Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/448

434 Geschichte und Wissenshaft des Judenthums, XXIV, 1875, p. 10) "Rabi Moysis expositio nominum in libris prophetarum."

The citations given in the De erroribus from Maimonides's Guide are almost all wrong as far as the numbering of the chapters is concerned, if we adopt as a standard the division of Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew translation, which agrees with the Arabic original. There is a second Hebrew translation by Judah Charisi, which differs in the numbering of the chapters, and finally the earliest Latin translation, which Perles discovered in a Munich Ms. and which he proves to be based upon the Hebrew of Charisi, numbers the chapters consecutively throughout the book, thus differing from either of the Hebrew translations, both of which begin numbering anew in each of the last two parts of the book. The author of the De erroribus must have had a Ms. more like the Hebrew translations in the system of numeration of the chapters, for he gives the book and chapter in every instance. The Paris Ms. which Mandonnet used has marginal variants now and then of the chapter numbers as given in the text, and these variants are almost always correct. The rest of the citations should be corrected as follows: Mandonnet, p. 22, line I, for LXXI read L; p. 22, § 5, insert ch. 23, 65 or 66; p. 23, § 7, for XIX read XXIX; p. 23, § 9, for IIº libro read IIIº. The other quotations are correctly given, except where there is a marginal variant, in which case the latter is the correct one.

It is a difficult and an ungrateful task to review this book. Greeted in Germany as a work of exceptional excellence, it is significant only as it is symptomatic. It purports to be an historical study; but the would-be historian possesses no historical imagination and has received no historical training. He makes a great display of knowledge of original sources, but has no conception of a critical evaluation of the texts which he cites in evidence. In a word, the work is historical only in the superficial sense that the several philosophers are passed in review in an approximately chronological order.

Dealing with the concept 'substance,' the author has no conception of the history of the term or of other terms which may be employed in a similar way. Hence he is quite willing to impute the