The Shem Tov Bible: A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain

The magnificent Shem Tov Bible is one of the most important manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures to have survived from medieval Spain. Not only was it copied by a great scholar of Jewish law and mysticism, Rabbi Shem Tov ben Abraham Ibn Gaon, but it was richly illuminated, thoroughly researched, and extensively annotated. Numerous pages boast fine illustrations, delicate penwork, and elaborate, elegantly gilded archways combining Christian and Islamicate ornamental motifs—all executed by a Jewish artist. The book’s altered letter-forms encode profound kabbalistic secrets, while its ample margins preserve voluminous and precise details about the biblical text, many of them unattested in other sources. The level of exactitude and amount of Jewish learning invested in its production are likely unparalleled by any other medieval Jewish biblical manuscript. The Shem Tov Bible thus stands today as an extraordinary monument to the most influential and powerful Jewish civilization of the High Middle Ages.


The celebrated Rabbi Shem Tov ben Abraham Ben Gaon (better known as Ibn Gaon) was born in the 1270s or 1280s in Soria, a city located between Valladolid and Saragossa in north-central Spain, in the region of the medieval Crown of Castile. By the end of the thirteenth century, the city’s Jewish population numbered over one thousand souls, many of them involved in trade, viticulture, and crafts. In his youth, Ibn Gaon traveled to Barcelona to study with the great rabbis of his day, Solomon ben Abraham Adret (ca. 1235-ca. 1310) and Isaac ben Todros he-Hasid (thirteenth century), and also spent t.mes in Tudela, where he corresponded on Jewish legal matters with Adret.

Ibn Gaon’s fame rests primarily on two popular works of his, preserved in multiple manuscripts and/or printed editions, that demonstrate his mystical and legal erudition. His first book, Keter shem tov (completed before ca. 1310), is the first comprehensive gloss written on the esoteric portions of the Torah commentary of Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (1194-ca. 1270) and played an important role in disseminating Nahmanides’ Kabbalah. His next major composition, Migdal oz (apparently completed toward the end of his life), is a commentary on much of the legal code of Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), in which he set out to defend Maimonides against his detractors, in part by citing sources in support of his positions. A third treatise, Baddei ha-aron u-migdal hanan’el (completed in 1325), survives in two medieval manuscripts and was only recently published in full. It supplies us with important biographical information about Ibn Gaon and deeper insight into his mystical worldview.

In the midst of all of this intellectual activity, Ibn Gaon set out on his most ambitious scholarly project: the creation of an illuminated Hebrew Bible on parchment, complete with vowel points, cantillation marks, text-critical notes known as Masorah, and anomalous letter-forms. He finished the manuscript in his hometown of Soria in the year 1312, as he writes in the colophon on p. 753 (Fig. 2):

Ibn Gaon does not tell us how long it took him to produce his magnum opus, but it was clearly years in the making, and he evidently continued working on it throughout the rest of his life given the different hues of the inks used. In Baddei ha-aron 6:1, he writes that shortly after the book was completed, he and a colleague, Hananel ben Abraham Ibn Esquira, left Spain for the Land of Israel, “for we said: Perhaps the Diaspora is not worthy of [us] using these wondrous, uplifted things”—an apparent reference to his Bible, which he considered to be too holy for it to stay outside the Holy Land. After more than two years on the road, during which t.mes he continued to research the details of the biblical text, he finally arrived in the Land of Israel ca. 1315. He briefly stayed in Tiberias and then moved on to Jerusalem before settling in Safed, a northern city with an important Jewish community that would, two centuries later, become the world center of Kabbalah study. It is here that Ibn Gaon continued his scholarly activities until he passed away ca. 1330.


The religious precept of beautifying ritual objects has deep roots in Judaism, and the earliest surviving illuminated Hebrew Bibles from Spain date from the thirteenth century. The Shem Tov Bible participates enthusiastically in this artistic tradition, employing both Islamicate and Christian ornamental motifs inspired by the visual language of its original Iberian surroundings.

What is, perhaps, most noteworthy about the decoration scheme in the Shem Tov Bible is the degree to which it serves an organizational function, helping to visually outline the book’s structure, as explained below. Moreover, as opposed to some other illuminated Iberian Hebrew Bibles, the ornamentation is applied carefully and methodically throughout the entire book. The close link between the decoration scheme and the structure of the text opens up the possibility that Ibn Gaon may have illuminated the volume himself. At the very least we can confidently assert that the artist was deeply knowledgeable about the Hebrew Bible and worked closely with Ibn Gaon.

The manuscript’s most prominent decorative elements are the arcades positioned between the Prophets and the Writings (pp. 502-506) and following the Writings (pp. 754-768), which house the text of various masoretic lists (see next chapter). Those on pp. 502-503 (Fig. 3) are gothic arches resting on elegant, foliated capitals surmounting blue, yellow, and pink column shafts adorned with interlace patterns. Inhabiting the spandrels above are various birds and beasts, among them dragons, executed using spared-ground technique against a brown background. On two magnificently illuminated pages, the text is framed by gold, blue, pink, and red scrolling foliage topped by Islamicate poly-lobed archways below rectangular panels embellished with golden rinceau design and even the use of silver leaf (pp. 504-505). The following page features rounded portals outlined in red ink with blue flourishes (p. 506).

Toward the end of the volume, the text is framed by thin columns colored red, blue, and maroon resting on painted, decorated bases (pp. 754-755). The next opening is more ornate, displaying pairs of dragons with foliate tongues supporting the inner columns (pp. 756-757). Islamicate influence returns on pp. 758-759, where the text appears below golden horseshoe arches separated by spandrels featuring delicate red and blue fleuronnée decoration.

