Hébreu 161

The manuscript shelfmarked "Hébreu 161" belongs to the Hebrew collection of the Department of Manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, in Paris — a collection that constitutes one of the oldest and richest holdings of Hebrew manuscripts in Europe. This collection is described, in its earliest stratum, by the great scholarly catalogue compiled in the nineteenth century, the Catalogues des manuscrits hébreux et samaritains de la Bibliothèque Impériale, by MM. Munk, Derenbourg, Franck and Zotenberg, with a preface by J. Taschereau. It is in this reference volume that the first hundreds of shelfmarks — among which number 161 belongs — received their standardized description, and it is this volume that still fixes today the framework of any inquiry into these objects.

The "Hébreu" shelfmark at the BnF is not a thematic classification but a continuous series, inherited from the successive inventories of the Royal then Imperial then National Library. The first shelfmarks are occupied by the biblical manuscripts: the Bibliothèque nationale de France has indeed devoted a specific research programme to the manuscripts bearing the numbers Hébreu 1 to 32, manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. Beyond this first strictly biblical set, the series continues with annotated bibles, Masoretic collections, and liturgical, juridical, philosophical and scientific works. To situate Hébreu 161 within this series is thus to situate it within a world-library where the transmission of the Jewish text — biblical, talmudic, exegetical — was patiently recopied by generations of scribes.

The present "Great Book" proposes to illuminate what can be established, what can reasonably be supposed, and what belongs to Memory and tradition concerning this object and its milieu of production. Where the archive speaks, we cite the archive; where it falls silent, we say so clearly. Epistemic honesty requires acknowledging from the outset that the individual detailed entry for no. 161 could not be confirmed word for word by the authoritative sources consulted: we therefore reconstruct its history through the framework, through the series, and through the attested practices of the Hebrew collection in Paris [Catalogue Munk-Derenbourg-Franck-Zotenberg; BnF, Archives et manuscrits].

The collection of which Hébreu 161 forms part was constituted in successive layers. The French royal collection had, since the early modern period, absorbed Hebrew manuscripts originating from seizures, purchases, bequests, and monastic and private collections. In the nineteenth century, the State undertook to provide these collections with scholarly instruments: it is in this context that the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Impériale appeared, an instrument signed by a team of leading orientalist scholars. The fact that this catalogue was the joint work of Munk, Derenbourg, Franck, and Zotenberg testifies to the philological seriousness of the enterprise: Salomon Munk and Joseph Derenbourg are among the greatest Hebraists and Arabists of the century, and Hermann Zotenberg was one of the institution's most prolific cataloguers.

The logic of shelf-marking explains the place of number 161. The conservators arranged the copies of the Hebrew Bible at the head of the series, hence the BnF's modern programme devoted to manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible shelf-marked Hébreu 1 to 32. The shelf-marks immediately adjacent to those we are studying correspond, in the inventories, to bibles and biblical portions: among the institution's online records one finds, for example, manuscripts described as Hébreu 16, Bible, Old Testament, Prophets-Hagiographa, or again Hébreu 28, Bible, Old Testament in Hebrew, dated 1344. This documentary proximity suggests that the zone of the first few hundreds of the Hebrew series is dominated by the sacred text and its apparatus.

It must be emphasised here that the old catalogue holds the value of a reference instrument. When a researcher wishes to establish the identity of a shelf-mark such as Hébreu 161 — its content, its origin, its dating — the first reflex is to consult the corresponding record in the printed catalogue, then the electronic record in the BnF's Archives et manuscrits database, which today serves as the authority for current description. These two documentary layers, the nineteenth-century print and the contemporary digital database, complement one another: the first fixes the scholarly tradition, the second updates it [Catalogue Munk-Derenbourg-Franck-Zotenberg; BnF, Archives et manuscrits database].

What can be said, with caution, about the likely contents of Hébreu 161? The serial method, in the absence of a confirmed individual entry in our sources, allows for a framed deduction. The nearby shelfmarks in the numbering belong, as we have seen, to the biblical domain: the BnF describes in its database units such as Hébreu 36, Bible, Ancien Testament en hébreu, around 1300, or grouped sets such as Hébreu 8 à 10, Bible, Ancien Testament en hébreu and Hébreu 1 à 3, Bible, Ancien Testament en hébreu. This regularity indicates that the zone of the first two hundred numbers of the series is massively devoted to the Hebrew Bible, to its books taken individually or in collections, and to its commentaries.

One must nevertheless remain rigorous. The belonging of a shelfmark to a biblical neighbourhood does not mechanically guarantee its content: the Paris Hebrew series mixes, sometimes on contiguous numbers, complete bibles, Pentateuchs, collections of Prophets and Hagiographa, Masoretic manuscripts and rabbinic commentaries (Rachi, Kimhi, Ibn Ezra) accompanying the text. The number 161, located beyond the first strictly biblical block, could therefore belong either to an annotated bible, or to a neighbouring genre — liturgy, law, exegesis — depending on how the old inventories aggregated the acquisitions. In the absence of direct confirmation in the authoritative sources consulted, this identification remains within the register of the probable, and not the established.

Editorial probity here imposes an explicit caveat: any reader wishing to know the exact content, dating, possible copyist and provenance of Hébreu 161 must refer to the precise entry in the BnF's Archives et manuscrits database and to the printed volume of the catalogue, which alone are authoritative. The present chapter advances only a horizon of expectation grounded in the structure of the series [BnF, base Archives et manuscrits; Catalogue de la Bibliothèque Impériale].

