Seligmann Baer and the Masoretic Text

Seligmann Baer was a nineteenth-century German Jewish scholar of the Masorah and of the Jewish liturgy. With the Christian Hebraist Franz Delitzsch he produced a series of editions of the books of the Hebrew Bible that were intended to follow the Masoretic tradition strictly, and for several decades these editions were widely regarded as the most faithful printed representation of the Masoretic text. He also edited the prayer book that became the standard text for many later editions of the Ashkenazi siddur, and he contributed the Masorah to a major edition of the rabbinic Bible printed in Vilna.¹²

His reputation as an editor of the biblical text did not survive the twentieth century intact. Christian David Ginsburg criticised many features of his editions in 1897, and after the rediscovery of the early Tiberian codices, scholars such as Paul Kahle and Norman Snaith concluded that Baer’s text, for all his learning, did not represent the text of the Ben Asher Masoretes. This article describes his life, his methods and his works, and the reasons why his editions were first accepted and later set aside. It relies chiefly on the articles on Baer in The Jewish Encyclopedia and the Encyclopaedia Judaica, on Ginsburg’s Introduction, and on Snaith’s assessment of the Ben Asher text, and it notes where these sources differ.

Early Life and the School of Heidenheim

According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, Baer was born at Mosbach in Baden on 18 September 1825 and died at Biebrich on the Rhine in March 1897.³⁴⁵ The Encyclopaedia Judaica gives the same years and describes him as a Hebrew grammarian, Masorah scholar and liturgist.⁶ Both sources connect his early formation with Wolf Heidenheim. The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that Baer was Heidenheim’s pupil and that Heidenheim left him many of his manuscripts, and that Baer turned to Masoretic studies at the age of nineteen.⁷ The Jewish Encyclopedia states more cautiously that Baer belonged to the school of Heidenheim and possessed some of his original manuscripts, and that he began his Masoretic studies as early as 1844.⁸ Since Heidenheim died in 1832, when Baer was a child, the relationship was probably one of intellectual descent through Heidenheim’s works and manuscripts rather than of personal instruction over many years, although the sources used here do not describe it in detail.

The Jewish Encyclopedia also emphasises the depth of his knowledge. It states that few scholars in the nineteenth century had so intimate an acquaintance with all the details of the Masorah as Baer, and that it was largely due to him that the study of this branch of Hebrew philology was brought to the attention of biblical critics.⁹ This judgement, written within a few years of his death, explains the authority his editions enjoyed in his lifetime and for some time afterwards.

Wolf Heidenheim and the Rödelheim Press

Heidenheim’s career provides the background to Baer’s work. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, Heidenheim was born at Heidenheim in 1757 and died at Rödelheim on 23 February 1832. As a young man he studied Talmud in Fürth and devoted himself to Hebrew grammar and especially to the Masorah. He left Fürth in 1782, probably because of his teacher’s opposition to Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Pentateuch, which Heidenheim admired, and settled in Frankfurt.^10111213 His first edition was Abraham ibn Ezra’s grammatical work Moznayim with a critical commentary, published at Offenbach in 1791. He then began a critical edition of the Pentateuch with the Targum, the commentaries of Rashi and Rashbam, Norzi’s Minhat Shai and his own notes, but the undertaking was too difficult for him financially and he stopped at Genesis 43:16.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

In partnership with Baruch Baschwitz, Heidenheim obtained a licence to establish a printing press at Rödelheim and moved there in 1799. His first major publication there was an edition of the festival prayer book, the mahzor, with a Hebrew commentary and a German translation, for which he secured ancient manuscripts, among them one of 1258, as well as the earliest Italian and German printed editions, in order to establish a correct text. In 1806 he became sole proprietor of the press, and in 1808 he published Mishpete ha-Te’amim, a treatise on the accents according to the ancient grammarians. Between 1818 and 1821 he issued his Pentateuch in four separate editions, one of which, entitled Tikkun Sofer, was an unvocalised text for scribes. He also published a daily prayer book, Siddur Safah Berurah, with a German translation in 1823.¹⁷ The article on Rödelheim in the same encyclopaedia names the press founded by Heidenheim and Baschwitz as the Orientalische und Occidentalische Buchdruckerei and states that it made the town especially noteworthy for Jewish printing at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Among its most important works it lists the Sefer ha-Kerobot of 1800, the grammar Mevo ha-Lashon of 1806, the treatise on the accents of 1808 and five editions of the Pentateuch issued between 1818 and 1821.¹⁸ Rödelheim, near Frankfurt, remained the place of publication of many of Baer’s own works, including Torat Emet and Seder Avodat Yisrael.¹⁹

