Ben Naphtali

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Ben Naphtali (Hebrew: אַבּוּ עִמְרָן מֹשֶׁה בֶּן דָּוִד בֶּן נַפְתָּלִי, romanizedʾAbbū ʿĪmrān, Mōše ben Dāwīḏ ben Nap̄tālī) was a rabbi and Masorete who flourished around 890-940 CE, probably in Tiberias. Of his life little is known.

His first name is in dispute. Some medieval authorities called him "Jacob"; two Chufut-Kale manuscripts have "Moses b. David"; a third contains his epigraph, which is incomplete, only "ben David ben Naphtali" remaining. His name is most likely Abu Imran, Moshe ben David ben Naphtali as preserved in Mishael ben Uzziel's 11th century treatise and in the Cairo Geniza fragment T-S K27.36 in the University Library at Cambridge.

Ben Naphtali and Ben Asher

Ben Naphtali wrote a

Norzi, and other medieval writers as well as in manuscripts such as British Museum MS. Harley 1528.[1] These lists are printed in the Mikraot Gedolot (rabbinical Bible), in the texts of Baer-Delitzsch and Christian David Ginsburg's Masorah vol. iii.[2] A complete list of these differences can be found in Mishael Ben Uzziel's treatise Kitāb Al-Khilaf, the book of the Ḥillufim (Differences), which is thought to have been written before 1050.[3]

It was reconstructed from fragments and critically edited by Lazar Lipschütz in 1965. The differences between Ben Naphtali and Ben Asher number about 860,[4] about nine-tenths of which refer to the placing of the accents מתג and געיא. The remaining ones have reference to דגש and רפה, to vowels, accents, and consonantal spelling.[5]

Relation to the Received Text

The differences between the two Masoretes do not represent solely personal opinions; the two rivals represent different schools. Like the Ben Ashers there seem to have been several Ben Naphtalis. The statement of

Prov.
xxx. 17), etc. The Masoretic lists often do not agree on the precise nature of the differences between the two rival authorities; it is, therefore, impossible to define with exactness their differences in every case; and it is probably due to this fact that the received text does not follow uniformly the system of either Ben Asher or Ben Naphtali. The attempt is likewise futile to describe the one codex as Western or Eastern.

Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography

  • Diḳduḳe ha-Ṭe'amim, ed. Baer and Strack, p. 11; [6]
  • Harris, The Jewish Quarterly Review i. 250; [7]
  • Ginsburg, Introduction to the Masoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible, pp. 241 et seq. [8]

References

  1. ^ "Digitised Manuscripts".
  2. ^ [starting page 6, [1]
  3. ^ see [2] Archived 2013-09-21 at the Wayback Machine for the English version, [3] Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, and [4] Archived 2013-09-21 at the Wayback Machine for the Hebrew versions of Lipschütz's edition of Mishael Ben Uzziel's 11th century treatise.
  4. ^ Lipschütz has some issues counting in the English version and this reference needs to be replaced by a proper count at some point.
  5. Jewish Encyclopedia. For the complete list of differences between Ben Naphtali and Ben Asher, see the Kitab al-Khilaf above as it was published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
    .
  6. ^ Mas. ha-Masoret, ed. Ginsburg, p. 144
  7. ^ see ben Naphtali, No. 7
  8. Chaim Joseph David Azulai at File:Tehillim_45_Pisa_1803.jpg with title page at File:Title_Page_Tehillim_Pisa_1803.jpg, 2) the Djerba (Tunisia) tradition at File:Tehillim_45_Djerba_1951.jpg with title page at File:Title_Page_Tehillim_Djerba_1951.jpg with title page at File:Title_Page_Tehillim_Djerba_1951.jpg and 3) the Casablanca (Morocco) tradition at File:Tehillim_45_Casablanca_1972.jpg with title page at File:Title_Page_Tehillim_Casablanca_1972.jpg
    .

Other sources

External links

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainSinger, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)