The following two pages are the most luxurious in this series: on p. 760, three columns of text are housed within horseshoe arches surrounded by red fleuronnée work, with two facing deer executed in spared-ground technique above the two outer columns (Fig. 4); and on p. 761, two text columns surmounted by poly-lobed arches appear below a profusely illuminated rectangular rinceau panel (similar to the ones on pp. 504-505) inhabited by flora and fauna, the whole surrounded by an elegant fleuronnée frame (Fig. 1).

Another recurring design feature are the gilded frames placed around the tally of a given biblical book’s verses, sedarim, and paragraph breaks (Fig. 5). These often include various stylized acanthus motifs or Islamicate interlace patterns and serve to visually mark the transition from one book to the next.

At the end of the Prophets appears a more embellished example with a triangular pediment resting atop fleuronnée columns supported by two crouching lions; the spandrels above are infilled with foliage and two facing storks (p. 501; Fig. 6). Similarly, the Writings section closes with a gilt text box followed by a single gilt horseshoe archway housing Ibn Gaon’s colophon (p. 753). Here, too, the spandrels are filled with flora and the columns decorated with fleuronnée design, though in this case they are topped by dogs’ heads with protruding tongues.

Occurring at regular intervals are illuminated marginal markers for parashiyyot (weekly Torah portions), haftarot (lections from the Prophets; Fig. 12), and megillot (the Five Scrolls of the Writings). These generally take the form of floral frames for (a version of) the above Hebrew words, painted in gold, red, pink, maroon, blue, and/or green, but occasionally include text illustrations as well. For example, two readings related to the New Moon are decorated with illuminated crescent moons (pp. 87, 244; Fig. 7);

an ouroboros appears at the end of a reading that references reptiles (Lev. 20:25) (p. 99); a reading that always falls in the month of Adar, represented by the zodiac sign Pisces, features four fish (these might also evoke fertility, a theme taken up in the haftarah for Parashat ki tetse) (p. 166; Fig. 8);

one of the readings for the first day of Rosh Hashanah is decorated with a rooster (p. 225; Fig. 9), symbolic of rousing the sleeping for the Day of Judgment; a bird accompanies the haftarah for Parashat va-yeshev, perhaps with reference to Amos 3:5 (“Does a bird drop on the ground—in a trap—with no snare there?”) (p. 477); and the book of Jonah is introduced with a depiction of a sailboat with two oars (p. 481; Fig. 10).

Finally, each marginal letter samekh, indicating a new seder, is flourished with delicate red and/or purple ink fleuronnée work (in the Writings, these are often illuminated); the same holds true for the various textual midpoint markers (see next chapter; Fig. 11); and each instance of a letter that has been enlarged or shrunk in size, consistent with ancient scribal tradition, is noted in the margin with an illuminated double-leaf motif.

The Shem Tov Bible is part of a genre of medieval Hebrew manuscripts known as Masoretic Bibles. Such codices typically feature not only the biblical text, its vowel points, and its cantillation marks but also a series of notes, known as Masorah (lit., Tradition), meant to ensure the accurate transmission of the text from one generation of scribes to the next. Most Masoretic Bibles include two types of Masorah notes inscribed in minuscule script on each page: the Masorah parva, added between columns of biblical text and in the outer and inner margins, and the Masorah magna, generally written in three or four lines in the upper and/or lower margins. Among other functions, the former usually conveys in highly abbreviated form the number of occurrences of a given textual feature in the Hebrew Bible, while the latter often expands on that number by citing those occurrences, somet.mes s formulating a rule or mnemonic to aid the scribe’s memory. Both the codex’s biblical text and its paratexts will be treated below.

Text

As mentioned in his colophon, Ibn Gaon organized the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible in accordance with the sequence outlined by the sages in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Bava batra 14b (see Contents), which places them roughly in thematic (in the case of the Latter Prophets) or chronological (in the case of the Writings) order. It is important to note that this system was not followed by the scribes of some of the best known ancient Eastern codices, nor is it the one in general use today. Ibn Gaon’s insistence on this specific sequence underlines his allegiance to the Babylonian Talmud as the definitive source of Jewish law.

Similarly, Ibn Gaon was particular to follow the instructions of Maimonides with respect to the various types of paragraph breaks in the text of the Pentateuch, as well as some of his rulings on the forms of the Song of the Sea (Ex. 15:1-19) and of the Song of Moses (Deut. 32:1-43). In good rabbinic fashion, and as mentioned above, he likewise marked the haftarot lections according to the annual reading cycle of Babylonian Jewry (as practiced by Sephardim), and he listed the readings for special Sabbaths, festivals, and fasts on p. 179, perhaps suggesting that he intended the book to serve a liturgical function in the synagogue in addition to a scholarly one.

Ibn Gaon’s assiduous commitment to the accuracy of his work is reflected in the words themselves. Professor Menachem Cohen, editor of the Ha-keter Hebrew Bible project at Bar-Ilan University (1992-2019), has observed that the Shem Tov Bible represents “the best of the Sephardic codices,” which medieval scholars venerated for their superior quality. The research of Ofer and of his teacher, Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, the last generation’s doyen of Masorah studies whose work formed the basis for the Jerusalem Crown edition (2000), has demonstrated that the Shem Tov Bible’s degree of closeness to the prescriptions of the Masorah exceeds that of some of the most famous biblical manuscripts, such as Codex Sassoon and the Leningrad Codex. It is for these reasons that the Rev. Dr. Norman H. Snaith, editor of the British and Foreign Bible Society’s revised Hebrew Bible of 1958, consulted hundreds of the Shem Tov Bible’s readings while compiling his edition. Similarly, both Cohen and Breuer incorporated evidence from this codex into their own Hebrew Bibles.