The parallels with Baer’s later work are evident. Heidenheim combined Masoretic scholarship with the editing of liturgical texts, he sought out early manuscripts and editions to correct the printed text, he wrote on the accents, and he produced a Pentateuch for scribes. Baer followed him in each of these areas, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica states explicitly that in his liturgical editions Baer followed the example and standards set by Heidenheim.²⁰ Snaith also linked the two men, describing Baer as following Heidenheim and attributing to both the same principle of correcting deviations in order to produce uniformity.²¹

A Teacher at Biebrich

Baer never held an academic post. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that he was content with the office of Hebrew teacher to the Jewish community of Biebrich, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica describes him as remaining all his life in the humble position of a teacher in the Jewish community school there.²²²³ Biebrich lies on the Rhine and is today a district of the city of Wiesbaden.²⁴

He nevertheless received academic recognition. Both encyclopaedias record that he was awarded an honorary doctorate of philosophy by the University of Leipzig, but they give different reasons. The Encyclopaedia Judaica dates the award to 1876 and attributes it to the initiative of Delitzsch, while The Jewish Encyclopedia states that it was conferred in recognition of his services to the Commission for the History of the Jews in Germany.²⁵²⁶ The two explanations are not necessarily incompatible, but the sources used here do not allow them to be reconciled with certainty. The connection with Leipzig University was natural, since Delitzsch taught there and the biblical editions were published in Leipzig.²⁷²⁸

Torat Emet and the Accents of the Poetic Books

Baer’s first major work was Torat Emet, published at Rödelheim in 1852. Both encyclopaedias describe it as a study of the accentuation of the poetical books of the Bible, namely Psalms, Proverbs and Job, which have a system of accents different from that of the other books.²⁹³⁰³¹ The Jewish Encyclopedia adds that an enlarged edition in German, together with tables entitled Masoretische Uebersichten, was added as an appendix to the first edition of Delitzsch’s commentary on the Psalter, published at Leipzig in 1860.³²

The subject is a demanding one, and Baer’s treatment of it brought him into contact with Delitzsch at the beginning of their collaboration. The system of the poetical accents is discussed in a separate article on this site on the poetic accents.³³ Later scholars who wrote on these accents, among them William Wickes, built on the work of Baer, as is discussed below.

The Partnership with Franz Delitzsch

Franz Delitzsch was a Lutheran theologian and Hebraist who collaborated extensively with Jewish scholars, and the encyclopaedia entry on him cited here names Seligmann Baer among his collaborators on critical editions of biblical texts and describes that collaboration as reflecting mutual scholarly esteem, even though Delitzsch also pursued Christian missionary aims towards Jews.³⁴ The Jewish Encyclopedia states that Delitzsch “stood sponsor” for much of Baer’s work and that their friendship helped Baer to make the results of his studies known.³⁵ The partnership between a Christian professor and a Jewish community teacher was thus essential to the reception of Baer’s editions, for it gave them an academic standing and a publisher that Baer could not have obtained alone. The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that Delitzsch was impressed by Baer’s scholarly approach and that together they published the Psalms with Masorah in 1860, followed by most of the other books of the Bible.³⁶ The Jewish Encyclopedia dates the edition of the Psalms to 1861, published at Leipzig by Dörffling und Franke, and records a second edition published a few years later by Brockhaus.³⁷ The difference of a year between the two sources may reflect the distinction between the date of printing and the date on the title page, but this cannot be confirmed from the sources used here.

