Mishlei Shu’alim [Hebrew version of Aesop’s Fables]

BERACHIAH BEN NATRONAI HANAKDAN.

University Press

Prague

1661

With engraved frontispiece of the Animal Kingdom, signed "Jo. Ch. Smischek fe[cit]." Title in red and black. Latin and Hebrew on facing pages. Hebrew in square characters typical of Prague, provided with nikud.

Vinograd, Prague 443

The 12th-13th century Hebrew grammarian, translator, and scholar Berechiah's appellation "HaNakdan" ("The Punctuator") reflects his professional expertise: adding the vowel-points to Hebrew bibles and prayer books. Born. and trained in Normandy, Berechiah worked for a time in England but was so unimpressed by the lack of religious standards within Anglo-Jewry, he determined to produce a collection of ethically instructive animal fables to help remedy the situation. Mishlei Shu’alim (Fox Fables), his most celebrated work, adapts much of its content from the French-language fable collection of Marie de France (c. 1170) and from a now lost Latin version of Aesop. This European Aesopian tradition is married by Berechiah to the biblical and talmudic traditions, with the result that the animals converse in a Biblical Hebrew interspersed with talmudic quotations. This edition, in which the Hebrew text and a Latin translation by Melchior Hanel appear on facing pages, features an an introduction by the polymath Athanasius Kircher and an engraved frontispiece, in which the fox teaches ethical lessons to an assortment of animals.