Taking the Scribe Seriously

The Dating of Vat ebr. 14 Reconsidered

Abstract

MS Vat ebr. 14 was produced by Eliyya ha-Naqdan, a scribe from northern France who lived in the 13th century. All direct information we have about him today is contained in the colophons of this manuscript and of MS Berlin or. quart. 9, the only two manuscripts of his still extant today. In both cases, Eliyya provides a date of completion, but the information given in Vat ebr. 14 presents difficulties that have let previous investigators to believe that he must have made a mistake. In this paper, we systematically evaluate every plausible option for reading Vat ebr. 14’s main colophon to examine the possibility of identifying a date of completion for which the data given by Eliyya match up. We show that an internally consistent date exists, Tuesday, Av 16, 4999 (July 19, 1239 C.E.), only five days before the date the majority of scholars who assume that Eliyya did make a mistake arrive at, Sunday, Av 21, 4999 (July 24, 1239 C.E.). We thus conclude that the assumption that the scribe made an error is unwarranted, and that Tuesday, Av 16, 4999 (July 19, 1239 C.E.) is the likely date of the manuscript’s completion.