Paratexts 

One of the most important innovations of the Shem Tov Bible is its expansion of the role of the Masorah parva described above. Ibn Gaon used the volume’s wide outer and inner margins to add a significant amount of masoretic information, much of it rare and some of it unique. Most prominent are his abundant citations of the famed Hilleli Codex, a legendary, ancient Hebrew Bible quoted and used as an accurate model by Iberian copyists from the early thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries but subsequently lost to history (Fig. 13). As observed by David Solomon Sassoon, the Shem Tov Bible preserves valuable testimony about the layout and spelling especially of the text of the Prophets and the Writings in the Hilleli Codex. In fact, Ibn Gaon made numerous changes, particularly to the paragraph breaks he had originally inserted, based on what he saw in this authoritative Bible. Sassoon himself collects ed the Hilleli readings found in Ibn Gaon’s work, perhaps with the intention of eventually publishing them. These readings have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the history of the transmission of the biblical text in Spain.

Other noteworthy contents of the Masorah parva are its regular references to renowned biblical scholars, ranging from Moses ben Mohah and Rabbi Phinehas Rosh Yeshivah (both of the eighth century) to Rabbis Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi; 1040-1105), Joseph (ca. 1105-ca. 1170) and David (ca. 1160-ca. 1235) Kimhi, and Nahmanides, highlighting the range of Ibn Gaon’s source material. The scribe often contrasts the positions of opposing masoretic schools, like those of Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, about the details of the biblical text. He also notes similar, though slightly variant, language used in different books of the Bible (Kings vs. Isaiah or Chronicles, Isaiah vs. Jeremiah), presumably to prevent copyists from confusing them. Perhaps most remarkable is his demonstrable preference for the opinions of the “Eastern” (from Babylonia) Masorah scholars over those of their “Western” (from the Land of Israel) colleagues; indeed, on a number of occasions Ibn Gaon revised the text to match the “Eastern” reading. Ofer has suggested that this tendency may be attributable to Ibn Gaon’s aforementioned acceptance of Babylonian authority in all matters of Jewish law and practice.

Beyond the Masorah parva, another extraordinary feature of this manuscript is Ibn Gaon’s penchant for enumeration, in the spirit of the soferim of old (see the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Kiddushin 30a). Not only does he tally the paragraph breaks (“open” and “closed” with separate counts) and sedarim of each biblical book, as noted in the colophon, but each verse is numbered separately on the extreme outer edges of the page. In the Pentateuch, the count restarts with the beginning of a new parashah (excepting Parashat va-yelekh), while in the Prophets and Writings the count runs from one end to the other of each book. (In the Twelve Minor Prophets, the count restarts with each new minor prophet.) Because of this, the scribe is able to make precise internal references to other parts of the volume. For example, the Masorah parva to the word mas’at in Gen. 43:34 (p. 37) notes that there are six occurrences of this word vocalized with a patah [a] vowel, and all six are cited on the page of the manuscript containing the 1,434th verse of the book of Chronicles, i.e., II Chron. 24:9. If we turn to II Chron. 24:9 on p. 740, almost at the other end of the codex, we indeed find a listing of the six verses that include the word mas’at in the Masorah magna of the lower margin. No other medieval Hebrew manuscript is known to mark the verses in this way and to use such a sophisticated system for internal references.

Ibn Gaon’s numerical interests extend to other features of the volume as well. The midpoints of each biblical book, as well as the first- and third-quarter points of the Pentateuch and of the Latter Prophets, are noted and decorated in the margins. Each book (including each of the Twelve Minor Prophets) closes with an illuminated rectangle generally containing a tally of the book’s verses, sedarim, and paragraph breaks (and occasionally even the number of words and letters[!]); moreover, at the end of the Pentateuch, Prophets (Fig. 6), and Writings space is provided for sum totals for those sections of the Bible. The poetical books of Psalms, Job, and Proverbs—collects ively known as Sifrei emet—are divided into one hundred fifty, thirty-one, and forty-one chapters, respectively, each chapter marked with an illuminated or decorated marginal number. And at the base of each recto is the name and number of the biblical book copied on that page, with the following additions: in the Pentateuch the name and number of the parashah are added below, in the Twelve Minor Prophets the name and number of the minor prophet are added below, and in the Psalms the name and number of one of the five “books” into which Psalms is traditionally divided are likewise added below. All of this numeration endows the volume with a clear, precise, and readily discernible structure for ease of navigation and study.

Continuing with the numerical theme, Ibn Gaon included at the front of the Bible a famous poem attributed to Rabbi Saadiah Gaon (882-942) composed of thirty quatrains, one for each of the twenty-seven letters of the Hebrew alphabet (including the five final letter-forms) plus an extra quatrain for the letters gimel, resh, and tav. Ibn Gaon’s goal in copying the poem was to provide the reader with a mnemonic for remembering the number of occurrences of each letter within the biblical corpus. Generally, the first word of a given quatrain starts with the letter in question; the second and third words start with letters whose numerological value corresponds to the thousands; and the fourth, fifth, and sixth words start with letters representing the hundreds, tens, and ones place. The remainder of the words in the quatrain briefly reference pairs of verses that, in their full form, contain words adding up to the number already calculated.

For example, the first letter treated on p. 1 is the non-final form of nun, as indicated both by the enlarged nun in the center and by the first word, nibbe’u; the second and third words start with lamed and bet, respectively, indicating 32,000; and the fourth, fifth, and sixth words start with tsadi, ayin, and zayin, respectively, indicating 977. We thus learn that there are 32,977 instances of the non-final form of the letter nun in the Bible. This statistic is also arrived at by adding the numbers mentioned in the verses referenced in the remainder of the quatrain: Num. 1:35 (“Those enrolled from the tribe of Manasseh: 32,200”) and Gen. 5:31 (“All the days of Lamech came to 777 years”). As noted in his Baddei ha-aron 6:1, Ibn Gaon wrote a commentary to this complex poem, apparently represented here, explaining which verses are referenced in the latter part of each quatrain and providing the numerological total.