To understand a manuscript like Hébreu 161, one must know the material civilization that produced it. The medieval Hebrew manuscripts preserved in Paris fall into broad graphic areas — Sephardic (Iberian Peninsula and Provence), Ashkenazic (Northern France, Rhineland), Italian, and Eastern (Near East, Yemen) — each endowed with specific writing styles, page layouts, and binding practices. The dated copies in the collection, such as manuscript Hébreu 28, a Hebrew Bible copied in 1344, show that the holdings mainly cover the 13th–15th centuries, the golden age of biblical copying in Europe.

The scribe's work — that of the sofer — followed strict halakhic rules for liturgical scrolls; but for study codices, the so-called book-format mss., there was greater latitude. The copyist would often record there, in a colophon placed at the end of the volume, his name, the place and date of completion, and even the name of the patron. These colophons constitute the most precious source for dating and locating a manuscript; when they are absent, paleographers turn to the analysis of the script, the ruling, the inks, and the watermarks of the paper or the preparation of the parchment. It is through these techniques that the 19th-century cataloguers, and then contemporary codicologists, assigned a date and an origin to each shelfmark of the holdings.

The layout of medieval Hebrew Bibles frequently follows a tripartite arrangement: the sacred text in the center, the massora (critical notes on spelling and vocalization) in the margins and between the columns, and the rabbinic commentary framing the whole. This highly codified visual arrangement made the book an object of study as much as of devotion. If Hébreu 161 does indeed belong to the biblical sphere, as its shelfmark proximity suggests, it is likely that it presents all or part of this scholarly architecture — a hypothesis to be verified against the institution's record [BnF, Archives et manuscrits database; studies in Hebrew codicology].

The story of a manuscript does not end with its making: it continues through its journeys, its owners, its confiscations and its acquisitions. The Parisian Hebrew collection is the sediment of this circulation. Many volumes come from Jewish communities of Europe scattered by the expulsions — from France in 1306 and 1394, from Spain in 1492, from Portugal in 1496 — whose books followed the exiles or were dispersed on the book market. Others entered by the scholarly route, through the great libraries of Christian Hebraist collectors of the Renaissance and the classical age.

Here, Memory and the archive answer one another. The Jewish tradition has always surrounded the book with religious care: a worn manuscript was not destroyed but deposited in a genizah, and a precious volume was passed down by inheritance, mention of which was sometimes inscribed on the flyleaves. The library archive, for its part, coldly records the shelfmark, the provenance and the date of entry. When the two come together — a Hebrew note of ownership confirmed by an acquisition register —, the historian holds a certainty; when they diverge or one is missing, he must content himself with the probable. For Hébreu 161, the precise provenance investigation remains to be carried out on the documents themselves, and we flag it as an open task rather than as an established fact.

The scholarly catalogue of the nineteenth century represents the moment when this chain of transmission was fixed in public knowledge. By methodically describing each shelfmark, Munk, Derenbourg, Franck and Zotenberg transformed an accumulation of volumes into an intelligible corpus, open to international research. Contemporary digitisation, attested by the exhibitions of the Hebrew Bible on the Gallica digital library, extends this gesture by making the very images accessible from afar [Catalogue de la Bibliothèque Impériale; Gallica, BnF].

In the 21st century, a manuscript such as Hébreu 161 leads a double life: a heritage object preserved under strict climatic conditions, and a research document accessible through catalogue records and images. The BnF has launched specific programmes for its Hebrew manuscripts, like the one devoted to the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible Hébreu 1 to 32, which aim to produce renewed codicological and palaeographic descriptions, to establish the history of the collections, and to disseminate digital reproductions.

For the researcher, several documentary strata overlap. The printed entry of the old catalogue provides the 19th-century diagnosis. The electronic record in the Archives et manuscrits database — accessible under a permanent address of the type ark:/12148/... as for the neighbouring shelfmarks (for instance Hébreu 28 under the identifier cc5784t) — gives the current state of knowledge. Finally, the digitisation on Gallica, where it exists, allows the direct examination of the script, the illuminations, and the marginal annotations without handling the original. This threefold resource makes the study of the manuscript a cumulative undertaking, in which each generation of scholars corrects and enriches the previous one.

The "Great Book" presented here has no other ambition than to map out this path for Hébreu 161: to indicate where to look, what may be taken as established, and what remains open. It invites the reader to refer to the institution's official record for detailed data — exact content, foliation, dating, copyist, provenance — which alone will transform the probable presented here into the documented established [BnF, Archives et manuscrits database; Gallica].

Hébreu 161 first invites approach through its framework: a shelfmark within the great Hebrew series of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, originally described in the scholarly nineteenth-century catalogue by Munk, Derenbourg, Franck, and Zotenberg, and now relayed by the Archives et manuscrits database and by Gallica. The neighboring shelfmarks, populated by Hebrew bibles such as Hébreu 16, Hébreu 28 (1344), or Hébreu 36 (around 1300), and the existence of a program dedicated to the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible Hébreu 1 through 32, point the hypothesis toward content of a biblical or para-biblical nature, without this being, in the present state of our sources, formally established.

The history of this object is thus, in essence, the history of a series, of an institution, and of a science of transmission. It connects the gesture of the medieval scribe, the dispersion of the Jewish communities, the patience of the cataloguers, and the contemporary digital openness. What we have been able to affirm, we have grounded in the archive; what we have not been able to confirm, we have flagged as such. The final word belongs to the official BnF record, toward which this book serves as threshold and guide.