{"id":1546,"date":"2026-11-13T01:56:39","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T01:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/elijah-ha-naqdan-and-the-nakdanim-of-medieval-europe\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T01:56:50","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T01:56:50","slug":"elijah-ha-naqdan-and-the-nakdanim-of-medieval-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/elijah-ha-naqdan-and-the-nakdanim-of-medieval-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Elijah ha-Naqdan and the Nakdanim of Medieval Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Somewhere in northern France, in the summer of 1239, a scribe named Elijah came to the last pages of Deuteronomy in a book he had been making for a patron called Rabbi Asher. For eight leaves, from folio 234 to folio 241, he turned the Masorah into a second inscription: large Hebrew letters built out of minute script, each letter a cage of Masoretic notes, and the letters together spelling his name, his father\u2019s praise and a blessing on the man who had paid for the book.1<\/a><\/sup> Inside one of those letters, on folio 239, the notes ran out. Elijah filled the gap with a confession and a boast. He had found no Masorah to put there, he wrote, so he would write about himself instead: the scribe, the nakdan<\/em>, the masran<\/em>, son of the great Berechiah.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is now Vat. ebr. 14 in the Vatican Library, a Pentateuch with the Aramaic Targum, the Five Scrolls and the Haftarot, copied, corrected, vocalised and furnished with Masorah by Elijah ben Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Naqdan.3<\/a><\/sup> Its maker is one of the few medieval pointers of the Bible whose voice can still be heard, and his father is one of the most surprising figures of Anglo-Norman Jewry, a punctuator of Hebrew books who also turned Aesop\u2019s fables into Hebrew rhymed prose.4<\/a><\/sup> Between them they show what a nakdan<\/em> was, what he did to a page, and why later scholars came to doubt that he understood his own work.5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer, Pointer, Masorete<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Elijah\u2019s titles describe three different jobs. The sofer<\/em>, the scribe, wrote the consonants. The nakdan<\/em>, the pointer, added the vowel signs and the accents. The masran<\/em> wrote the Masorah, the small notes in the margins that count rare forms and guard the spelling of the text.6<\/a><\/sup> In a phrase that recurs in colophons from Fustat to Normandy, a craftsman who did all three said that he had written, pointed and \u201cmasoreticised\u201d the book.7<\/a><\/sup> Elijah used the same three verbs in the colophon of his other surviving Bible: \u201cI have written, vocalized and added the Masorah in this book.\u201d8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word nakdan<\/em> comes from the Hebrew for a point or dot. The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, defined the na\u1e33danim<\/em> as punctuators or Masoretic annotators, the successors of the Masoretes proper, whose activity \u201cconsisted in collecting and conserving Masoretic material, revising the consonantal text produced by professional scribes, and furnishing them with vowel-signs and accents as well as with Masoretic glosses.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup> In a narrower sense, it added, the name belongs to those who flourished from the twelfth century to the invention of printing.10<\/a><\/sup> Its article on the Masorah gave the same craftsmen a physical signature: the nakdanim of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries revised the work of the copyists and added the vowels and accents, \u201cgenerally in fainter ink and with a finer pen,\u201d and frequently the Masorah as well.11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The encyclopaedia\u2019s list of nakdanim whose names survive runs to forty-five entries.12<\/a><\/sup> It is a roll call of northern Europe. There is \u1e24ayyim ben Isaac, at work in La Rochelle in 1215\u201316; Judah ben Isaac, called Sir Leon, of Paris, around 1200; Joseph \u1e24azzan of Troyes, author of a grammatical work; Joseph of Xanten, son of Kalonymus of Neuss, in 1294; Moses ben Yom-\u1e6cob ha-Na\u1e33dan; Jekuthiel ben Judah ha-Kohen, author of the \u02bfEn ha-\u1e32ore<\/em>; and, at number nine, \u201cElijah Na\u1e33dan, son or grandson\u201d of Berechiah ben Natronai Krespia ha-Na\u1e33dan.13<\/a><\/sup> Even the great Tosafist Rabbenu Tam appears on the list.14<\/a><\/sup> The pointing of the Bible, in this world, was not a mechanical trade but a branch of learning, and the encyclopaedia also named Tosafists from Rabbenu Gershom to Meir of Rothenburg as compilers of Masoretic material that turned up in the margins of codices.15<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Man in Fustat<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The craft had begun in the East, and its classic witness shows that the three jobs could live in one pair of hands. In the early eleventh century, in Fustat, the scribe Samuel ben Jacob wrote the codex now called the Leningrad Codex for a client named Mevorakh ben Joseph.16<\/a><\/sup> His long ownership colophon opens by stating that \u201cthis codex of the complete Bible was written, furnished with vocalisation and masora, and carefully checked in Fus\u1e6d\u0101\u1e6d.