A final set of paratexts are the masoretic lists housed within the illuminated archways discussed above. One of these lists, on pp. 502-503, is relatively well known and is often referred to in Masorah literature by its first two words, Okhlah ve-okhlah (Fig. 3). The rubric at the head of this alphabetically organized litany explains that all the pairs of words that follow occur only twice in the Hebrew Bible: once alone and a second t.mes with a prefixed vav (“and”). Thus, for example, okhlah (with that specific set of vowels) appears alone in the verse “After they had eaten [okhlah] and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose” (I Sam. 1:9) but with a prefixed vav in “Pray sit up and eat [ve-okhlah] of my game” (Gen. 27:19). The other masoretic lists transcribed by Ibn Gaon are similarly detailed in the type of textual information they transmit.

In a well known passage from the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Menahot 29b, Moses ascends on High, only to find the Almighty sitting and crowning the letters of the Torah. It seems likely that this legend forms the basis upon which a treatise known as the Sefer tagei (Book of Crownlets) was composed, probably somet.mes in the latter half of the first millennium CE in Babylonia. The work, an important copy of which is preserved in the Shem Tov Bible (see below), is essentially a record of nearly two thousand specific instances where a scribe copying a Torah scroll is meant to alter the shape of a given letter, usually either by adding to it a prescribed number of tagin (crownlets or serifs) or by changing its graphic form in some other way. Such modified letters are known in rabbinic parlance as otiyyot.mes shunnot (anomalous letters), and evidence for them can be found in manuscripts from almost all medieval Jewish communities. Over the centuries, the custom fell into desuetude, and nowadays the only large groups of Jews that maintain a version of the practice are certain Yemenite communities.

In its preamble, Sefer tagei, like some other anonymously authored literature, claims a highly distinguished and ancient pedigree:

It is noteworthy that several of the figures in this chain of transmission are traditionally associated either with scribal activity (Ezra, Nahum the Scribe) or with the supernatural and esoteric (Ahithophel, Elijah, Elisha, Ezekiel, Rabbi Nehunya ben ha-Kanah). It should come as no surprise, then, that the earliest literary reference to Sefer tagei to have reached us is found in the Judeo-Arabic commentary of the aforementioned tenth-century Rabbi Saadiah Gaon to Sefer yetsirah, the mystical Book of Creation. It seems that by his t.mes the modifications recorded by Sefer tagei had come to be seen as essential parts of the letters, such that a Torah scroll written without them would be deemed ritually unfit. Later on, Maimonides the rationalist would endorse the inclusion of otiyyot.mes shunnot as the ideal way to copy a Torah scroll, and Nahmanides the kabbalist, in the introduction to his Torah commentary, would assert that proper explanation of Sefer tagei and of the otiyyot.mes shunnot within it would lead to knowledge of “many very deep secrets.”

In his Baddei ha-aron 6:1, Ibn Gaon writes that this comment by Nahmanides, his teachers’ teacher, inspired him to seek out Sefer tagei during the long years he spent researching the mysteries of the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible. After much effort and many inquiries with great contemporary scribes about the otiyyot.mes shunnot, Ibn Gaon finally received a copy of Sefer tagei as a gift from his friend Hananel Ibn Esquira’s father Abraham. He then proceeded to compare his version of the book with the traditions of other professional scribes and found that the text had been greatly corrupted in the course of its transmission. And so he resolved to “return the crown to its original state” by reviewing the Torah no fewer than 2,249 t.mes s(!), allowing him to determine where every one of the otiyyot.mes shunnot belonged:

From this passage we see how much effort Ibn Gaon invested in editing Sefer tagei in order to arrive at the most accurate recension of the text possible. And indeed, as described above, Sefer tagei is written out in minute script between the Torah and the Prophets in this codex (pp. 177-179; Fig. 14). The Shem Tov Bible thus contains one of just four full manuscript copies of Sefer tagei extant, and this exemplar is the only one in the group written by a Sephardic scribe. It is on account of Ibn Gaon’s diligent labors that his version of Sefer tagei was used as the basis for the best edition available (Toronto, 2010).

Ibn Gaon did not suffice with merely transcribings Sefer tagei; he also put it into practice when copying the Bible itself, as he wrote at the end of the text on p. 179:

If we look at the leaves containing the Ten Commandments (pp. 60-61; Fig. 15), we get a sense of what this means. Here we find examples of what Sefer tagei calls a final letter kaf that has four horns in the word hotsetikha (Ex. 20:2); a letter shin that has seven tittles in the words tissa and shem (v. 7); a letter heh that has four tagin in the words ha-shabbat and va-yekaddeshehu (v. 10); and a final letter pe that has four tagin in the word tin’af (v. 13). Other unusual forms scattered throughout the Pentateuch include the yod bent into the shape of a kaf (e.g., p. 6); the lamed whose ascender is elongated, with a three-pronged tag extending downward from it (p. 31); the nun whose leg is bent backward (p. 8); the ayin the crown of whose head is suspended (p. 46); and the well known spiral pe (p. 27). Consistent with his numerical orientation, whenever an anomalous letter was called for, Ibn Gaon generally added a marginal note indicating the number of t.mes s that particular form appeared throughout the Pentateuch.

It is important to observe that Sefer tagei is organized alphabetically, that is, it lists all of the instances of the modified alef before all of the instances of the modified bet, and so on. It is not, in other words, structured in a way that would make it easy for a scribe to follow along as he is copying the text of the Torah in order. Ibn Gaon’s implementation of its prescriptions throughout the Pentateuch testifies to his thorough knowledge of both the Bible and Sefer tagei and constitutes a scribal feat unparalleled among extant.mes dieval biblical codices. It is only a shame that his tract explaining the kabbalistic significance of the otiyyot.mes shunnot has not survived to give us greater insight into how he understood them.

