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How to Avoid Some Pitfalls While Interpreting Dates in Hebrew Manuscripts*

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How to Avoid Some Pitfalls While Interpreting Dates in Hebrew Manuscripts* Alexander GORDIN NationalLibraryofIsrael 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 oftheTenthAnnualInternationalInterdisciplinaryConferenceonJewishStudies, 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:InternationalJournalforJewishStudiesandJewishCivilization 11 (2006), p. 11-19. Revuedesétudesjuives,178(1-2),janvier-juin2019,pp.159-184. doi:10.2143/REJ.178.1.3286072 160 PITFALLSWHILEINTERPRETINGDATESINHEBREWMANUSCRIPTS 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 AnnoMundi and AnnoGraecorum) 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”, ProceedingsoftheAmericanAcademyforJewishResearch 52 (1985), p. 115-139. Information about the Creation era and the calendar based on it can be found, for example, at N. BUSHWICK, UnderstandingtheJewishCalendar, New York-Jerusalem, 1989. For corre- spondence of the Rabbinical and the Julian dates in the Middle Ages, see E. MAHLER, Hand- buchderjüdischenChronologie, Leipzig, 1916. PITFALLSWHILEINTERPRETINGDATESINHEBREWMANUSCRIPTS 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, Codiceshebraicis litterisexaratiquotemporescriptifuerintexhibentes, 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 PITFALLSWHILEINTERPRETINGDATESINHEBREWMANUSCRIPTS 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.
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