\u201d17<\/a><\/sup> On one of the carpet pages, folio 474, Samuel wrote that he had \u201cwritten, vocalised and provided the masora of this codex.\u201d18<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benjamin Outhwaite, who has followed Samuel through the fragments of the Cairo Genizah, draws out what that means. Samuel copied the text and also added the vocalisation and the Masorah, \u201cperforming alone a task often carried out by a scribe (sofer<\/em>) and a punctuator (naqdan<\/em>) working together.\u201d19<\/a><\/sup> He seems also to have produced the micrography of the carpet pages and perhaps their gold, \u201ca remarkable piece of solo entrepreneurship, producing single-handedly a luxury edition of the Hebrew Bible.\u201d20<\/a><\/sup> Outhwaite notes other eastern codices with the same pattern: one written, vocalised and provided with Masorah by Joseph ben Jacob the Maghribi, another written and vocalised by Moses ben Hillel.21<\/a><\/sup> The journal\u2019s profile of Samuel ben Jacob<\/a> follows his career further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word Samuel used for \u201cchecked,\u201d mugah<\/em>, matters for everything that follows. Outhwaite explains it as the term for authoritative Bibles copied or corrected against a particular textual tradition, and quotes Israel Yeivin\u2019s definition, \u201cany sort of carefully corrected text.\u201d22<\/a><\/sup> A nakdan was, among other things, a corrector. Two centuries later, in northern France, Elijah would use the same word for the old book against which he checked his own work.23<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/picture>
Illustration: a scribe in Fustat working alone on the text, the points and the decoration of a luxury Bible, as Samuel ben Jacob did in the early eleventh century. An imagined scene, not a portrait.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Bible in Another Hand<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In Europe the jobs were often divided, and the division can be seen on the page. The only Hebrew book written in England that can be dated before the expulsion of 1290, now in the care of the Museum of the Bible in Washington and long known as Codex Valmadonna I, was finished in Tammuz 4949, in the summer of 1189.24<\/a><\/sup> Its original scribe recorded on the final page that he had finished the Hebrew \u1e24umash, the Targum, the Haftarot, the Five Scrolls and Job.25<\/a><\/sup> Sotheby\u2019s description of the codex records that its square Ashkenazic script carries vocalisation, cantillation marks and Masorah Magna and Parva \u201cin another hand.\u201d26<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scribe and the pointer did not even necessarily work from the same model. \u00c9lodie Attia, the scholar who has studied Elijah\u2019s Bibles most closely, observes that a medieval biblical manuscript was \u201cthe result of a complex process involving sources and different people.\u201d The sofer<\/em> was responsible for the consonants and may have used a different exemplar from the one used by the naqdan<\/em> or the masran<\/em>. In the Valmadonna codex, she notes, many Masoretic annotations contradict the consonantal text beside them.27<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

England\u2019s Jews knew what such a book was worth. A Hebrew deed of 1271 from Lincolnshire, now among the muniments of Westminster Abbey, records a Bible handed over in anticipation of the marriage of Judith, daughter of Madame Bellaset, to Aaron son of Benjamin. It was \u201cwritten on parchment, in three columns on each page, with nikud and Masorah, Targum and Haftarot, bound in a single volume.\u201d28<\/a><\/sup> The pointing and the Masorah were named in the contract alongside the parchment, as part of what made the book valuable. The 1189 codex itself survived the riots that followed the coronation of Richard I, perhaps because, as Ephraim of Bonn reported of the books looted at York in 1190, the plunder was carried to Cologne and sold back to Jews.29<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"In<\/picture>
Illustration: a pointed Bible handed over at a betrothal, after the Lincolnshire deed of 1271 that describes such a book \u201cwith nikud and Masorah, Targum and Haftarot.\u201d An imagined scene.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Fox-Fable Father<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Elijah\u2019s father wrote the book for which the family is best remembered. Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, as the Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> describes him, was a fabulist, translator, thinker, copyist and grammarian of the end of the twelfth and the thirteenth century, who lived in Normandy and for a time in England. \u201cHis title ha-Nakdan testifies to the fact that he punctuated Hebrew books.