Specimen variarum lectionum sacri textus et Chaldaica Estheris Additamenta cum Latina versione ac notis. [“Specimen of Variants of Sacred Text and Aramaic Addition to Esther with Latin Translation.”]

ROSSI, GIOVANNI BERNARDO DE

Rome

1782

FIRST EDITION. Latin interspersed with Hebrew. Entire section in Aramaic, Prayer of Mordechai and Esther, with Latin translation face `a face (pp. 138-161). Broad-margined copy. From the Cassuto Collection

The Italian Christian Hebraist Giovanni Bernardo de Rossi (1742-1831) was Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Parma. He contributed to Hebrew scholarship in three fields: typography, bibliography, and text-critical Bible studies. This work is noted by JE as containing a specimen of the Targum to the Book of Esther. In fact, this Prayer of Mordechai and Esther derives from the Additions to the Book of Esther contained in the Septuagint and Vulgate versions of Esther - apocryphal in nature, they are not contained in the canonical Hebrew text. They have been attributed to Lysimachus, an Alexandrian Jew, who about 114 B.C.E. translated Esther into Greek. What De Rossi discovered in a Vatican manuscript was a translation of these Additions from Greek (or Latin) into Aramaic. See JE, Vol. X, p.486; EJ, Vol. VI, cols. 913-14