Baer and Delitzsch then conceived the plan of editing anew the books of the Hebrew Bible according to the Masoretic tradition. The Jewish Encyclopedia lists the volumes, published at Leipzig by Tauchnitz with a Latin preface by Delitzsch, in the following order: Genesis in 1869, Isaiah in 1872, Job in 1875, the Minor Prophets in 1878, Psalms and Proverbs in 1880, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah in 1882, Ezekiel in 1884, the five Megillot in 1886, Chronicles in 1888, Jeremiah in 1890, Joshua and Judges in 1891 and Kings in 1895.³⁸ Several volumes contained additional treatises. The Psalms appeared with a treatise on the metrical accentuation, Proverbs with a treatise on the dagesh at the beginning of words, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah with an outline of biblical Aramaic and a treatise by Friedrich Delitzsch on the Babylonian proper names in these books, and Ezekiel with a specimen of an Ezekiel–Babylonian glossary, also by Friedrich Delitzsch.³⁹

Franz Delitzsch died in 1890. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, the last two volumes were edited by Baer alone, and death prevented Baer from completing the series.⁴⁰ The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that Delitzsch prefaced each book with a Latin introduction except for the last two, Jeremiah of 1890 and Kings of 1895.⁴¹ The two sources thus disagree about which volumes lacked Delitzsch’s involvement, and the difference may arise from the distinction between the editorial work and the prefaces. Snaith observed that the series included only Genesis of the Pentateuch, and that a complete Pentateuch in Baer’s text was available only in the Rödelheim edition.⁴² The volumes of the series have been gathered in a combined digitised copy at the Internet Archive.⁴³

The Christian Hebraist of Leipzig

The article on Delitzsch in The Jewish Encyclopedia describes him as a Christian Hebraist, born at Leipzig on 23 February 1813 and died there on 4 March 1890. After posts at Rostock and Erlangen he was called in 1867 to Leipzig, where he spent the rest of his life. He was deeply interested in post-biblical Hebrew literature, and the encyclopaedia notes that his biblical commentaries are full of citations from rabbinic and later Hebrew works and that they follow the Masoretic text without attempting emendation.⁴⁴ These characteristics help to explain his partnership with Baer. A Christian scholar who respected the Masoretic text and knew rabbinic literature was well placed to recognise the value of Baer’s learning and to present it to the academic world.

The same article records that Delitzsch collaborated with Baer in the publication of a revised Masoretic text of the Old Testament, which it describes as “the Baer-Delitzsch text, unfortunately left unfinished”, and that in connection with this work he produced a series of studies between 1871 and 1886 on the Complutensian Polyglot.⁴⁵⁴⁶ It also states that Delitzsch was a vigorous opponent of the antisemitic movement in Germany and defended the Jews against the blood accusation, while at the same time his interest in the conversion of the Jews led him to found at Leipzig in 1886 the institution later called the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum, and to translate the New Testament into Hebrew.⁴⁷ Baer’s collaborator was thus a complex figure, a defender of the Jews against calumny and a missionary to them, whose scholarly esteem for Jewish learning coexisted with religious aims that Baer did not share. The sources used here do not record Baer’s own view of these aims.

Delitzsch’s son Friedrich Delitzsch, noted in the same article as an Assyriologist, contributed the treatises on Babylonian names and vocabulary to the volumes of Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah and of Ezekiel.⁴⁸⁴⁹⁵⁰ The Leipzig editions were therefore, in part, a family undertaking of the Delitzsches as well as a partnership between Christian and Jewish scholarship.

The Method of the Edition

The editions were intended to present the text according to the Masorah, and each volume was accompanied by appendices. The Jewish Encyclopedia describes them as containing Masoretic notes taken from the best editions and manuscripts, the variant readings between the Westerners and the Easterners, the differences between Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, and other Masoretic lists and enumerations.⁵¹ The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that the editions were compiled by Baer from manuscripts representing the variants of the Masorah of Ben Asher, Ben Naphtali and other Masoretic traditions.⁵²

The aim was to reconstruct the text of the Masoretes, and in particular the tradition of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, which had long been regarded as authoritative.⁵³ Baer’s method, however, did not consist in reproducing a single early manuscript. He applied rules derived from the Masoretic notes and from the treatises of the Masoretes to the text as a whole, correcting the manuscripts and editions wherever they seemed to deviate from those rules. Snaith described this principle as an attempt to smooth out difficulties by correcting any deviations, and thus to produce a uniformity which the early manuscripts themselves did not possess.⁵⁴

The Jewish Encyclopedia identified a further limitation. It observed that many of the faults later found in Baer’s editions were due to his inability to consult the manuscripts in the large European collections.⁵⁵ A teacher in a small community, working largely with the materials available to him and with the help of Delitzsch, he could not undertake the extensive collations that Ginsburg carried out in the British Museum. His knowledge of the Masoretic literature was profound, but the manuscript basis of his editions was narrower than their authority implied.