\u201d30<\/a><\/sup> Some have identified him with Benedictus le Puncteur of Oxford, who contributed to a gift for Richard I in 1194, though many deny the identification.31<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His best-known work is the Mishle Shu\u02bfalim<\/em>, the Fox Fables, a collection of 107 fables in the common count, or 113 in a fuller version.32<\/a><\/sup> The Posen Library notes that most of the stories come from Marie de France\u2019s French Ysopet<\/em> and from medieval Latin versions of Aesop, with others from Indian and Islamic sources that circulated in northern Europe, and that at the end of each one Berechiah offers the lessons to be gleaned from it.33<\/a><\/sup> In the translation by Moses Hadas, one fable tells of a lion sleeping in the shade of a rock and a toad that bites him on the forehead; the moral is that \u201ca giant is sometimes strangled by a fly.\u201d34<\/a><\/sup> In his preface Berechiah wrote that the fables were known to all mankind and found in the books of all languages, \u201cbut my faith differs from theirs.\u201d35<\/a><\/sup> The same preface laments the moral state of English Jewry and concludes, \u201cI would prefer toil and a dry crust to sharing my lot with them.\u201d36<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fables were only part of his work. Berechiah translated Adelard of Bath\u2019s Quaestiones Naturales<\/em>, the popular twelfth-century book of natural science, under the title Dodi ve-Nekhdi<\/em>; he wrote ethical treatises drawing on Saadia Gaon; and he composed a lapidary of sixty-three kinds of stones and a commentary on Job.37<\/a><\/sup> The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> thought it significant that in the fables\u2019 preface he refers to the turning of fate \u201cto the island of the sea,\u201d which Adolf Neubauer read as an allusion to the English massacres of 1190.38<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elijah himself has a part in the history of his father\u2019s reputation. An older view placed Berechiah in Provence around 1260. The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> explains that this rested on a misreading of a colophon written by his son, which Joseph Jacobs showed in 1890 to belong to 1233.39<\/a><\/sup> A pointer\u2019s colophon, read correctly, moved a fabulist from thirteenth-century Provence to twelfth-century England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two Books Signed by the Son<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Only two manuscripts by Elijah survive, and each carries his name in more than one place.40<\/a><\/sup> The smaller is Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Or. Quart. 9: a Pentateuch, Five Scrolls, Job and Haftarot of 198 leaves, about 134 by 115 millimetres, copied, corrected, vocalised and furnished with Masorah by Elijah, and finished on Wednesday 26 October 1233.41<\/a><\/sup> The letters of its text are about two millimetres high.42<\/a><\/sup> Its colophon names the place where it was finished as RDWM. Scholars have read the name as Rouen, while G\u00e9rard Nahon proposed Dormans in the Marne; Attia records both views.43<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that colophon Elijah calls himself \u201cthe scribe Elijah ben ha[?] Berakhiah ha-Naqdan,\u201d praises his father as reader, Mishnah scholar, expert grammarian and sage, and adds: \u201cI am son of his old age. I have written, vocalized and added the Masorah in this book.\u201d44<\/a><\/sup> A word in the opening was later erased, leaving a gap in the middle of his father\u2019s name.45<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The larger book, Vat. ebr. 14, measures about 300 by 240 millimetres.46<\/a><\/sup> Its first three leaves were lost and replaced in the fifteenth century by an Italo-Ashkenazic hand; from folio 4 to the end, the only scribe, corrector, punctuator and Masorete is Elijah.47<\/a><\/sup> He marked his name inside the Masora Magna with dots, picked out its letters with dots and floral patterns, and marked it again at the head and inside a column of the Haftarot.48<\/a><\/sup> On folio 242 he added a scribal blessing for himself: \u201cBe strong and stronger the scribe and punctuator.\u201d49<\/a><\/sup> The long micrographic colophon at the end of Deuteronomy praises Berechiah as one who \u201cgave heed, sought out, set in order many proverbs,\u201d words borrowed from Ecclesiastes, and blesses Rabbi Asher \u201cwho dedicated his heart to make this beautiful book.\u201d50<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did not find any corresponding masoretic notes here. I am writing, I, the scribe, the Naqdan and the masran, son of the man of lots of works, the Rav Berakhiah ha-Naqdan.<\/p>Elijah ha-Naqdan, Vat. ebr. 14, f. 239r, trans. \u00c9lodie Attia51<\/a><\/sup><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The date of the larger book has its own small history. Elijah wrote in his final colophon, on a damaged last leaf, that he finished the book on the third day of the week, the 21st of Av, in the year 99 of the fifth millennium by the short count.52<\/a><\/sup> Read as 4999, that gives the summer of 1239, which suits his script and his father\u2019s dates, and Norman Golb and Benjamin Richler accepted it. But the 21st of Av 4999 fell on a Sunday, not a Tuesday, and Neubauer had suggested 1219 instead.53<\/a><\/sup> In 2022 Bettina Burghardt, writing in the working papers of the Heidelberg Corpus Masoreticum project, went through every plausible reading of the colophon and found an internally consistent date, Tuesday 16 Av 4999, 19 July 1239. Her conclusion was that \u201cthe assumption that the scribe made an error is unwarranted.