Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo

Historical scan page 22

1 8 INTRODUCTION Ph. The Phillipps MS. 391, of 92 ff., of cent. XII. early, contains principally tracts of Jerome, notably Quaestiones Hebraicae. On ff. 87-8 it has the four extracts which I printed in 1893 (see above). It belonged to Leander van Ess, and has an old press-mark C i or C 7. T. No. 117 in the Town Library at Treves. A paper MS., dated 1459. It contains five of the same tracts as Ph and two of the extracts from Philo. It retains its old press-mark, B 11, and an inscription showing that it be- longed to the abbey of S. Maria ad Martyres at Treves. The contents of the book and the text of the extracts make it clear that T is a copy of Ph or of a sister-book, while the form of the press-mark shows that Ph and T belonged to the same library. Thus T is only important as helping to "place" Ph. F. MS. McClean 31 in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cam- bridge (fully described in my catalogue of the McClean MSS.), is a remarkable copy of the Aurora, or versified Bible, of Petrus de Riga. It is of cent. XIII., and is copiously annotated. Among the marginalia are many extracts (a complete list will be found at the beginning of the Appendix on various Readings) from Philo, uni- formly introduced under that name, and for the most part abridged. The manuscript may have been written in the Rhine Provinces, or in Eastern France. J. The Hebrew Chronicle of JerahmeeU edited in an Eng- lish translation by Dr. M. Caster (^Oriental Translation Fund, New series IV., 1899), was compiled early in cent. XIV. somewhere in the Rhineland. It contains large portions of Philo, some in extenso, some abridged.. A list is given in the Appendix. Dr. Caster will have it that the Hebrew is the original text; but Hebraists do not agree with him, and it is, in fact, possible to show that the Hebrew writer was translating from Latin, and from a manuscript which contained misreadings common to those we now have. See the Appendix of Readings on III. 10, VII. 3. ((f) Glancing back over the list, we see that for all but one of the items a German origin is estab- lished. The Vatican MS. is the exception, and even this presents certain indications of German origin. Near the beginning of the book (III. 3) is a speech beginning Deleam. R reads Vel eain.