Philology and Textuality: Maḥberet Menaḥem Ben Saruk in the British Library’s Manuscripts

This article examines the textuality of Menaḥem ben-Saruk’s Maḥberet, the first biblical Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary, composed in Cordoba, Andalusia, c. 950 CE. The Maḥberet has reached us in several Genizah fragments and about twenty manuscripts, the earliest being London, The British Library, Add. 27214 (aka London 950) dated 1091 (L1) and London, The British Library, Arundel Or 51 (aka London 951) dated 1189 (L2). Other manuscripts were copied during the 13th century or later. Because the Maḥberet has been corrupted in the course of its long transmission, including during the interval between 950 CE, its first publication, and 1091, the date of the earliest manuscript, it is impossible to reconstruct its Urtext. The two eclectic editions published (Filipowski 1854; Sáenz-Badillos 1986) are full of errors. A philological analysis of a particular text of the Maḥberet based on the oldest manuscripts preserved at the British Library (compared with relevant Italian Genizah fragments) is undertaken here as a test case to trace the copyists’ interventions.