Close
Calendar book of the early Tosafists
By uclhsac, on 3 April 2014
Welcome to our ERC Calendars Blog. As PI of the project I would like to launch the discussion with a very specific question – maybe someone out there can help.
Ber Goldberg, who brought out the second edition of Isaac Israeli’s Yesod Olam (Berlin 1846 – a text we are studying in this project), published a very interesting article entitled ‘Shem mi-Shemuel’, on the common medieval attribution of a baraita and other sources on the Jewish calendar to the Amoraic sage Samuel. The article came out on 13 February 1862, when Goldberg was apparently living in Paris, in the very short-lived monthly journal Ha-Mevasser (Lemberg, vol. 2:5-6, pp. 41-2). In this article, Goldberg quotes extensive passages from a manuscript that he says has ‘come to his hand’ and that he describes as a calendar book of the early Tosafists including Rashbam and Rabbenu Tam: והנה בא לידי ספר כ”י על חכמת העבור לקדמוני בעלי התוספות מהם הרשב”ם ורבינו תם אחיו
I have not been able to locate this manuscript. H.Y. Bornstein, in his article Divrei yemei ha-ʿibbur ha-aḥaronim, pt 1, ha-Tequfah 14-15 (1922), 321-72, on page 338, refers to this manuscript as ‘ms Guenzburg’. I do not know on what basis Bornstein wrote this. I first thought he may have meant the monumental, Provencal calendar compendium ms Guenzburg 365, because it is a calendar book and both Rashbam and Rabbenu Tam are cited there (on fols. 171r and 175r, respectively). However, after searching those and many other (though not all) parts of this manuscript, I have not found any of Goldberg’s quotations there. So is this the manuscript Bornstein meant, or did he mean another one? And anyway, was Bornstein right? Where is this manuscript that Goldberg quoted from? Can anyone make any suggestions about where I could find it?
One Response to “Calendar book of the early Tosafists”
- 1
I have found it! It has taken me more than four years, but here it is: ms Moscow RSL Guenzburg 365 (yes!), fol.257 recto and verso (two versions of the passage are quoted there).
Btw, I have perused the manuscript and cannot find any reference to Rabbenu Tam (the passage on fol. 175 is another Rabbi Jacob, not him). However, after fol. 171 (where Rashbam is quoted) there is evidently a page missing (the text does not follow, and there is a change of handwriting). Perhaps Goldberg (in 1862) saw Rabbenu Tam in the missing page, before it went missing from the book. It would be good if this page could be found.