\u201d54<\/a><\/sup> The title of her paper, Taking the Scribe Seriously<\/em>, could serve for the whole modern study of the nakdanim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elijah\u2019s notes show him at work. On two leaves he wrote in the lower margin, \u201cHere, I did not find anymore notes,\u201d evidence that he was searching for Masoretic material to copy. In the Haftarot he noted where the reading \u201cin France\u201d begins.55<\/a><\/sup> Later hands added comments quoting Abraham ibn Ezra and glosses in Old French written in Hebrew letters.56<\/a><\/sup> The book was used, read and annotated in the society that produced it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pictures Made of Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What makes Vat. ebr. 14 famous is the shape of its Masorah. In many of its lower margins the notes do not run in lines but form pictures. Attia counted sixty-four figurative micrographic designs and eleven simple drawings: twenty-one in Genesis, twelve in Exodus, four in Leviticus, eight in Numbers and nineteen in Deuteronomy.57<\/a><\/sup> The series opens with Noah\u2019s ark on folio 7 and Noah offering a sacrifice on folio 9, and some of the drawings may have been inspired by Latin manuscripts from Rouen.58<\/a><\/sup> It is, she notes, the oldest Ashkenazic manuscript to present such an extensive series of figurative Masorah, including human figures.59<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such art had enemies. Attia records that the practice was widespread enough in the lifetime of Judah he-\u1e24asid (1150\u20131217) to draw his condemnation.60<\/a><\/sup> It also shaped the reputation of Ashkenazi Bibles for centuries. Jacob ben \u1e24ayyim, introducing the second rabbinic Bible printed in Venice in 1524\u201325, complained that most Masoretic notes were written in a contracted form and with ornaments, \u201cso much so that they cannot at all be deciphered, as the desire of the writer was only to embellish his writing and not to examine or to understand the sense.\u201d61<\/a><\/sup> Elias Levita, in 1538, swore that he had travelled a day or two to see a reliable index of the Masorah, trusted Spanish codices most, and dismissed the marginal glosses of other books: \u201cthe scribes have perverted them, as they did not care for the Masorah, but only thought to ornament their writing, and to make even lines.\u201d62<\/a><\/sup> The journal\u2019s essays on Elias Levita<\/a> and on biblical micrography<\/a> trace both sides of that story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern scholars largely repeated the charge. Attia quotes a description of micrographic Masorah as having taken on \u201can aesthetic function rather than that of an aid to the study of the biblical text,\u201d its tiny characters and loose alignment showing that the Masorah \u201cwas scarcely even understood,\u201d and notes Colette Sirat\u2019s view that micrographic Masorah was never meant to be read.63<\/a><\/sup> Ashkenazi communities were commonly said to have been unfamiliar with the Masorah, and the pictures themselves were offered as proof.64<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did the Pointer Understand His Masorah?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Attia\u2019s edition was designed to test that claim. Working at Heidelberg between 2011 and 2014, she took the thirteen folios of Exodus in Vat. ebr. 14 that contain figurative Masorah and edited every note on them, regular and pictorial, lemma by lemma.65<\/a><\/sup> She chose Exodus because there she could compare Elijah\u2019s notes with three of the great eastern codices: the Leningrad Codex, the Damascus Pentateuch and British Library Or. 4445. She also compared them with a Spanish Bible and with three early Ashkenazi books, including the Valmadonna codex, the La Rochelle Bible and Elijah\u2019s own Berlin manuscript, checking the thirteen folios against ninety-one others.66<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result reversed the old verdict. In most cases the notes could be identified, were comprehensive, and showed strong parallels with those of the oldest eastern Tiberian codices.67<\/a><\/sup> Only two of the roughly 160 lemmas she edited carried figurative notes that could not be read, and every other uncertainty in the edition had nothing to do with the pictures.68<\/a><\/sup> One note in the edition matched a list known from the Masoretic compendium Okhlah ve-Okhlah<\/a>, which suggested that Elijah had access to manuscripts containing ancient material.69<\/a><\/sup> \u201cThe presence of figurative elements in the Masorah represents neither a loss nor a distortion of Masoretic knowledge,\u201d she concluded, \u201cbut instead illustrates a development in the transmission of the Masorah.