Hebrew biblical books with Vulgate and Latin glosses (England, late 12th and 13th century)

MS 143

A product of medieval Oxford scholarship?

This bilingual manuscript of the books of Joshua, Judges, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes is opened from left to right, but the Hebrew text from the late 12th century/early 13th century is written and read from right to left. The parallel running Latin text (mid-13th century) is that of the Vulgate Bible. It is written and read from left to right, while the Latin interlinear text (late 13th century) is a more literal translation of the Hebrew original and thus read together with the Hebrew from right to left.

This manuscript was produced in England before the expulsion of Jews in 1290 by Edward I. Together with other manuscripts of its kind, it demonstrates that Christian biblical scholars engaged with the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament and Jewish (or convert) scholars in an effort to correct the Latin translation of the Vulgate Bible. It is unclear how Christian scholars in England acquired their Hebrew language skills, as ‘no Hebrew grammatical manuscripts which might have been used by medieval Christian scholars in pre-expulsion England have been identified so far’ (Olzowy-Schlanger, p. 111). It
appears that manuscripts like this, which is one of only twenty-five known biblical Hebrew-Latin
manuscripts produced in England before 1290, were ‘the primary tool’ for the study of Hebrew
(Olzowy-Schlanger, p. 111). The interlinear translation further suggests that its late 13th-century writer had some understanding of the Hebrew language. Interlinear translations survive in about fifteen pre-expulsion English manuscripts and because all of these differ from each other and have different layouts, cases of mere copying from another manuscript without linguistic knowledge are unlikely (Olzowy-Schlanger, p. 115).

On folio 98v, the scribe added the tetragrammaton (the four-letter Hebrew name for God transliterated as ‘YHWH’) to Judges 9:29 and 9:31, which goes against Jewish practice.

There is a hypothesis that MS 143, and other manuscripts like it, are linked to Grosseteste’s sponsorship of Hebrew-Latin bilingual Psalters (Loewe, p. 63). Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168-1253)
was an Oxford scholar, Bishop of Lincoln from 1235, and one of the most celebrated English medieval intellectuals.