Dikduke ha-Te’amim and the Rules of the Metheg

Two of Baer’s separate works bear directly on this method. With Hermann L. Strack he published in 1879 the Dikduke ha-Te’amim of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, the treatise on the accents and grammar attributed to the last of the Tiberian Masoretes of that family.⁵⁶⁵⁷ The edition made available one of the principal sources from which the rules of the Ben Asher tradition could be reconstructed.

The second work was a study of the secondary accent known as the metheg. The Encyclopaedia Judaica gives the title as Die Methegsetzung and dates it to 1867, and The Jewish Encyclopedia states that it appeared in Merx’s Archiv für wissenschaftliche Erforschung des Alten Testaments at Halle in 1867.⁵⁸⁵⁹ Snaith, by contrast, dates a German edition of the rules to 1869, under the title Die Metheg-Setzung nach ihren überlieferten Gesetzen dargestellt, with a preface by Delitzsch.⁶⁰ The two dates may refer to the journal article and a separate edition, but this is not stated in the sources.

Snaith’s judgement of this work was severe. He wrote that the rules for the use of the metheg found in all Hebrew grammars began with Heidenheim’s work published at Rödelheim in 1808, that Baer published a German edition of them, and that through Delitzsch’s support they found their way into the grammars. He agreed with Kahle, who condemned these rules in The Cairo Geniza, that they were wrong, because Heidenheim and Baer had derived them from late Ashkenazi manuscripts in the belief that they represented the practice of Ben Asher.⁶¹ Snaith added that it was no wonder that Heidenheim and Baer severely condemned the Aleppo Codex, because the use of the metheg in that codex is substantially the same as in the Leningrad Codex that Kahle used.⁶²⁶³⁶⁴

Ginsburg’s Criticism

The most detailed contemporary criticism of Baer’s editions came from Christian David Ginsburg, whose own Masoretico-critical text was edited for the Trinitarian Bible Society and printed in Vienna in 1894, and whose Introduction followed in 1897.⁶⁵⁶⁶ In the preface to the Introduction Ginsburg explained that he had at first given the results of his collations without regard to the work of others, but that it had been pointed out to him that sections of Baer’s edition had been accepted by students as representing the Masoretic recension. Since his own edition differed from Baer’s in many respects, he considered it his duty to specify his authorities whenever his readings conflicted with Baer’s, and this, he said, accounted for the greater extent of his notes in the Prophets and the Writings.⁶⁷

The first of Ginsburg’s criticisms concerned the open and closed sections. Baer had inserted the letters marking open and closed sections into the text of the Prophets and the Writings. Ginsburg argued that manuscripts frequently differ in their description of a given section, and that such an insertion could at best rest on a single manuscript representing one Masoretic school, while being contradicted by the majority of standard codices.⁶⁸ He collated six standard codices in the British Museum for the sections of the Former Prophets, arranged the catchwords of their sections and those of Baer’s edition in seven parallel columns, and reported the results. In Joshua Baer had omitted twenty-nine sections plainly given in the manuscripts, in Judges eighteen and in Samuel fifty-one, and Ginsburg found similar omissions in the Latter Prophets and the Writings, including seventy-two in 1 Chronicles. He also listed places where Baer had inserted sections not found in any of the manuscripts he had collated, or supported by only one of them.⁶⁹

The detail of Ginsburg’s lists shows the character of his objection. The six codices he used for the Former Prophets were British Museum Oriental 2201, Oriental 2626–2628, Arundel Oriental 16, Harley 1528, Harley 5710–5711 and Additional 15250, and for each omitted section he stated how many of the six contained it. The first omission in Joshua, at Joshua 1:12, is a section found in all six manuscripts and marked in the vacant space in Arundel Oriental 16, which Ginsburg regarded as a model codex. Baer’s text also had a break at Joshua 24:21 against the authority of five of the six manuscripts, and in several places Baer described as closed a section that Arundel Oriental 16 marks as open, or the reverse.⁷⁰ In Judges Ginsburg found two sections in Baer’s text, at Judges 3:15 and 20:15, that are not found in any of the six manuscripts. In the Writings he noted, among other things, that Baer had inserted a break at Job 39:14 and at Ruth 3:8 against all the manuscripts he had collated, and that in the alphabetical chapters of Lamentations, where the standard codices separate the verses beginning with each letter, Baer printed them without any break.⁷¹ The cumulative effect of these lists was to show that Baer’s sections could not be regarded as the sections of the Masorah, since they agreed neither with the majority of manuscripts nor with any single authoritative codex.

