Nathan ben Jehiel
Encyclopedia
Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome (Hebrew: נתן בן יחיאל מרומי; Nathan ben Y'ḥiel Mi Romi according to Sephardic pronunciation) (c. 1035–1106) was a Jewish Italian lexicographer. He was born in Rome
not later than 1035 to one of the most notable Roman families of Jewish scholars. Owing to an error propagated by Azulai, he has been regarded as a scion of the house of De Pomis. Now, however, it is regarded as almost a certainty that he belonged to the Anaw (Degli Mansi) family. Nathan's father, R. Jehiel ben Abraham, aside from being an acknowledged authority on the ritual law, was, like the majority of the contemporary Italian rabbis, a liturgic poet.
. It appears that he had begun life not as a student, but as a peddler of linen wares, which was then considered a distasteful occupation.
The death of his employer caused him to abandon trade for the Torah
. He returned home, where his father began to bestow upon him the treasures of learning, the accumulation of which was continued under foreign masters.
First, Nathan went to Sicily
, whither Matzliach ibn al-Batzaq had just returned from a course of study under Hai Gaon
, the last of the Pumbedita
geonim
. It was there that Nathan garnered that Babylonian learning which has led some to the erroneous notion that he had himself pilgrimed to Pumbedita.
Then Narbonne
enticed him, where he sat under the prominent exegete and haggadist R. Moses ha-Darshan
. On his way home he probably lingered for a while at the several academies flourishing in Italy
, notably at Pavia
, where a certain R. Moses was head master, and at Bari
, where R. Moses Kalfo
taught. He arrived home, however, from his scholarly travels some time before the death of his father, which occurred about the year 1070, and which gave him the opportunity of illustrating the simplicity of funeral rites which he had been advocating.
The presidency of the rabbinic college was thereupon entrusted by the Roman community to Jehiel's three learned sons: Daniel, Nathan, and Abraham – "the geonim of the house of R. Jehiel," as they were styled (Shibbole ha-Leḳeṭ, ii. 5). Daniel, the eldest, seems to have composed a commentary on the mishnaic section Zera'im, from which the "'Aruk" quotes frequently, and to have stood in friendly relations with Christian
scholars. The three brothers rapidly acquired general recognition as authorities on the Torah
; and numerous inquiries were addressed to them. Their most frequent correspondent was R. Solomon ben Isaac (Yiẓḥaḳi), an Italian scholar who is not to be identified with Rashi
.
The sources of this work are numerous. Aside from the Aruk of Tzemach ben Paltzoi (Ẓemaḥ b. Palṭoi), which he utilized (it should be stated, however, that Rapoport and Geiger
deny this), he used a very large number of additional works. Above all, he placed under contribution the information received, in both oral and written form, from R. Maẓliaḥ and R. Moses ha-Darshan, the former of whom, in particular, through his studies under Hai, had made himself the repository of Eastern learning. The entire extent of Nathan's indebtedness to his authorities can not be estimated, for the reason that of the hundreds of books cited by him many have not been preserved. But none will deny his obligation to R. Gershom of Mainz, whom he repeatedly quotes, though, as Kohut rightly maintains against Rapoport, he can not have been his personal disciple.
Similarly he used the writings of R. Hananeel b. Chushiel and R. Nissim ben Jacob
, both living at Kairwan. So frequent, in fact, were the references to R. Hananeel in the lexicon that R. Jacob Tam, for example, regarded the work as based entirely on the commentaries of that author (Sefer ha-Yashar, p. 525), while the author of the Or Zarua, as a matter of course, referred to him almost all of the lexicon's anonymous statements.
Hai Gaon
, again, figures very frequently in its pages, sometimes simply designated as "the Gaon," while it has particularly assimilated all philologic material that is contained in his commentary on the mishnaic order Ṭohorot.