One other kabbalistic feature worthy of discussion in this context is Ibn Gaon’s inscription of the final letter nun one hundred thirteen t.mes s, often within the empty space of paragraph breaks, in this manuscript’s Pentateuch section. Probably originally meant to record one tradition (of several) regarding where the Jews of the Land of Israel (and satellite communities) would break up the public reading of the Torah according to a triennial cycle in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, these nuns had, by Nahmanides’ t.mes , taken on mystical overtones. According to his student, Rabbi Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, Nahmanides endorsed the position that a person need not stand up in the presence of a Torah scroll written without these nuns; in other words, he considered such a Torah to be ritually unfit. Nahmanides himself is said to have made a list of the locations of the nuns, and although Ibn Gaon does not.mes ntion them explicitly in Baddei ha-aron, it appears likely that he included them, like the otiyyot.mes shunnot, under the influence of Nahmanides’ teachings. No other known medieval biblical codex features final letters nun serving this unique function.

As noted above, Ibn Gaon brought his Bible with him to the Land of Israel in 1315, eventually settling in Safed, where he passed away about fifteen years later. According to an inscription on the codex’s final leaf (p. 768; Fig. 16), it was later acquired by Sar Shalom ben Phinehas, a nasi (prince claiming Davidic descent) of the Jewish community who resided in Baghdad in the fourteenth century:

It may be that the codex was (re)bound at this point, since the hand that wrote the inscription seems to have also been responsible for the catchwords at the end of each quire, presumably added to aid in the quires’ assembly by a bookbinder. The manuscript probably stayed in the Middle East for at least a couple centuries thereafter, because it is apparently referenced in a legal opinion authored by Rabbi David ben Solomon Ibn Abi Zimra (1479-1573), a native of Spain who sojourned in Jerusalem and Safed but spent most of his career as the leader of Egyptian Jewry. Ibn Abi Zimra was asked a question relating to the proper form of the letter vav in the word shalom found in Num. 25:12. The Babylonian Talmud in Tractate Kiddushin 66b states that this vav is “severed” but does not elaborate. Ibn Abi Zimra consulted a number of sources for their interpretation of this passage, including the work of Ibn Gaon, in which, he notes, the vav is split in two (see p. 131).

Likewise, evidence from Syria suggests the Shem Tov Bible’s possible presence there. In January 1925, David Solomon Sassoon purchased fourteen old, ritually unfit Torah scrolls from the sextons of the synagogue in Jober, then a village located on the outskirts of Damascus that has since become one of the city’s suburbs. Some of these scrolls date from the sixteenth century and, remarkably, feature both otiyyot.mes shunnot and marginal final letters nun (some of which were subsequently erased) very similar to the ones found in the Shem Tov Bible. Moreover, a copy of the Pentateuch printed in Hijar, Spain, in 1490 that once belonged to Elkan N. Adler and is now part of the collects ion of The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York includes handwritten annotations of readings taken from the Aleppo Codex, as well as otiyyot.mes shunnot reminiscent of those in the Shem Tov Bible, implying that the manuscript made its way to Aleppo in the second half of the sixteenth century.

The manuscript appears to have then been transported to North Africa, perhaps in the seventeenth century, as a Bible now held by JTS includes a colophon very similar to the one in the Shem Tov Bible (Ms. 388, f. 293v), suggesting it was copied from the original. The spelling of the word u-be-surot with a samekh instead of u-be-tsurot with a tsadi in this colophon may indicate that the scribe was working in an Arabic-speaking milieu.

In 1868, Eliezer Ashkenazi, a Polish rabbi who had moved to Tunis and was active there in the rare book trade, published the first modern reference to the Shem Tov Bible. He had evidently sought to buy it through a friend, identified only with the initials M.G., from the family that owned it, but the family was not interested in selling, “because aside from being a truly precious object, it is a tried and true talisman, for a woman experiencing a difficult labor will be saved from her birth pains when the book enters her home.” Over the next forty years, more information began trickling out about this Bible. In 1879, a responsum by Elijah Hazzan (d. 1908), chief rabbi of Tripoli (present-day Libya), was published that revealed for the first t.mes that the manuscript was located in his city and that it included a copy of Sefer tagei. In 1895, Adolf Neubauer (1831-1907) of Oxford University printed the text of the inscription at the back of the Shem Tov Bible, identifying it as belonging to the Serour (sic) family of Tripoli.

A historian of Libyan Jewry, Mordechai Cohen (1856-ca. 1929), provided further background when he wrote that the Shem Tov Bible was brought to Tripoli from the city of Yafran, in the western Nafusa Mountains, in the days of Rabbi Abraham Khalfon (1741-1819). It was kept in the home of Rahamim Seror, unless a woman giving birth needed it for apotropaic purposes, as described above.

In 1905, the aforementioned Elkan N. Adler (1861-1946), one of the most prolific Judaica collects ors in England at the t.mes , traveled to Tripoli seeking to acquire the manuscript but failed to bring it home with him. David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942; Figs. 17-18), whose own library would grow to become the most important private Judaica collects ion of modern t.mes s, succeeded where his older friend had not, purchasing the manuscript for £85. The volume entered his library under the shelf mark 82 on August 17, 1909, and a bit over two years later, on October 9, 1911, he paid another £6-6-0 to have it rebound in its current binding by Joseph William Zaehnsdorf, a craft bookbinder based in London.