The second criticism concerned the chapter divisions. The chapters of the modern Bible derive from Christian practice and were introduced into Hebrew Bibles in the early modern period.⁷² Ginsburg observed that Baer had denounced the chapter numbers in the Masoretic summaries at the end of each book as arbitrary and without Masoretic authority, but had then introduced the breaks and numbers of the chapters into the text itself. Leaving out the Psalms, Ginsburg counted 779 chapters in the Hebrew Bible, of which 617 coincide with one or other of the Masoretic sections, while 162 are contrary to the Masorah because the editors who introduced them created breaks where the Masorah has none. Deducting the twenty-nine such breaks in the books of Baer’s edition not yet published when he wrote, he found 133 in the remaining books, and stated that Baer had followed his predecessors in breaking up the text in every one of these cases.⁷³

The Jewish Encyclopedia summarised further points in Ginsburg’s criticism. Baer had introduced anti-Masoretic pauses, his division of the sedarim was faulty, and he had introduced the dagesh into the first letter of a word when the preceding word ends with the same letter, and in certain other positions, in ways not warranted by the best manuscripts. The Masoretic notes at the end of Baer’s volumes, especially the lists of variant readings, were also criticised.⁷⁴⁷⁵ Ginsburg further noted that, in the arrangement of the poetical books, Baer had followed the practice of early printed editions rather than the standard codices, in which the lines of Psalms, Proverbs and Job are arranged in hemistichs.⁷⁶ The Aramaic paradigms attached to the volume of Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah were criticised separately by Emil Kautzsch in his grammar of biblical Aramaic.⁷⁷

Baer’s Reply and the Vilna Masorah

Baer was not silent in the face of criticism. The Jewish Encyclopedia records that he wrote a lengthy criticism of Ginsburg’s Massorah in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft.⁷⁸ The exchange between the two men reflected different conceptions of a Masoretic edition. Ginsburg sought to establish the text by collating many manuscripts and recording their testimony, while Baer sought to reconstruct the text according to the rules he derived from the Masorah. Snaith later criticised Ginsburg too, arguing that he had treated one manuscript as being as good as another and decided readings by a simple majority, but he did not thereby rehabilitate Baer.⁷⁹

Baer’s Masoretic knowledge was also put to use in a major rabbinic Bible. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that he contributed the Masorah to the Rabbinic Bible to be published by the Romm firm in Vilna in 1894, a work upon which he spent many years.⁸⁰⁸¹ The Encyclopaedia Judaica adds that his Masorah was printed in the widely accepted Vilna edition of the Mikraot Gedolot.⁸²⁸³ Through this edition Baer’s Masoretic work reached readers who might never have consulted his Leipzig volumes.

The Liturgist

The Encyclopaedia Judaica considers that Baer’s greatest achievement lay in the field of liturgy. Its author states that his many editions of liturgical texts, in which he followed Heidenheim’s example and standards, were not only a scholarly achievement but added dignity and decorum to Orthodox synagogue services throughout western Europe, where his editions became very popular.⁸⁴⁸⁵ The most important of them was the prayer book Seder Avodat Yisrael, published at Rödelheim in 1868 with a scholarly commentary entitled Yakhin Lashon. The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that it was reprinted several times, most recently in 1937, and that it has been accepted as the standard text by most later editions of the siddur.⁸⁶⁸⁷ The Jewish Encyclopedia adds that the text of the Psalms, accurately vocalised and accented, was attached to it.⁸⁸

Baer’s other liturgical publications included editions of selihot and kinot, a collection of blessings, handbooks for mourners and for use in cemeteries, a prayer book with prayers in German at the end, piyyutim and the service of circumcision.⁸⁹ The Jewish Encyclopedia also mentions a collection of prayers entitled Leket Zevi, published at Rödelheim in 1855 and 1861, and a work on ritual slaughter, Zivhe Tsedek, published in 1876.⁹⁰ The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that these small books ran into several editions and were reprinted after the Second World War.⁹¹

The combination of biblical and liturgical scholarship was not accidental. The prayer book contains large portions of biblical text, especially the Psalms, and the correct vocalisation and accentuation of these texts raised the same questions that Baer addressed in his biblical editions. In both fields he sought a text that was correct according to the rules of grammar and the Masorah, and in both fields his authority rested on his learning rather than on a single manuscript.

