Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 68:1 (NA 2017)
Article: A New Codex From The Scribe Behind The Leningrad Codex: L17
Author: Kim Phillips

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A New Codex From The Scribe Behind The Leningrad Codex: L17

Kim Phillips

([email protected])

Summary

Samuel b. Jacob was the scribe responsible for the production of the so-called Leningrad Codex (Firkowich B19a), currently our earliest complete Masoretic Bible codex. This article demonstrates that another codex from the Firkowich Collection, containing the Former Prophets only, is also the work of Samuel b. Jacob, despite the lack of a colophon to this effect. The argument is based on a combination of eleven textual and para-textual features shared between these two manuscripts, and other manuscripts known to have been produced by the same scribe.

1. Introduction To The Manuscript

Together with the Cairo Genizah, the Firkowich Collection of Hebrew manuscripts housed in the Russian National Library is the most important trove of manuscripts for the study of the medieval text of the Hebrew Bible. EVR I Bibl. 80 and EVR I B 13 are sections from a single codex of the Former Prophets residing in that collection. When Yeivin was preparing his monumental work on the Aleppo Codex, he included this manuscript among those close to the Aleppo Codex, and labelled it L17.1 For some years this manuscript was only readily accessible via the microfilm collection in the National Library of Israel. In recent months, however, high-resolution digital images of many of

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these microfilms, including L17, have been made available online via the website of the National Library of Israel.2

It is the intention of this article to demonstrate that L17 is the work of Samuel b. Jacob, the scribe best known for writing the Leningrad Codex. As such, L17 is of great importance for our understanding of the practice of this celebrated scribe.3

L17 is a large-format, beautifully written manuscript of the Former Prophets.4 The biblical text is written three columns to the page, seventeen lines per column, in a large, highly accomplished hand; the written area is approximately 27cm×28cm (h×w).5 The text is heavily annotated with inter-columnar mp, and mm in the top and bottom margins of the page. The extensive mm is written over two to five lines in each margin. Rarely, the mm is also written in the vertical outer margins of the page.

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Due to the nature of the images,