Sassoon treasured this Bible, which he, like some others before him, referred to as the “Kether Shem Tob” (Shem Tov Crown), gesturing toward its regal stature. He not only paginated it, as he generally did when he acquired a new manuscript, but added modern biblical chapter numbers and quire signatures throughout, and even filled in some of the Masorah magna on p. 371. He also mentioned it in a number of his publications, including, of course, his great collects ion catalogue, Ohel Dawid, where he recorded that the Shem Tov Bible was “held in great veneration by the Jews [of Tripoli], who made pilgrimages to it, as to a holy shrine, in t.mes s of public or private distress and trouble.” Moreover, as noted above, he collects ed the Hilleli readings found herein, presumably to have them printed, and, with the encouragement of Dropsie College President Cyrus Adler (1863-1940), seriously explored the possibility of producing a facsimile edition in 1926. Sassoon’s attachment to the Shem Tov Bible finds eloquent expression in the following story, recounted by his son Solomon, about his father’s final illness in July-August 1942:

In 1970, the Sassoon family began selling parts of its magnificent Judaica collects ion through Replica Shoes ’s. One of its blockbuster manuscript auctions took place in New York in December 1984, when the Shem Tov Bible, touted as “one of the most important Hebrew Bibles in the world” and positioned as the very last item in the catalogue, sold for a record-breaking $825,000 (including commission) to the owners of a prominent European Judaica collects ion. It was later lent to important Judaica exhibitions held in Amsterdam (1990), Berlin (1992), New York (1992), and Dallas (1993), before being sold privately in 1994 to Jaqui Safra, a passionate collects or of art and historical objects from Geneva, who is its current owner.

The Shem Tov Bible, completed in 1312 in Spain, is a tour de force of biblical and kabbalistic scholarship and a precious witness to the medieval tradition of Sephardic book art. Its meticulously rendered text and paratexts constitute an invaluable bridge to the lost Hilleli Codex and other authoritative sources; a thorough fulfillment of the prescriptions of Sefer tagei; and an exhaustive attempt by an accomplished scribe and well known rabbi to reproduce the Hebrew Bible as accurately and precisely as possible. The result of years of painstaking labors, the Shem Tov Bible survives as a landmark in the history of Hebrew manuscript production. It has only begun to be explored in its proper depth; so much more remains to be discovered. Echoing the blessing recorded for the nasi Sar Shalom on the volume’s final page, we can hope that future study of the Shem Tov Bible will continue to yield new insights and understanding of this holy book:

The research of several scholars has informed the composition of much of the present catalogue note. Professor Katrin Kogman-Appel of the University of Münster, a leading expert on medieval Jewish art history, analyzed the Bible’s decorative program within its Iberian context. Professor Yosef Ofer of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, one of the preeminent authorities on the history of biblical transmission, studied the manuscript’s text and marginalia. Dr. Jen Taylor Friedman and doctoral candidate Mordechai Weintraub have both spent many years delving into the traditions surrounding the Pentateuch’s anomalous letters, especially as they are manifest in the Shem Tov Bible. Replica Shoes ’s is grateful to them for their trailblazing scholarship, and to Professor Harvey Goldberg, Professor Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, and Rabbi Yehoshua Yankelewitz for providing information that aided in the cataloguing of this historic manuscript.

Sotheby’s would also like to thank Ardon Bar-Hama for his photographs of the Shem Tov Bible, which are featured in this catalogue note.

pp. 1-2: letters nun-final pe of Rabbi Saadiah Gaon’s poem on the Hebrew alphabet

Torah (pp. 3-176)

pp. 3-43: Genesis 2:1-24:5, 25:9b-end
pp. 43-80: Exodus
pp. 81-106: Leviticus
pp. 106-143: Numbers
pp. 143-176: Deuteronomy

pp. 177-179: Sefer tagei
p. 179: list of haftarot for special Sabbaths, festivals, and fasts

Prophets (pp. 180-501)

pp. 180-202: Joshua
pp. 202-225: Judges
pp. 225-280: I-II Samuel
pp. 280-336: I-II Kings
pp. 337-386: Jeremiah
pp. 386-430: Ezekiel
pp. 430-469: Isaiah
pp. 469-501: Twelve Minor Prophets

pp. 502-503: Okhlah ve-okhlah
pp. 504-506: various masoretic lists

Writings (pp. 507-753)

pp. 507-576: Psalms 34:8-end
pp. 577-611: Job
pp. 611-641: Proverbs
pp. 641-647: Ecclesiastes
pp. 647-650: Song of Songs
pp. 650-654: Lamentations
pp. 655-668: Daniel
pp. 668-675: Esther
pp. 675-697: Ezra-Nehemiah
pp. 697-753: I-II Chronicles

p. 753: colophon
pp. 754-767: various masoretic lists
p. 768: inscription

Format: 768 pages (13 1/2 x 10 in.; 342 x 253 mm) (collation: i¹⁰ [i_1-3,5-6,15 lacking], ii-iv¹², v-vii¹⁴, viii-x¹², xi¹⁴, xii¹⁶, xiii¹⁴, xiv-xx¹², xxi² [xxi_2-11 lacking], xxii-xxv¹², xxvi-xxvii¹⁴, xxviii-xxxi¹², xxxii⁶ [xxxii_3,6 lacking]) on parchment; original quire signatures in pen in Hebrew characters in upper-inner corner of first page of each quire (often damaged or obscured but [partially] visible on pp. 249, 277, 385, 409, 457, 505, 509, 533, 581); modern quire signatures in pencil in Arabic numerals in upper-inner corner of first page of each quire; quires begin on the flesh side; modern pagination in pencil in Arabic numerals in upper-outer corners; written in elegant Sephardic square script of larger (text body) and smaller (Masorah) sizes in brown ink; some texts reinked or added later in darker inks; generally double-column text of 31 lines per column; the biblical songs (pp. 56-57, 173-175, 206-208, 277-278), special texts (pp. 191, 642-643, 674), and the books of Psalms, Job, and Proverbs laid out differently; ruled in blind and in plummet; prickings often visible in outer edges, especially following the Torah section; justification of lines via dilation or contraction of final letters (average justification: approx. 8 3/4 x 6 1/2 in.; 223 x 167 mm); biblical text fully vocalized and accentuated in brown ink; Masorah magna added in upper and lower margins and Masorah parva added in between columns and in outer margins; small circles placed above words to which Masorah parva notes refer; verses numbered in outer edges of each page, the counts restarting with every new parashah (in the Torah [minus Parashat va-yelekh]) or every new book (in the Writings and the Prophets); book name and number noted near lower-outer corner of rectos, with parashah name and number added below in the Torah, minor prophet name and number added below in the Twelve Minor Prophets, and “book” name and number added below in the Psalms; “open” paragraph breaks marked with a pe or the word petuhah and “closed” paragraph breaks with a samekh or the word setumah and numbered separately in red ink; frequent marginal notations of Hilleli Codex readings, some of them requiring the cancelation of a paragraph break via red dots or the reclassification (and later numbering) of a “closed” break as “open,” or vice versa; later horizontal catchwords, somet.mes s damaged, added in pen in lower-inner corner of last page of each quire (original? catchword on p. 360); later headers added for Joshua-Jeremiah (pp. 180-361); modern biblical chapter numbers in pencil in Arabic numerals in outer margins; corrections in hand of primary scribe intermittently throughout; occasional later marginalia (e.g., pp. 117, 121, 452 [Musa?], more common in Psalms, Job, and Proverbs).