\u201d70<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One marginal note shows the nakdan comparing sources. On folio 256, reviewing a passage, Elijah recorded a reading found \u201cin an old masoret, old corrected exemplar,\u201d a yashan noshan mugah<\/em>.71<\/a><\/sup> Attia notes that it is not clear whether he meant a Masoretic note from an old manuscript or the biblical text in one, and whether the old book was an earlier Ashkenazi copy or a model codex of the Ben Asher tradition. Either way, it seems probable that Elijah knew Tiberian sources.72<\/a><\/sup> The word mugah<\/em> is the same one Samuel ben Jacob had used in Fustat.73<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Anglo-Norman Accent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Agreement with the eastern codices was not total, and the differences turned out to have a pattern of their own. In the thirteen folios of Exodus, Attia found 162 lemmas with Masoretic notes, carrying seventy variants against the comparison manuscripts.74<\/a><\/sup> Some of the same variants recur in Vat. ebr. 14, the Valmadonna codex and the Berlin manuscript, and she grouped them as \u201cAnglo-Norman\u201d features, perhaps the trace of a regional scribal tradition in England and northern France.75<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The La Rochelle Bible, copied in the Atlantic port around 1216, stood apart. It showed almost none of the Anglo-Norman features and stayed closer to the eastern codices.76<\/a><\/sup> Attia suggests that it may have been copied from a Spanish exemplar, and that a busy harbour would have put many manuscripts into circulation along with other goods.77<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elijah\u2019s own two books also differ. The Berlin manuscript looks like a miniature of the Vatican one, but it follows different rules of vocalisation, interchanging qame\u1e63<\/em> and pata\u1e25<\/em>, and shureq<\/em> and qibbu\u1e63<\/em>, and omitting dagesh<\/em>. Attia suggests that local pronunciation may have influenced it, that it may have been copied from a different exemplar, and that its tiny format may mean it was meant for use as a prayer book.78<\/a><\/sup> The same man, pointing two copies of much the same books six years apart, could follow two models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These findings sit uneasily with a judgement made in 1977 by Federico P\u00e9rez Castro, who compared Toledo, Ashkenazi and eastern Bibles and concluded that the Ashkenazi manuscripts were \u201cfar removed\u201d from the Ben Asher model.79<\/a><\/sup> Attia points out that the eastern codices already differed among themselves, so that the Cairo Codex of the Prophets varied from the Leningrad Codex almost as much as one of P\u00e9rez Castro\u2019s Ashkenazi samples did.80<\/a><\/sup> Her conclusion is that the Ashkenazi Bibles \u201cremain fundamentally Tiberian and should be considered a medieval development of that tradition,\u201d and that the idea of a single standard Tiberian text set against a non-standard one has to be abandoned.81<\/a><\/sup> The pointing of Elijah\u2019s books is neither the vowel system of Codex Reuchlinianus<\/a> nor a degraded copy of Aleppo. It is the Tiberian tradition as it was practised in thirteenth-century Normandy and England.82<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grammarians of the Points<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The nakdanim did not only point books. Some of them wrote the rules. Moses ben Yom-\u1e6cob of London, known as Moses ha-Na\u1e33dan, wrote the Darke ha-Ni\u1e33\u1e33ud weha-Neginot<\/em>, on the rules of vowels and accents. Jacob ben \u1e24ayyim printed it in the Bomberg rabbinic Bible, and it was repeated in all later rabbinic Bibles; the Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> called it \u201cpractically the standard work on Hebrew punctuation in the Middle Ages.\u201d In it Moses quotes Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra and Solomon Par\u1e25on.83<\/a><\/sup> Every reader of the rabbinic Bible, including the readers of the new Miqraot Gedolot HaKeter<\/a>, stands at the end of a line that runs back through Venice to a nakdan of medieval London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moses ben Yom-\u1e6cob had pupils. Judith Olszowy-Schlanger describes the London circle in which Moses ben Isaac ben ha-Nesiah compiled his dictionary of biblical Hebrew, the Sefer ha-Shoham<\/em>, around 1260. He was a disciple of \u201cthe famous grammarian and Masorete\u201d Moses ben Yom Tov, and a fellow student of his son Elijah Menahem, a rich merchant, pawnbroker, physician and eminent rabbi.84<\/a><\/sup> The Sefer ha-Shoham<\/em>, she writes, is the most important work of Hebrew linguistics composed in the Ashkenazi world. Among the authorities it cites are Moses ben Yom Tov and Berechiah ha-Nakdan.85<\/a><\/sup> Its author, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, took his book\u2019s title from the onyx stone because shoham<\/em> is an anagram of his own name, Moshe.86<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further east, in Prague in the second half of the thirteenth century, Jekuthiel ben Judah ha-Kohen, called ha-Na\u1e33dan, occupied