Tikkun ha-Sofer and the Torah Scrolls

Baer also prepared a guide for scribes and readers of the Torah. The Jewish Encyclopedia describes Tikkun ha-Sofer weha-Kore as the Masoretic text of the Pentateuch together with the laws governing the writing of synagogue scrolls, and dates it to 1856 at Rödelheim.⁹² The Encyclopaedia Judaica describes the same work as a handbook for scribes and readers of the Torah and dates it to 1875.⁹³ The two dates may refer to different editions, but the sources do not say so. The work continued the tradition of Heidenheim’s Tikkun Sofer, the unvocalised Pentateuch for scribes published at Rödelheim between 1818 and 1821.⁹⁴

In 1870 Baer published Zwei alte Thorarollen aus Arabien, a study of two old Torah scrolls from Arabia.⁹⁵ The sources used here do not describe the contents of this work, but its title indicates that Baer’s interest in the Masoretic text extended to the scrolls used in the synagogue as well as to the codices on which the Masoretic notes were written.

The Crusade Chronicles

In the last part of his life Baer ventured into history. The Jewish Encyclopedia records that he translated, for the Commission for the History of the Jews in Germany, the Hebrew accounts of the persecutions at the time of the Crusades, published in the second volume of the Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland at Berlin in 1892.⁹⁶⁹⁷ These Hebrew chronicles describe, among other events, the massacres of Jewish communities in the Rhineland in 1096.⁹⁸ The Jewish Encyclopedia judged that the venture was not successful, citing the criticism published by Brann in the Monatsschrift.⁹⁹

The work places Baer within the wider movement of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the scholarly study of Jewish history and literature that flourished in nineteenth-century Germany.¹⁰⁰ Although he was primarily a Masoretic and liturgical scholar, his translation of the Crusade chronicles and his services to the Commission show that he participated in the historical projects of that movement as well.

Reassessment in the Twentieth Century

The authority of Baer’s editions in his own time was considerable. The Jewish Encyclopedia, writing a few years after his death, stated that in general his text had been accepted as representing the Masoretic tradition, even though exception might be taken to individual points or to his too extensive generalisations from insufficient manuscript evidence, and it predicted that his editions would remain for some time the standard Masoretic text.¹⁰¹ The Encyclopaedia Judaica likewise states that his edition was generally regarded as a genuine rendition of the traditional Masoretic text, although it also evoked criticism.¹⁰²

The rediscovery of the early Tiberian manuscripts changed this assessment. Snaith recounted that, on Paul Kahle’s advice, Rudolf Kittel did not reprint in the third edition of his Biblia Hebraica the text of the 1909 edition, which had been based on the text of Jacob ben Hayyim and was, in Snaith’s words, much closer to it than Ginsburg’s text or even Baer’s.¹⁰³¹⁰⁴ Kahle had found in Leningrad a number of manuscripts dated between 929 and 1121, whose text differed from that of Jacob ben Hayyim, and he was convinced that he had found the true Ben Asher text, especially in the Leningrad Codex B 19a, copied in 1008 or 1009.¹⁰⁵ The Leningrad Codex later became the basis of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and remains the base text of the principal modern critical editions.¹⁰⁶ The text of Jacob ben Hayyim, which had dominated printed Bibles since the sixteenth century, is discussed in another article on this site.¹⁰⁷

Snaith’s own verdict on Baer combined respect with rejection. He agreed with Kahle that Heidenheim and Baer knew a great deal of Masorah and were so devoted to its study that they could almost be regarded as continuing the work of the Masoretes, as “the last Massoretes”. He considered the phrase apt because Baer’s texts were the last and most complete development of the tendencies that had grown up in Ashkenazi Jewry in its study of the Masorah, tendencies already visible in Jacob ben Hayyim’s text of 1524–1525. But he concluded plainly that “Baer’s text is not the Ben Asher text”.¹⁰⁸