Special Features: Alphabetic poem framed in gold, with each new gilt letter of the alphabet set within a frame against an either pink or blue ground on pp. 1-2; anomalous letters included regularly throughout the Torah; in the Torah, new parashiyyot marked in outer margins with usually floral frames colored gold, blue, red, pink, etc., and a note about the previous parashah’s haftarah; in the Prophets, new haftarot marked in a similar way, with a marginal red ink notation of the parashah to which the haftarah corresponds and the red words ad kan (till here) marking the end of the haftarah (decorated with double-leaves on p. 368); in the Writings, new megillot marked in a similar way; some parashah and haftarah markers illustrate the texts (e.g., pp. 87, 99, 166, 225, 244, 463, 477, 483); new sedarim marked with a marginal samekh flourished with red and/or purple fleuronnée work (in Daniel, Esther, Ezra, and Chronicles, some are also gilt) and numbered, the count restarting at the beginning of a new biblical book (the margins somet.mes s record alternate counts); in Psalms, Job, and Proverbs, the decoration of the new sedarim is like that of new parashiyyot in the Torah, while the decoration of the chapter numbers is like that of the sedarim in the rest of the volume; midpoints of various kinds flourished with red and/or purple fleuronnée work (pp. 21, 63, 86, 88-89, 94, 124, 159, 192, 214, 252, 308, 341, 361, 381, 408, 439 [especially ornate], 449, 484, 534, 594, 626, 644, 649, 653, 662, 687, 720); quarter-points of various kinds flourished in a similar manner (pp. 41, 129, 422, 468); biblical books (and, in Psalms, each of the first four subdivisions) end with a gilt rectangular box tallying masoretic data; enlarged and shrunk letters marked in the margins with illuminated double-leaf motifs (pp. 3, 18, 21, 73-74, 81, 84, 89, 91, 121, 133, 149, 171, 173-174, 240, 349, 373, 456, 463, 486, 501, 536-537, 581, 602, 611, 627, 638-639, 644, 647, 651-654, 662, 668, 671, 674-675, 697); Masorah magna with special decoration on p. 136; marginal notes about alternate haftarah customs in France on pp. 321 (illuminated), 418; elaborate gilt masoretic tally box on p. 501; colophon within illuminated horseshoe-shaped frame on p. 753; masoretic text housed within various types of decorated arcades on pp. 502-506, 754-768 (see The Decoration and Illumination).

Condition: Probably lacking eighteen folios, twelve containing biblical text (three folios lacking before p. 1, two between pp. 2-3, one between pp. 18-19, ten between pp. 506-507, one each between pp. 760-761, 764-765), plus an unknown number of introductory folios (“preface” referenced in the colophon); some abrasion of text and decoration throughout, especially on the flesh side; scattered staining and dampstaining (e.g., pp. 380-381); occasional creasing; minor repairs periodically in gutter at head and/or foot; short tears in outer edges toward front of volume, at t.mes s repaired; repairs in edges of pp. 1-22, 753-768, slightly affecting text or decoration on pp. 1-2, 755-756, 758, 767; small repairs in lower-inner corner of pp. 9-10, in gutter of pp. 47-48, and near inner margins of pp. 455-456, 505-506, all slightly affecting text or decoration; natural parchment defects on pp. 33-34, 117-118; small holes in outer margins of pp. 41-48, 709-710, 729-732, 749-752, and in gutters of pp. 499-502, 721-722; portion of lower margins of pp. 89-90 excised; minor damage along ruling lines on pp. 77-78, 107-108, 145-146, 153-154, 201-202; text restored with ink over tape on p. 134; small repairs in upper-outer corners of pp. 177-184, not affecting text; some ink transfer from p. 230 to p. 231; small holes affecting individual letters on pp. 267-268, 293-294; worm tracks on pp. 315-386, 711-732, 739-768, slightly affecting text on pp. 331-338; short slit near gutter of pp. 371-372.

Binding: Bound in tan leather, paneled in blind, slightly scratched and with curving corners, by “Zaehnsdorf 1911” (inside of rear board); turn-ins blind-tooled; spine in six compartments with raised bands; Sassoon Library shelf mark (“82”) sticker pasted in lower compartment; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns; Sassoon bookplate added to pastedown of upper board.

Luxury Week

The Shem Tov Bible and Mysticism in the Golden Age of Spain

Elkan N. Adler, “England’s Hebrew Treasures,” The Jewish Chronicle (February 13, 1914): 21, 30-31; The Jewish Chronicle (February 20, 1914): 35-36, at p. 36.

Eliezer Ashkenazi, “Al devar tanakh katuv hadur ha-nimtsa be-makom peloni,” Ha-levanon 5,18 (May 6, 1868): 279-280.

Yaacov Basser (ed.), Ha-dein sefer tagei (Toronto: Yaacov Basser, 2010).