But, withal, the multitude of languages marshaled in the Aruk is prodigious even for a period of poly-glot proclivities. The non-Jewish Aramaic dialects are encountered side by side with Arabic, Persian
, Greek
, Latin
, and even Slavonic, while Italian
seems as familiar to the author as the various rabbinic forms of style.
This multiplicity of languages, however, is at present generally considered a mere mark of the multifarious character of the compilation; and the credit for the exegetic employment of the several languages is given to Nathan's authorities rather than to himself.
While he possessed, no doubt, a superficial and empiric knowledge of Latin and Greek, of which the former already contained an admixture of contemporary Italian, and the latter, subdivided into spoken and written Greek, was still partly used in southern Italy; while he may have acquired a desultory acquaintance with Arabic, and certainly was quite familiar with Italian, yet it may be stated almost with certainty that the majority of his etymologies were compiled and copied from his various source-books.
For this reason, perhaps, the various dialects appear in the Aruk under several names, each originating seemingly in a different author, as Arabic, for example, which occurs under three distinct denotations, possibly without Nathan being aware of their synonymity. To the same cause may be assigned the polyonymy of the Hebrew and rabbinic dialects in the Aruk, as well as the presence of a great deal of geographic and ethnographic information which the author certainly did not acquire in actual travel. As regards the grammatical derivation of Hebrew words, Nathan deviated from the principle of triliteral roots discovered by Judah ben David Chayyuj (Ḥayyuj) and adopted by the Spanish grammarians as a rule; like the majority of French and German rabbis, he considered two letters, and at times one, sufficient to form a Hebrew root.
may be discerned in his remark that as regards conjuring and amulets neither their grounds nor their sources were known (Aruch Completum, vii. 157, s.v.).
was already in a position to utilize it in the second edition of his commentaries, having been acquainted with it by R. Kalonymus ben Shabbethai, the noted rabbi who had moved to Worms
from Rome
. Kalonymus, however, can at best have transported to his new home but meager information concerning the Aruk, as his removal occurred about thirty years prior to its completion; the first folios he may well have seen, since he was intimately acquainted with Nathan. A generation after the time of Rashi the Aruk is found in general use among the Biblical commentators and the tosafists
, as well as among the legalistic and the grammatical authors. Numerous manuscript copies were brought into circulation; and with the introduction of printing its spread was widely extended.
The first edition, which bears neither the date nor the place of publication, probably belongs to the year 1477, while in 1531 Daniel Bomberg
of Venice issued what is no doubt the best of the early editions. In both the copying and the printing processes, however, the work suffered innumerable alterations and mutilations, which have been recently repaired to a certain extent by the scientific edition issued, on the basis of the first editions and of seven manuscripts, by Alexander Kohut
(Aruch Completum, 8 vols. and supplement, Vienna and New York, 1878–92).
in Grätz Jubelschrift, Hebr. part, pp. 1–47), a small work of little significance.
In the 13th-century R. Tanchum ben Joseph of Jerusalem wrote a lexicon, Al-Murshid al-Kafi, which purposed not only to replace the Aruk, which had grown rare, but also to complete and to correct it.
Abraham Zacuto
, author of the Yuḥasin, at the beginning of the sixteenth century composed a supplement entitled Iḳḳere ha-Talmud, of which only a fragment of the latter part has come down. About the same time Sanctus Pagninus, a Christian, issued an Enchiridion Expositionis Vocabulorum Haruch, Thargum, Midraschim Rabboth, et Aliorum Librorum (Rome, 1523; Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. col. 2083). The general method of the Aruk was also adopted by Elijah Levita, who, in his Meturgeman and Tishbi, advanced a step in that he differentiated the targumic and the Talmudic words and also sought to complete his prototype.