Snaith also commented on Baer’s influence on others. He described William Wickes, the author of two treatises on the Hebrew accents, on the verse accents in 1881 and on the prose accents in 1887, as an ardent follower of Baer, and judged that Wickes was in the main right about the prose accents but imagined the rules to be much more rigid than they are. He went so far as to say that the text of the edition of Van der Hooght, whose “blunders” Wickes had criticised, is nearer to the true Ben Asher text than that of Baer.¹⁰⁹ Wickes has his own article on this site, William Wickes and the Hebrew Accents.¹¹⁰

Printed Texts after Baer

Snaith’s article also describes the printed Hebrew Bibles that competed with Baer’s text. He began his inquiry in 1934, when the British and Foreign Bible Society asked him what should be done about its edition of the Hebrew Bible by Meir Halevi Letteris, first published in 1866 and very popular among both Jews and Christians, whose plates had been worn by nearly seventy years of printing. Snaith judged that the Letteris text was closely allied to the text of Jacob ben Hayyim, and that Ginsburg’s edition, printed in Vienna in 1894 for the Trinitarian Bible Society and revised for the British and Foreign Bible Society between 1911 and 1926, with a collation of seventy-five manuscripts and nineteen printed Bibles, also largely followed Jacob ben Hayyim.¹¹¹ Baer’s editions, though famous, were never complete for the whole Bible, and they were therefore one text among several, distinguished by their claim to represent the Masorah rather than the printed tradition.

Snaith’s own solution, adopted in the Hebrew Bible he edited for the British and Foreign Bible Society, published in December 1958, was to follow the readings preferred by Norzi, which he found in the first hand of many Spanish manuscripts before they were corrected to agree with Jacob ben Hayyim. He chose as his principal manuscript the first hand of British Museum Oriental 2626–2628, written in Lisbon in 1483, and checked it against a Yemenite manuscript of the Writings and the Shem Tov Bible written in Soria in 1312.¹¹² He found that this text was very close to the text Kahle had produced from the Leningrad Codex, and concluded that the Ben Asher text was more widespread than had been realised, being found also in the Aleppo Codex and in the first hand of the best Spanish manuscripts.¹¹³ The contrast with Baer is instructive. Snaith sought the Ben Asher text in the uncorrected work of early scribes, whereas Baer had sought it in the rules he derived from later sources and applied to the text.

An Assessment

Baer’s place in the history of the Masoretic text is therefore paradoxical. He was one of the most learned students of the Masorah in the nineteenth century, and his editions brought the Masoretic tradition to the attention of biblical scholars at a time when it was little understood. Yet his method of applying rules drawn from late manuscripts and Masoretic literature to the whole text produced a uniformity that the earliest manuscripts do not show, and the authority his editions acquired, largely through Delitzsch’s support, meant that his rules for the metheg and other details passed into the standard grammars.¹¹⁴

His lasting influence lies in two areas that are less often discussed in the history of biblical scholarship. His prayer book established a text of the siddur that later editions followed, and his Masorah for the Vilna rabbinic Bible gave him a permanent place in one of the most widely used editions of the Hebrew Bible with its commentaries.¹¹⁵ His biblical editions, though superseded, remain an important witness to the state of Masoretic learning in the nineteenth century and to the Ashkenazi tradition of Masoretic scholarship that Kahle and Snaith regarded as the culmination of a long development.

Further Study

For Baer’s life and writings, the two encyclopaedia entries used throughout, in The Jewish Encyclopedia and the Encyclopaedia Judaica, provide the essential biographical and bibliographical information, and the article on Heidenheim in The Jewish Encyclopedia describes the Rödelheim tradition from which Baer came.^116117118 Ginsburg’s criticisms are set out in the second chapter of his Introduction, and Snaith’s article on the Ben Asher text gives a concise twentieth-century assessment.¹¹⁹¹²⁰ The Baer–Delitzsch volumes can be consulted in digitised form at the Internet Archive.¹²¹ On this site, readers may also consult the articles on Jacob ben Hayyim and the Second Rabbinic Bible, the Leningrad Codex and Biblia Hebraica Quinta.