Mordechai Breuer, Nussah ha-mikra be-“keter yerushalayim” u-mekorotav ba-masorah u-be-kitvei ha-yad (Jerusalem: Keren ha-Masorah, 2003), 10.

Salomon Buber, in Me’assef niddahim 12 (June 18, 1879): 193-194 (no. 3).

David Cazès, “Antiquités judaiques en Tripolitaine,” Revue des études juives 20 (39) (January-March 1890): 78-87, at pp. 80-83.

Menachem Cohen, “Mavo le-mahadurat ha-keter,” in idem (ed.), Mikra’ot gedolot ha-keter: mahadurat yesod hadashah, vol. 6 (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1992), 13*, 56*, 92* n. 27.

Mordechai Cohen, Higgid mordekhai: korot luv vi-yehudeha yishuveihem u-minhageihem, ed. Harvey Goldberg (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1978), 266 (sec. 87).

Saskia R. de Melker, Emile G.L. Schrijver, and Edward van Voolen (eds.), The Image of the Word: Jewish Tradition in Manuscripts and Printed Books (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Library and Jewish Historical Museum; Leuven: Peeters, 1990), 6, 20, 45 (no. 2).

Moses Gaster, “The Romance of Jewish Manuscripts,” The Jewish Chronicle Supplement 149 (June 1933): iv-vi, at p. v.

Elijah Hazzan, She’elot u-teshuvot ta‘alumot lev, ed. Daniel Bitton, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Ma’or, 1986), 13a (no. 9).

Jeffrey Hogrefe, “Judaica collects ion Sold: 14th-Century Bible Fetches Record $825,000 in Replica Shoes ’s Auction,” The Washington Post (December 5, 1984), https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1984/12/05/judaica-collects ion-sold/9f4f9b7c-bde8-4325-b2cd-de04636041fc/.

David ben Solomon Ibn Abi Zimra, She’elot u-teshuvot ha-radbaz, pt. 8 (Jerusalem: Yerid ha-Sefarim, 2004), 252-253 (no. 181).

Shem Tov ben Abraham Ibn Gaon, Sefer baddei ha-aron ve-nikra gam migdal hanan’el, in Sefer ammudei ha-kabbalah, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 2001).

Katrin Kogman-Appel, Jewish Book Art between Islam and Christianity: The Decoration of Hebrew Bibles in Medieval Spain, trans. Judith Davidson (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004), 115-116, 125-130.

David Samuel Loewinger, “Rabbi shem tov ben avraham ben ga’on,” Sefunot 7 (1963): 8-39.

Andreas Nachama and Gereon Sievernich (eds.), Jüdische Lebenswelten: Katalog (Berlin: Berliner Festspiele; Jüdischer Verlag; Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991), 263 (no. 12/6).

Adolf Neubauer (ed.), Mediaeval Jewish Chronicles and Chronological Notes, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), xiv, 248.

Rita Reif, “Sassoon Judaica Sold at Replica Shoes ’s,” New York t.mes s (December 5, 1984): C29.

Saadia ben Joseph Gaon, Commentary to Sefer yetsirah, ed. Joseph Kafih (Jerusalem: Va‘ad le-Hotsa’at Sifrei Rasag, 1972), 130-131 (ch. 5).

Jacob Saphir, Even sappir, vol. 2 (Mainz: Jehiel Brill, 1874), 176 n.

Nahum M. Sarna, “Introduction to the Hilleli Manuscript,” in Studies in Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2000), 239-251.

David Solomon Sassoon, “Inscriptions in the Synagogue in Kai-Fung-Foo,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 11,2 (October 1920): 127-144, at p. 133.

David Solomon Sassoon, “Hebrew Manuscripts from Spain,” The Jewish Chronicle Supplement 53 (May 1925): i-iii, at p. i.

David Solomon Sassoon, Ohel Dawid: Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, London, vol. 1 ([Oxford]: Oxford University Press; London: Humphrey Milford, 1932), x, xxii, xxiv-xxv, lii, 2-5 (no. 82), 46-47, 554-556, plate 27.

David Solomon Sassoon, “Divrei david,” in Abraham Ben-Yaacob, Perakim be-toledot yehudei bavel: korot anaf ehad mi-mishpahat sassoon ha-baghdadit, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Olam ha-Sefer ha-Torani, 1989), 660, 695, 724.

Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, in Vivian B. Mann, Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilynn D. Dodds (eds.), Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain (New York: George Braziller; Jewish Museum, 1992), 177 (no. 7).

Norman H. Snaith (ed.), Sefer torah nevi’im u-ketuvim meduyyak heiteiv al pi ha-masorah (London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1958), preface.

Sotheby’s, A Further Ninety-Seven Highly Important Hebrew Manuscripts from the collects ion formed by the Late David Solomon Sassoon (New York: Replica Shoes ’s, 1984), lot 97.

Siegfried Stein, “Saadya’s Piyyuṭ on the Alphabet,” in Erwin L. J. Rosenthal (ed.), Saadya Studies in Commemoration of the One Thousandth Anniversary of the Death of R. Saadya Gaon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1943), 206-226, at pp. 208-209.

Jen Taylor Friedman, “Otiyyot.mes shunnot in Sefer Tagei (Sefer Tagin) and other manuscripts, including the Bologna Torah Scroll” (PhD diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, 2023).

Zion Teschuba, “Hemdah genuzah,” Ha-tsefirah 15,214 (December 26, 1888): 3-4.

Mordechai Weintraub, “Simanim paratekstu’aliyyim be-sifrei torah” (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2021), 46-55.

Mordechai Weintraub, “Daf hadash min ha-genizah shel sefer tagei,” Shenaton le-heker ha-mikra ve-ha-mizrah ha-kaddum 27 (2022): 127-146.

https://archive.org/details/tanakh-ms-sassoon-82-images/mode/1up