The manner and the matter of the Aruk were closely followed by Johannes Buxtorf in his Lexicon Chaldaicum Talmudicum (Basel, 1639), and by David de Pomis in his Ẓemaḥ Dawid. Early in the seventeenth century Menahem Lonzano
issued his small but useful supplement, Ma'arik, concerned particularly with foreign words (in Shete Yadot, Venice, 1618; newly edited by Jellinek, Leipzig
, 1853). Ma'arik ha-Ma'areket, a compilation by Philippe d'Aquin, appeared in Paris in 1629.
No doubt the best supplements to the Aruk were written in the same century by Benjamin Musaphia
, a physician at Hamburg
, and by David ha-Kohen de Lara. Mussafia's Musaf he-'Aruk (1655), probably known also as Aruk he-Ḥadash, according to Immanuel Löw
, devoted itself particularly to the Greek and Latin derivatives, leaning largely on Buxtorf. De Lara (d. 1674) published Keter Kehunnah (Hamburg, 1668), in which he had set before himself polyglot purposes, and which, though brought down to "resh," was published only as far as the letter "yod" (Steinschneider, l.c. col. 875). His smaller work, on the other hand, Ir Dawid (Amsterdam, 1638), of which the second part was called Meẓudat Ẓiyyon, confined itself almost exclusively to Greek derivatives.
Even the nineteenth century witnessed the publication of several works accredited to the classic lexicon. Isaiah Berlin
(d. 1799) wrote Hafla'ah Sheba-'Arakin (Breslau, 1830; Vienna, 1859; Lublin, 1883), annotations to the Aruk; similar notes were appended by I. M. Landau to his unscientific edition of the Aruk (5 vols., Prague, 1819–40); while S. Lindermann has issued elucidations under the title Sarid ba-'Arakin (Thorn, 1870).
Besides, there are several anonymous dictionaries attached to the same classic, e.g., the abbreviated Aruk, Aruk ha-Ḳaẓer, known also as Ḳiẓẓur 'Aruk, which was successively printed at Constantinople (1511), Cracow (1591), and Prague (1707), and which contains merely the explanation of words, without their etymologies.
Another short Aruk, frequently cited by Buxtorf, and recently discovered in a manuscript at Bern, has been found to contain numerous French and German annotations. Of such epitomes there has no doubt been a multitude in manuscript form. A dictionary of still wider scope than the Aruk is the Sefer Meliẓah of Solomon ben Samuel. Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy
, in fine, records the existence of a Lexicon of the Difficult Words in the Talmud (Cat. Cambridge, p. 114).
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
not later than 1035 to one of the most notable Roman families of Jewish scholars. Owing to an error propagated by Azulai, he has been regarded as a scion of the house of De Pomis. Now, however, it is regarded as almost a certainty that he belonged to the Anaw (Degli Mansi) family. Nathan's father, R. Jehiel ben Abraham, aside from being an acknowledged authority on the ritual law, was, like the majority of the contemporary Italian rabbis, a liturgic poet.
His travels
The details of Nathan's sad life must be excerpted and pieced together from several autobiographic verses appended to the first edition of his lexiconLexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
. It appears that he had begun life not as a student, but as a peddler of linen wares, which was then considered a distasteful occupation.
The death of his employer caused him to abandon trade for the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
. He returned home, where his father began to bestow upon him the treasures of learning, the accumulation of which was continued under foreign masters.
First, Nathan went to Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
, whither Matzliach ibn al-Batzaq had just returned from a course of study under Hai Gaon
Hai Gaon
Hai ben Sherira , was a medieval Jewish theologian, rabbi and scholar who served as Gaon of the Talmudic academy of Pumbedita during the early 11th century. He was born in 939 and died on March 28, 1038...
, the last of the Pumbedita
Pumbedita
Pumbedita was the name of a city in ancient Babylonia close to the modern-day city of Fallujah....
geonim
Geonim
Geonim were the presidents of the two great Babylonian, Talmudic Academies of Sura and Pumbedita, in the Abbasid Caliphate, and were the generally accepted spiritual leaders of the Jewish community world wide in the early medieval era, in contrast to the Resh Galuta who wielded secular authority...
