Previously I have highlighted some Georgian manuscripts that the Bibliothèque nationale de France has graciously made freely available online. Here is a list of Judeo-Persian manuscripts from the BnF that I have been able to find at Gallica. (If I happen to have missed one, please let me know.) They mostly come from the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries, some of them with colophons. While these manuscripts obviously fall outside of the delimiter “eastern Christian” that guides most of the posts appearing here, I know that at least some readers of the blog have, just as I do, broader interests than that delimiter allows. Most of the texts here are biblical; for details about published biblical texts in Persian (Judeo-Persian and otherwise), see my hitherto incomplete bibliography here.
These manuscripts often have a verse in Hebrew followed immediately by a Persian translation. For the Catalogues des manuscrits hébreux et samaritains de la Bibliothèque Impériale (Munk, Derenbourg, Franck, and Zotenberg) see at Gallica here and archive.org here. The few remarks I give below rely on this volume.
Un grand merci à la BnF de partager ces manuscrits!
70 Pentateuch http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9002771d (catalog)
BnF héb 70, f. 22v, end of Gen 14 in Heb and Judeo-Persian
71 Pentateuch http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90027700 (catalog)
- The Persian text of №s 70-71 is said to follow Targum Onqelos closely.
90 Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9064442x (catalog)
- Probably the same scribe as №s 70-71.
97 Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (to 10:3), with David Kimḥi’s commentary http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9064631t (catalog)
100 Jeremiah http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90644470 (catalog)
- Different from the version in № 97. Like some of the other JP translations, this one follows Onqelos more than the MT.
101 Minor Prophets, Lamentations http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90644151 (catalog)
- The margins have some of the Persian in Perso-Arabic script.
116 Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Esther http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9064448d (catalog)
117 Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9064446k (catalog)
BnF héb 117, f. 1v, the beginning of Proverbs in Heb and Judeo-Persian
118 Job, Lamentations, Jeremiah http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90644544 (catalog)
120 Job http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9064420b (catalog)
121 Job http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90644188 (catalog)
127 Esther, benedictions, and a Purim song (Heb and Pers) http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9064444r (catalog)
129 Daniel http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90645658 (catalog)
130 Tobit, Judith, Bel and the Dragon, Megillat Antiochos[1] http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9064465x (catalog)
BnF héb 130, f. 58r, colophon in Persian in Perso-Arabic and Hebrew script
The colophon (f. 58r) reads as follows:
نبشتة (!) شد این کتاب در موضع لار سال هزار و نوه صد ودوازده
נבשתה שוד אין כתאב דר מוצׄע לאר סאל הזאר ונוה צד ודואזדה
nevešte šod in ketāb dar mawẓiʿ-e Lār sāl-e hezār o noh sad o davāzdah
This book was written in the village of Lār in the year 1912 [AG, = 1600/1].
[1] The Aramaic text, for whatever it’s worth (Kaufman’s comments here), is available at the CAL site sub Late Jewish Literary Aramaic, text 81406.