himself chiefly with the Masorah and its pointing. With the help of six ancient Spanish manuscripts he prepared a correctly vocalised and accented text of the Pentateuch and the Book of Esther, and explained his rules in the \u02bfEn ha-\u1e32ore<\/em>, quoting Ben Naphtali, Ben Asher, Ibn Jana\u1e25, Ibn Ezra and Rabbenu Tam. Elias Levita and later grammarians quoted him in turn.87<\/a><\/sup> It was Jekuthiel, Attia notes, who already in the thirteenth century claimed that Spanish books stood closest to the Ben Asher tradition. Yet some of the grammatical explanations in his \u02bfEn ha-\u1e32ore<\/em> correspond to the very variants she found in the Anglo-Norman Bibles.88<\/a><\/sup> Even a critic of the local practice described it from inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the Nakdan Left<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The nakdanim are easy to overlook because their work is everywhere. Every pointed Hebrew Bible, from the codices of Fustat to the printed rabbinic Bibles of Venice and the digital texts of today, carries the signs that such craftsmen added to the consonants and checked against older books. The hub page on the nakdanim<\/a> surveys the vowel systems they used and the treatises that described them, among them the Hid\u0101yat al-Q\u0101ri\u02be<\/em><\/a> and the margins of the Masorah parva and magna<\/a> they filled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the European pointers left in addition was a record of themselves. Samuel ben Jacob put his name into the carpet pages of a Bible in Fustat.89<\/a><\/sup> An unnamed pointer added the vowels, accents and Masorah to an English Pentateuch in 1189, in a hand different from the scribe\u2019s.90<\/a><\/sup> Elijah ben Berechiah wrote his father\u2019s praise in letters made of Masoretic notes and told the reader, inside one of those letters, that he had looked for notes and found none.91<\/a><\/sup> The Erfurt Bibles<\/a> and the books copied by women scribes<\/a> carry the same kind of trace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For four centuries, from Jacob ben \u1e24ayyim to the catalogues of the twentieth century, the pictures in such books were taken as proof that their makers did not understand the Masorah.92<\/a><\/sup> Attia\u2019s reading of thirteen leaves of Exodus showed the opposite: the son of the fox-fable writer knew his Masorah, compared it with old corrected books, and turned it into art without losing its content.93<\/a><\/sup> Burghardt, recalculating his colophon, found that he had not mistaken the day of the week after all.94<\/a><\/sup> Both conclusions come down to taking the nakdan at his word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \n\n
  1. \u00c9lodie Attia, The Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan: An Edition of Ashkenazic Micrographical Notes<\/em>, Materiale Textkulturen 11 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), open access, record at hal.science<\/a>, 126\u2013127. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  2. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 127. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  3. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 119. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  4. \u201cBerechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan,\u201d Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), at encyclopedia.com<\/a>; Richard Gottheil and Joseph Jacobs, \u201cBerechiah ben Natronai Krespia ha-Na\u1e33dan,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  5. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. ebr. 14, digitised at digi.vatlib.it<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  6. \u00c9lodie Attia, \u201cOn Some Variants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts from the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,\u201d in Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions<\/em>, ed. Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan (Cambridge: University of Cambridge and Open Book Publishers, 2020), 593\u2013616, cited by paragraph, at books.openedition.org<\/a>, \u00b622. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  7. Benjamin M. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex: Samuel b. Jacob in the Cairo Genizah,\u201d Apollo, University of Cambridge Repository, at doi.org\/10.17863\/CAM.70702<\/a>; Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 134. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  8. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 134. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  9. Crawford Howell Toy and Caspar Levias, \u201cNa\u1e33danim,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  10. Toy and Levias, \u201cNa\u1e33danim\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  11. \u201cMasorah,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  12. Toy and Levias, \u201cNa\u1e33danim\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  13. Toy and Levias, \u201cNa\u1e33danim\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  14. Toy and Levias, \u201cNa\u1e33danim\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  15. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cMasorah\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  16. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  17. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  18. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  19. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  20. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  21. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  22. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  23. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 109\u2013110. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  24. Mark Farnadi-Jerus\u00e1lmi, \u201cWashington, MOTB MS. 858,\u201d Hebrew Palaeography Album<\/em>, gen. ed. Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, at hebrewpalaeography.com<\/a>; \u201cHebrew Bible: Pentateuch with Haftarot and the Five Scrolls, England, 1189,\u201d Sotheby\u2019s, The Valmadonna Trust Library, Part I<\/em>, New York, 22 December 2015, lot 7, at sothebys.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  25. Farnadi-Jerus\u00e1lmi, \u201cMOTB MS. 858\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  26. Sotheby\u2019s, Valmadonna Trust Library, lot 7. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  27. Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b622. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  28. Sotheby\u2019s, Valmadonna Trust Library, lot 7. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  29. Sotheby\u2019s, Valmadonna Trust Library, lot 7. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  30. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cBerechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  31. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cBerechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  32. Gottheil and Jacobs, \u201cBerechiah ha-Na\u1e33dan\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  33. Berekhiah ha-Nakdan, Fox Fables<\/em>, trans. Moses Hadas, with introduction, in The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization<\/em>, vol. 3, ed. Arnold E. Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press), at posenlibrary.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  34. Posen Library, \u201cFox Fables\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  35. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cBerechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  36. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cBerechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  37. Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, \u201cBerechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan\u201d; Gottheil and Jacobs, \u201cBerechiah ha-Na\u1e33dan\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  38. Gottheil and Jacobs, \u201cBerechiah ha-Na\u1e33dan\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  39. Gottheil and Jacobs, \u201cBerechiah ha-Na\u1e33dan\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  40. Bettina Burghardt, \u201cTaking the Scribe Seriously: The Dating of Vat ebr. 14 Reconsidered,\u201d Corpus Masoreticum Working Papers<\/em> 1 (2022), at journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  41. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 130. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  42. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 134. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  43. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 12, 134. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  44. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 134. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  45. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 134. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  46. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 119. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  47. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 119, 126. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  48. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 126\u2013127. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  49. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 127. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  50. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 127. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  51. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 127. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  52. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 127, 129. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  53. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 129. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  54. Burghardt, \u201cTaking the Scribe Seriously\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  55. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 126. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  56. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 126. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  57. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 16. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  58. