Alexander GORDIN [email protected]
67. A. NEUBAUER and A. E. COWLEY, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodle- ian Library, vol. 2, Oxford, 1906, col. 241. 68. Present-day Tepealtı in Turkey. 69. BEIT-ARIÉ, SIRAT, GLATZER, Codices, vol. 1, p. 110 (ms 15). 70. As was already noted, the one-day discrepancy, apparently caused by writing after the sunset, is rather common in medieval colophons.