PRINTED TEXT • LEIPZIG • BAER AND DELITZSCH

Seligmann Baer and the Leipzig Hebrew Bible

In the second half of the nineteenth century Seligmann Baer, working with Franz Delitzsch, produced a series of Masoretic editions of the biblical books at Leipzig. The volumes were widely received as a careful representation of the tradition. Christian D. Ginsburg, in his Introduction of 1897, subjected that claim to a detailed collation. This note follows that debate. The journal essay describes Baer’s career more fully.

Dates
born at Mosbach, 18 September 1825; died at Biebrich, March 1897
Teacher
Wolf Heidenheim, some of whose manuscripts passed to him
The Leipzig series
books of the Hebrew Bible, with Latin prefaces by Franz Delitzsch, from Genesis in 1869 to Kings in 1895
Office
Hebrew teacher to the Jewish community of Biebrich; honorary doctorate from Leipzig
Ink-and-watercolour illustration in the same style as the reference picture: bright natural daylight, clear consistent linear perspective, warm stone and wood, cream parchment, blue sky. All objects at realistic relative scale: a closed book has the thickness and length of a real bound volume on a table, an inkwell is small enough to sit in the palm, a reed pen or pointer is about as long as a hand, a table is ordinary table height, a stool is stool height, an arch or doorway is the height of a room. Nothing is gigantic or miniature relative to anything else. No people, no faces, no hands, no crosses or Christian symbols, no window glass and no glazing bars, no legible writing and no pseudo-script, no letters, numbers or marks that look like an alphabet. A wooden desk with a row of several uniform slim printed volumes of ordinary octavo size, one of them lying open with empty cream pages, the others closed and upright. A pen and a small inkwell sit at the right. An unglazed rectangular opening looks onto a river and distant trees.
Illustration: a row of uniform slim volumes, one of them open, for Baer’s Leipzig editions of the biblical books.
The editions at a glance
Seligmann Baer and the Leipzig Hebrew Bible
First fruits: the Psalms, 1861, with Delitzsch; a second edition followed
Last volumes: Joshua and Judges, 1891, and Kings, 1895, edited by Baer alone after Delitzsch’s death
Left unfinished: the series was not completed
Other work: liturgical editions, and, with H. L. Strack, Ben Asher’s Diqduqe ha-Teʿamim, 1879

The Jewish Encyclopedia already records Ginsburg’s main criticisms, with page references to the Introduction of 1897.

A Printed Text Claiming Masoretic Authority

Seligman Baer, also called Sekel, was born at Mosbach in Baden on 18 September 1825 and died at Biebrich-on-the-Rhine in March 1897. He belonged to the school of Wolf Heidenheim and spent his life as Hebrew teacher to the Jewish community of Biebrich. With Franz Delitzsch he published the Psalms in 1861, and then, from 1869, a series of Masoretic editions of the biblical books at Leipzig, each with a Latin preface by Delitzsch. The last two volumes, Joshua and Judges in 1891 and Kings in 1895, were edited by Baer alone, Delitzsch having died in 1890. Death prevented him from finishing the series.[1]

Each volume carried Masoretic notes taken from editions and manuscripts, including variant readings between East and West and between Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali. The Jewish Encyclopedia records that, in general, Baer’s text was accepted as representing the Masoretic tradition, “even though exception may be taken to his view on individual points or to his too extensive generalization from insufficient manuscript evidence.”[1]

Ink-and-watercolour illustration in the same style as the reference picture: bright natural daylight, clear consistent linear perspective, warm stone and wood, cream parchment, blue sky. All objects at realistic relative scale: a closed book has the thickness and length of a real bound volume on a table, an inkwell is small enough to sit in the palm, a reed pen or pointer is about as long as a hand, a table is ordinary table height, a stool is stool height, an arch or doorway is the height of a room. Nothing is gigantic or miniature relative to anything else. No people, no faces, no hands, no crosses or Christian symbols, no window glass and no glazing bars, no legible writing and no pseudo-script, no letters, numbers or marks that look like an alphabet. Close view of several uniform slim printed volumes of ordinary octavo size, one lying open with empty cream pages, the others closed. A pen at the edge of the frame. Wooden desk only. No window, no river, no trees, no people.
Illustration: a close view of the slim volumes, without the river.

Open and Closed Sections

Ginsburg’s first and most detailed criticism concerns the open and closed sections. In synagogue scrolls and in the best and oldest codices those divisions are marked only by the way the line is written. The later custom of putting a pe or a samekh in the gap, adopted in some manuscripts and editions, is one Ginsburg disregarded. He held that Baer, by printing those letters in the Prophets and the Writings, could at best rest on one manuscript and one school, and was contradicted by the majority of standard codices.[2]

Collating six British Museum manuscripts, among them Arundel Oriental 16, which he calls a model Codex, Ginsburg listed twenty-nine sections in Joshua, eighteen in Judges and fifty-one in Samuel that are present in the manuscripts but omitted by Baer. The same test, and the rule itself, are set out on the page on the open and closed sections.[2]

Chapter Breaks Against the Masorah

Ginsburg also criticised Baer for introducing the breaks and the numbers of the Christian chapters into the text itself. Leaving out the Psalms, he counted 779 such chapters, of which 617 coincide with a masoretic section and 162 run against it. In the portions of Baer’s text then still unpublished, Ginsburg reckoned twenty-nine of those anti-Masoretic breaks; in the published books he found Baer breaking the text in every remaining case, and inserting both the Hebrew letters and the Arabic numerals where the Masorah has no division at all.[3]

The Jewish Encyclopedia summarises further criticisms from the same Introduction: a faulty division of the sedarim, and the introduction of a dagesh not warranted by the best manuscripts. It adds that many of these faults were due to Baer’s inability to consult manuscripts in the large European collections.[1] The debate is less about Baer’s industry than about what may be called a Masoretic text when it is printed from a school of rules rather than from a named codex.

The journal essay on Seligmann Baer Open and Closed Sections Christian D. Ginsburg

Selected Bibliography

[1] “Baer, Seligman (Sekel),” Jewish Encyclopedia
“Baer, Seligman (Sekel),” The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1901–1906), on Baer’s life, the Leipzig series with Delitzsch, and Ginsburg’s criticisms, with page references to the Introduction of 1897. See also Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn, at https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/baer-seligman-isaac. * * *
[2] Ginsburg, Introduction, ch. II, pp. 9–13
Ginsburg, Introduction, ch. II, pp. 9–13, on the two forms of open and closed sections and on his collation of six British Museum codices against the sections omitted in Baer’s Joshua, Judges and Samuel. * *
[3] Ginsburg, Introduction, ch. III, pp. 25–30
Ginsburg, Introduction, ch. III, pp. 25–30, on the 779 chapters outside the Psalms and on Baer’s introduction of anti-Masoretic chapter breaks into the text. *
Seligmann Baer and the Masoretic Text (journal) · Open and Closed Sections in Scroll and Codex · Christian D. Ginsburg and the Printed Massorah · Jedidiah Norzi and the Minhat Shai · William Wickes and the Two Accent Treatises
Companion notes on this site.

Biographical facts follow the Jewish Encyclopedia article. The account of the sections and the chapters follows Ginsburg’s Introduction, chapters II and III. The journal essay is not repeated.