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 122. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  59. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 12. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  60. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 10. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  61. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 7. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  62. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 7. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  63. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 9. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  64. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 9. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  65. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 14\u201315; Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b68. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  66. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 15, 18. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  67. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 109. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  68. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 111\u2013112. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  69. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 109. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  70. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 111. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  71. Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, n. 15. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  72. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 109\u2013110. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  73. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  74. Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b614. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  75. Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b624. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  76. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 110. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  77. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 110\u2013111; Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b623. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  78. Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b610, \u00b623. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  79. Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b66. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  80. Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b67. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  81. Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b622. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  82. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 110. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  83. Crawford Howell Toy, Joseph Jacobs and Jacob Zallel Lauterbach, \u201cMoses ben Yom-\u1e6cob,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  84. Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, \u201cManuscrits h\u00e9breux et jud\u00e9o-arabes m\u00e9di\u00e9vaux,\u201d Annuaire de l\u2019\u00c9cole pratique des hautes \u00e9tudes, Section des sciences historiques et philologiques<\/em> 140 (2009): 43\u201345, at journals.openedition.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  85. Olszowy-Schlanger, \u201cManuscrits h\u00e9breux et jud\u00e9o-arabes m\u00e9di\u00e9vaux\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  86. \u201cMoses (ben Isaac) ben ha-Nesi\u2019ah,\u201d Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), at encyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  87. Crawford Howell Toy and M. Seligsohn, \u201cJekuthiel ben Judah ha-Kohen,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  88. Attia, \u201cVariants in Ashkenazic Biblical Manuscripts\u201d, \u00b67, \u00b622. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  89. Outhwaite, \u201cBeyond the Leningrad Codex\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  90. Sotheby\u2019s, Valmadonna Trust Library, lot 7. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  91. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 127. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  92. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 7, 9. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  93. Attia, Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan<\/em>, 109\u2013112. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  94. Burghardt, \u201cTaking the Scribe Seriously\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In 1239 Elijah ben Berechiah, son of the author of the Fox Fables, shaped the Masorah of a northern French Bible into letters and pictures and signed himself scribe, pointer and masran. Long dismissed as ornament, his notes turn out to follow the eastern Tiberian codices closely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-text-transmission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1551,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions\/1551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}