. It was there that Nathan garnered that Babylonian learning which has led some to the erroneous notion that he had himself pilgrimed to Pumbedita.
Then Narbonne
Narbonne
Narbonne is a commune in southern France in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Once a prosperous port, it is now located about from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea...
enticed him, where he sat under the prominent exegete and haggadist R. Moses ha-Darshan
Moses ha-Darshan
Moshe haDarshan was chief of the yeshiva of Narbonne, and perhaps the founder of Jewish exegetical studies in France...
. On his way home he probably lingered for a while at the several academies flourishing in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, notably at Pavia
Pavia
Pavia , the ancient Ticinum, is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 35 km south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It is the capital of the province of Pavia. It has a population of c. 71,000...
, where a certain R. Moses was head master, and at Bari
Bari
Bari is the capital city of the province of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, in Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy after Naples, and is well known as a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas...
, where R. Moses Kalfo
Moses Kalfo
Moses Kalfo, who lived at the beginning of the eleventh century at Bari, was an Italian Jewish scholar; he taught at the yeshibah there.He is known through lexicographical explanations cited by Nathan ben Jehiel, author of the Aruk. Nathan ben Jehiel probably studied under him for some...
taught. He arrived home, however, from his scholarly travels some time before the death of his father, which occurred about the year 1070, and which gave him the opportunity of illustrating the simplicity of funeral rites which he had been advocating.
The presidency of the rabbinic college was thereupon entrusted by the Roman community to Jehiel's three learned sons: Daniel, Nathan, and Abraham – "the geonim of the house of R. Jehiel," as they were styled (Shibbole ha-Leḳeṭ, ii. 5). Daniel, the eldest, seems to have composed a commentary on the mishnaic section Zera'im, from which the "'Aruk" quotes frequently, and to have stood in friendly relations with Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
scholars. The three brothers rapidly acquired general recognition as authorities on the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
; and numerous inquiries were addressed to them. Their most frequent correspondent was R. Solomon ben Isaac (Yiẓḥaḳi), an Italian scholar who is not to be identified with Rashi
Rashi
Shlomo Yitzhaki , or in Latin Salomon Isaacides, and today generally known by the acronym Rashi , was a medieval French rabbi famed as the author of a comprehensive commentary on the Talmud, as well as a comprehensive commentary on the Tanakh...
.
The Aruk
Nathan's private life was extremely sad. All his children died very young; and the bereaved father sought solace in philanthropy and scholarly application. In the year 1085 he built a communal bathhouse conforming to the ritual law; and about seventeen years later, Sept., 1101, he and his brothers erected a beautiful synagogue. In February of the latter year had been completed the noble structure of his studiousness – the Aruk.The sources of this work are numerous. Aside from the Aruk of Tzemach ben Paltzoi (Ẓemaḥ b. Palṭoi), which he utilized (it should be stated, however, that Rapoport and Geiger
Geiger
- People :* Abraham Geiger , German reform rabbi* Arno Geiger , Austrian writer* Emily Geiger , legendary heroine of the American Revolutionary War...
deny this), he used a very large number of additional works. Above all, he placed under contribution the information received, in both oral and written form, from R. Maẓliaḥ and R. Moses ha-Darshan, the former of whom, in particular, through his studies under Hai, had made himself the repository of Eastern learning. The entire extent of Nathan's indebtedness to his authorities can not be estimated, for the reason that of the hundreds of books cited by him many have not been preserved. But none will deny his obligation to R. Gershom of Mainz, whom he repeatedly quotes, though, as Kohut rightly maintains against Rapoport, he can not have been his personal disciple.
Similarly he used the writings of R. Hananeel b. Chushiel and R. Nissim ben Jacob
Nissim Ben Jacob
Nissim ben Jacob , was a rabbi best known today for his Talmudic commentary ha-Mafteach, by which title he is also known.-Biography:Rav Nissim studied at the Kairouan yeshiva, initially under his father - Jacob ben Nissim who...