Notes

1. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
2. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
3. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
4. “Mosbach”. *
5. “Baden”. *
6. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
7. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
8. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
9. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
10. “Heidenheim, Wolf (Benjamin) ben Samson”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
11. “Fürth”. *
12. “Moses Mendelssohn”. *
13. “Frankfurt”. *
14. “Heidenheim, Wolf (Benjamin) ben Samson”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
15. “Abraham ibn Ezra”. *
16. “Rashi”. *
17. “Heidenheim, Wolf (Benjamin) ben Samson”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
18. “Rödelheim”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
19. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
20. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
21. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
22. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
23. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
24. “Wiesbaden”. *
25. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
26. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
27. “Leipzig University”. *
28. “Franz Delitzsch”. *
29. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
30. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
31. “Hebrew cantillation”. *
32. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
33. “The Poetic Accents”, Masoretes. *
34. “Franz Delitzsch”. *
35. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
36. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
37. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
38. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
39. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
40. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
41. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
42. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
43. Seligmann Baer and Franz Delitzsch, Baer-Delitzsch Masoretic Bible (Leipzig, 1869–1888 and later), combined digitised volumes at the Internet Archive. *
44. “Delitzsch, Franz”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
45. “Delitzsch, Franz”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
46. “Complutensian Polyglot Bible”. *
47. “Delitzsch, Franz”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
48. “Delitzsch, Franz”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
49. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
50. “Friedrich Delitzsch”. *
51. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
52. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
53. “Aaron ben Moses ben Asher”. *
54. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
55. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
56. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
57. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
58. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
59. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
60. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
61. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
62. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
63. “Aleppo Codex”. *
64. “Leningrad Codex”. *
65. “Christian David Ginsburg”, Masoretes. *
66. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
67. Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897), Preface, digitised copy at the Internet Archive. *
68. Ginsburg, Introduction, chap. II, “The sectional divisions of the text”, pp. 9–21, Internet Archive. *
69. Ginsburg, Introduction, chap. II, “The sectional divisions of the text”, pp. 9–21, Internet Archive. *
70. Ginsburg, Introduction, chap. II, “The sectional divisions of the text”, pp. 9–21, Internet Archive. *
71. Ginsburg, Introduction, chap. II, “The sectional divisions of the text”, pp. 9–21, Internet Archive. *
72. “Chapter and Verse Divisions from Langton to Nathan”, Masoretes. *
73. Ginsburg, Introduction, chap. II, on the chapter divisions, Internet Archive. *
74. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
75. “Dagesh”. *
76. Ginsburg, Introduction, chap. II, “The sectional divisions of the text”, pp. 9–21, Internet Archive. *
77. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
78. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
79. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
80. “Vilnius”. *
81. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
82. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
83. “Mikraot Gedolot”. *
84. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
85. “Orthodox Judaism”. *
86. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
87. “Siddur”. *
88. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
89. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
90. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
91. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
92. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
93. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
94. “Heidenheim, Wolf (Benjamin) ben Samson”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
95. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
96. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
97. “Crusades”. *
98. “Rhineland massacres”. *
99. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
100. “Wissenschaft des Judentums”. *
101. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
102. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
103. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
104. “Biblia Hebraica (Kittel)”. *
105. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
106. “Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia”. *
107. “Jacob ben Hayyim and the Second Rabbinic Bible”, Masoretes. *
108. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
109. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
110. “William Wickes and the Hebrew Accents”, Masoretes. *
111. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
112. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
113. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
114. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
115. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
116. “Baer, Seligman (Sekel)”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), vol. 2, pp. 433–434. *
117. Isaak Dov Ber Markon, “Baer, Seligman Isaac”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), reproduced at Encyclopedia.com. *
118. “Heidenheim, Wolf (Benjamin) ben Samson”, The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906). *
119. Ginsburg, Introduction, chap. II, “The sectional divisions of the text”, pp. 9–21, Internet Archive. *
120. Norman H. Snaith, “The Ben Asher Text”, first published in Textus 2 (1962), reprinted in The Bible Translator. *
121. Seligmann Baer and Franz Delitzsch, Baer-Delitzsch Masoretic Bible (Leipzig, 1869–1888 and later), combined digitised volumes at the Internet Archive. *