Page:Eight chapters of Maimonides on ethics.djvu/44

24

A glance at the long list of manuscripts and editions of the Peraḳim shows the impracticability of trying to collate all the material available. The editor has, therefore, chosen a number of the most valuable sources, and has minutely compared them, being constantly guided by the Arabic. He has confined his attention as far as the Arabic is concerned to the Pococke version and that of Wolff based on it. A careful collation of Arabic texts may, however, clear up some points which are still left in doubt. The editor hopes to accomplish this task some day.

The material used in collation is as follows:

Br = manuscript of Add. 14763, written A.D. 1273, containing Samuel ibn Tibbon's translation of Maimonides' Commentary on Abot preceded by Ibn Tibbon's introduction to and translation of the Shemonah Peraḳim. This is the oldest and, on the whole, the best source known to the editor. It is very carefully written, with scarcely any scribal errors. For the first six chapters its evidence is very reliable. In the seventh chapter it begins to vary from the original Arabic, and in the eighth it departs rather widely, having readings which agree substantially with those of some unreliable sources. It is possible that the first six chapters were copied from one source, the seventh and eighth from another. This manuscript is characterized throughout by an almost superfluous use of the , even in Biblical quotations. It has a few vocalized words, all of which have been recorded in the notes.

Ma = a manuscript , Roman rite, fourteenth or fifteenth century ; in the library of the. Its readings are, on the whole, close to the Arabic, in places superior to those of Br, especially in Chapters VII and VIII, where the latter is faulty. The revised text of these two chapters is based mainly on this manuscript. There are, however, many, though unimportant, omissions, except in one instance in Chapter VIII, where all texts depart from the