, both living at Kairwan. So frequent, in fact, were the references to R. Hananeel in the lexicon that R. Jacob Tam, for example, regarded the work as based entirely on the commentaries of that author (Sefer ha-Yashar, p. 525), while the author of the Or Zarua, as a matter of course, referred to him almost all of the lexicon's anonymous statements.
Hai Gaon
Hai Gaon
Hai ben Sherira , was a medieval Jewish theologian, rabbi and scholar who served as Gaon of the Talmudic academy of Pumbedita during the early 11th century. He was born in 939 and died on March 28, 1038...
, again, figures very frequently in its pages, sometimes simply designated as "the Gaon," while it has particularly assimilated all philologic material that is contained in his commentary on the mishnaic order Ṭohorot.
Method and scope
Since the structure of the Aruk consists, as it were, of so many bricks, it is hard to decide whether the builder really possessed all the linguistic learning stored up in it. None can gainsay the author's philologic spirit of inquiry – quite remarkable for his day, which antedated the science of linguistics; his frequent collation of "variæ lectiones" is notable, while his fine literary sense often saved him from crude etymological errancies.But, withal, the multitude of languages marshaled in the Aruk is prodigious even for a period of poly-glot proclivities. The non-Jewish Aramaic dialects are encountered side by side with Arabic, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Greek
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, and even Slavonic, while Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
seems as familiar to the author as the various rabbinic forms of style.
This multiplicity of languages, however, is at present generally considered a mere mark of the multifarious character of the compilation; and the credit for the exegetic employment of the several languages is given to Nathan's authorities rather than to himself.
While he possessed, no doubt, a superficial and empiric knowledge of Latin and Greek, of which the former already contained an admixture of contemporary Italian, and the latter, subdivided into spoken and written Greek, was still partly used in southern Italy; while he may have acquired a desultory acquaintance with Arabic, and certainly was quite familiar with Italian, yet it may be stated almost with certainty that the majority of his etymologies were compiled and copied from his various source-books.
For this reason, perhaps, the various dialects appear in the Aruk under several names, each originating seemingly in a different author, as Arabic, for example, which occurs under three distinct denotations, possibly without Nathan being aware of their synonymity. To the same cause may be assigned the polyonymy of the Hebrew and rabbinic dialects in the Aruk, as well as the presence of a great deal of geographic and ethnographic information which the author certainly did not acquire in actual travel. As regards the grammatical derivation of Hebrew words, Nathan deviated from the principle of triliteral roots discovered by Judah ben David Chayyuj (Ḥayyuj) and adopted by the Spanish grammarians as a rule; like the majority of French and German rabbis, he considered two letters, and at times one, sufficient to form a Hebrew root.
Its importance
The Aruk is significant as a monument in the history of culture. Aside from its purely scientific value as a storehouse of old readings and interpretations as well as of titles of many lost books, it is important as the only literary production of the Italian Jews of that age. Moreover, though mainly a compilation, it is one of the most noteworthy medieval monuments of learning. Compiled at the historic juncture when Jewish scholarship was transplanted from Babylonia and northern Africa to Europe and was subject to the perils of aberration, it signally emphasized the necessity of preserving the old rabbinical treasures and traditions. Its service in this respect was equivalent to that rendered by the two great products of contemporary Spanish and French Jews – Alfasi's Talmudic code and Rashi's commentary. Together the three contributed toward the spread of rabbinic study. Besides, one has to depend upon the Aruk for whatever knowledge one may have of the intellectual condition of the Italian Jews in the 11th-century. Since its author, for example, uses the Italian language freely to elucidate etymologies, that he frequently offers the vernacular nomenclature for objects of natural history, that he repeatedly calls into service for purposes of illustration the customs of foreign peoples, the character of the reading public of his day can easily be inferred. The dawn of skepticismSkepticism
Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
may be discerned in his remark that as regards conjuring and amulets neither their grounds nor their sources were known (Aruch Completum, vii. 157, s.v.).
