Les souscriptions de fin de chapitre dans le Sefer ha-shorashim et le stemma codicum

Abstract

A large number of manuscripts of David Qimḥi’s Dictionary of Roots, the Sefer ha-Shorashim, completed circa 1205, have formulae of two lines at the end of some of the twenty-two chapters corresponding to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The original text was very sober, “The letter alef is finished and I will begin the letter bet”, as it appears in one of the earliest witnesses. Twenty-four codices contain mentions that are more elaborate. The variants of these exogenous elements were collected and classified in order to reconstitute or at least consolidate the manuscript tradition of the Sefer ha-shorashim. Beyond this first objective, it was possible to identify the probable region of original use by correlating the use of a formula with the location and dating of its attestations.

Keywords

• Qimḥi (David)
• Sefer ha-shorashim
• stemma codicum
• colophon
• formulae
• topos