Influence and editions
The Aruk rapidly achieved a wide circulation. According to Kohut, even RashiRashi
Shlomo Yitzhaki , or in Latin Salomon Isaacides, and today generally known by the acronym Rashi , was a medieval French rabbi famed as the author of a comprehensive commentary on the Talmud, as well as a comprehensive commentary on the Tanakh...
was already in a position to utilize it in the second edition of his commentaries, having been acquainted with it by R. Kalonymus ben Shabbethai, the noted rabbi who had moved to Worms
Worms, Germany
Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River. At the end of 2004, it had 85,829 inhabitants.Established by the Celts, who called it Borbetomagus, Worms today remains embattled with the cities Trier and Cologne over the title of "Oldest City in Germany." Worms is the only...
from Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. Kalonymus, however, can at best have transported to his new home but meager information concerning the Aruk, as his removal occurred about thirty years prior to its completion; the first folios he may well have seen, since he was intimately acquainted with Nathan. A generation after the time of Rashi the Aruk is found in general use among the Biblical commentators and the tosafists
Tosafists
Tosafists were medieval rabbis from France and Germany who are among those known in Talmudical scholarship as Rishonim who created critical and explanatory glosses on the Talmud. These were collectively called Tosafot , because they were additions on the commentary of Rashi...
, as well as among the legalistic and the grammatical authors. Numerous manuscript copies were brought into circulation; and with the introduction of printing its spread was widely extended.
The first edition, which bears neither the date nor the place of publication, probably belongs to the year 1477, while in 1531 Daniel Bomberg
Daniel Bomberg
Daniel Bomberg was an early printer of Hebrew language books. A Christian, born in Antwerp, he was primarily active in Venice between 1516 and 1549....
of Venice issued what is no doubt the best of the early editions. In both the copying and the printing processes, however, the work suffered innumerable alterations and mutilations, which have been recently repaired to a certain extent by the scientific edition issued, on the basis of the first editions and of seven manuscripts, by Alexander Kohut
Alexander Kohut
Alexander Kohut was a rabbi and orientalist. He belonged to a family of rabbis, the most noted among them being Rabbi Israel Palota, his great-grandfather, Rabbi Amram , and Rabbi Chayyim Kitssee,...
(Aruch Completum, 8 vols. and supplement, Vienna and New York, 1878–92).
Supplements and compendiums
A further proof of the popularity gained by the Aruk lies in the numerous supplements and compendiums which soon commenced to cluster about it. Down to recent times all rabbinic lexicons have been grounded on the Aruk. The first supplement was written in the 12th-century by R. Samuel ben Jacob ibn Jam'i or Jama' (J. Q. R. x. 514) of Narbonne, under the title Agur (edited by Solomon BuberSolomon Buber
Solomon Buber was a Jewish Galician scholar and editor of Hebrew works. He is especially remembered for his editions of Midrash and other medieval Jewish manuscripts, and for the pioneering research surrounding those texts....
in Grätz Jubelschrift, Hebr. part, pp. 1–47), a small work of little significance.
In the 13th-century R. Tanchum ben Joseph of Jerusalem wrote a lexicon, Al-Murshid al-Kafi, which purposed not only to replace the Aruk, which had grown rare, but also to complete and to correct it.
Abraham Zacuto
Abraham Zacuto
Abraham Zacuto was a Sephardi Jewish astronomer, astrologer, mathematician and historian who served as Royal Astronomer in the 15th century to King John II of Portugal. The crater Zagut on the Moon is named after him....
, author of the Yuḥasin, at the beginning of the sixteenth century composed a supplement entitled Iḳḳere ha-Talmud, of which only a fragment of the latter part has come down. About the same time Sanctus Pagninus, a Christian, issued an Enchiridion Expositionis Vocabulorum Haruch, Thargum, Midraschim Rabboth, et Aliorum Librorum (Rome, 1523; Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. col. 2083). The general method of the Aruk was also adopted by Elijah Levita, who, in his Meturgeman and Tishbi, advanced a step in that he differentiated the targumic and the Talmudic words and also sought to complete his prototype.
The manner and the matter of the Aruk were closely followed by Johannes Buxtorf in his Lexicon Chaldaicum Talmudicum (Basel, 1639), and by David de Pomis in his Ẓemaḥ Dawid. Early in the seventeenth century Menahem Lonzano
Menahem Lonzano
Menahem ben Judah ben Menahem de Lonzano was a rabbi, Masoretic scholar, lexicographer, and poet. He died after 1608 in Jerusalem. His nativity is unknown, but it has been supposed that he was born in Italy. According to Jellinek, who identified Lonzano with Longano, a seaport of Messenia, his home...
issued his small but useful supplement, Ma'arik, concerned particularly with foreign words (in Shete Yadot, Venice, 1618; newly edited by Jellinek, Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, 1853). Ma'arik ha-Ma'areket, a compilation by Philippe d'Aquin, appeared in Paris in 1629.
No doubt the best supplements to the Aruk were written in the same century by Benjamin Musaphia
Benjamin Musaphia
Benjamin ben Immanuel Musaphia , also called Benjamin Musaphia or Mussafia and Dionysius, was a Jewish doctor, scholar and kabbalist....
, a physician at Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, and by David ha-Kohen de Lara. Mussafia's Musaf he-'Aruk (1655), probably known also as Aruk he-Ḥadash, according to Immanuel Löw
Immanuel Löw
Immanuel Löw , was a Hungarian rabbi, scholar and politician.-Early life:Löw was born in Szeged, Hungary, 20 January 1854, the son of Hungarian rabbi Leopold Löw. He was educated in his native town and in Berlin, where he studied at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, graduating as...
, devoted itself particularly to the Greek and Latin derivatives, leaning largely on Buxtorf. De Lara (d. 1674) published Keter Kehunnah (Hamburg, 1668), in which he had set before himself polyglot purposes, and which, though brought down to "resh," was published only as far as the letter "yod" (Steinschneider, l.c. col. 875). His smaller work, on the other hand, Ir Dawid (Amsterdam, 1638), of which the second part was called Meẓudat Ẓiyyon, confined itself almost exclusively to Greek derivatives.
Even the nineteenth century witnessed the publication of several works accredited to the classic lexicon. Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin (rabbi)
Isaiah Berlin was the most eminent critic among the German Talmudists of the eighteenth century.-Biography:...
(d. 1799) wrote Hafla'ah Sheba-'Arakin (Breslau, 1830; Vienna, 1859; Lublin, 1883), annotations to the Aruk; similar notes were appended by I. M. Landau to his unscientific edition of the Aruk (5 vols., Prague, 1819–40); while S. Lindermann has issued elucidations under the title Sarid ba-'Arakin (Thorn, 1870).
Besides, there are several anonymous dictionaries attached to the same classic, e.g., the abbreviated Aruk, Aruk ha-Ḳaẓer, known also as Ḳiẓẓur 'Aruk, which was successively printed at Constantinople (1511), Cracow (1591), and Prague (1707), and which contains merely the explanation of words, without their etymologies.
Another short Aruk, frequently cited by Buxtorf, and recently discovered in a manuscript at Bern, has been found to contain numerous French and German annotations. Of such epitomes there has no doubt been a multitude in manuscript form. A dictionary of still wider scope than the Aruk is the Sefer Meliẓah of Solomon ben Samuel. Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy
Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy
Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy, sometimes Solomon Mayer Schiller-Szinessy was a Hungarian rabbi and academic...
, in fine, records the existence of a Lexicon of the Difficult Words in the Talmud (Cat. Cambridge, p. 114).