(1) That of the Pentateuch first appeared, in Hebrew characters, in the folio Tetraglot Pentateuch of Con- stantinople, in the year 1546. The exact title of this exceedingly rare book is not given by Wolf, by Masch, nor by De Rossi (it is said to be found in Adler's Biblisch-kritische Reise, p. 221) ; but, according to the title of it which Tychsen cites from Rabbi Shabtai (in Eichhorn's Repertorium, x, 90), Saadj-ah's name is ex- pressly mentioned there as the author of that Arabic version. Nearly a century later an Arabic version of the Pentateuch was printed in the Polyglot of Paris, from a MS. belonging to F. Savary de Breves ; and the text thus obtained was then reprinted in the London Polyglot, with a collection of the various readings of the Constantinopolitan text, and of another MS. in the appendix. For it was admitted that Saad- yah was the author of the Constantinopolitan version ; and the identity of that text with that of the Paris Polyglot was maintained by Pococke (who neverthe- less acknowledged frequent interpolations in the lat- ter), and had been confirmed even by the collation which Ilottinger had instituted to establish their di- versity. The identity of all these texts was thus con sidered a settled point, and long remained so, until Michaelis published (in his Orient. Bibl. ix, 155 sq.) a copy of a Latin note which Jos. Ascari had prefixed to the very MS. of De Breves, from which the Paris Polyglot had derived its Arabic version. That note ascribed the version to " Saidus Fajumensis, Monachus Coptites;" and thus Saadyah's claim to be considered the author of the version in the Polyglots was again liable to question. At length, however, Schnurrer (in his Dissertut. de Pentat. Arab. Pohjgl. in his Dissert. Philologico-criticai) printed the Arabic preface of that MS., proved that there was no foundation for the "Monachus Coptites," and endeavored to show that Sa'id was the Arabic equivalent to the Hebrew Saad- yah, and to re-establish the ancient opinion of the identity of the two texts. The results which he ob- tained appear (with the exception of a feeble attempt of Tychsen to ascribe the version to Abu Said in the Repertorium) to have convinced most modern critics ; and, indeed, they have received much confirmation by the appearance of the version of Isaiah. This version of the Pentateuch, which is an honorable monument of the rabbinical Biblical philology of the tenth cen- tury, possesses, in the independence of its tone and in some peculiarities of interpretation, the marks of hav- ing been formed on the original text. It leans, of course, to Jewish exegetical authorities generally, but often follows the Sept., and as often appears to ex- press views peculiar to its author. Carpzov has given numerous examples of its mode of interpretation in his Crit. Sacr. p. 646 sq. It is also marked by a cer- tain loose and paraphrastic style of rendering, which
makes it more useful in an exegetical than in a crit- ical point of view. It is difficult, however, to deter- mine how much of this diffuseness is due to Saadyah himself. For, not only is the printed text of his ver- sion more fault)' in this respect than a Florentine MS., some of the readings of which Adler has given in Eichhorn's Einleit. ins A. T. ii, 245, but it has suffered a systematic interpolation. A comparison of the Con- stantinopolitan text with that of the Polyglots shows that where the former retains those terms of the He- brew in which action or passion is ascribed to God — the so-called dvOpioTTOTrciOeiai — the latter has the "Angel of God," or some other mode of evading di- rect expressions. These interpolations are ascribed by Eichhorn to a Samaritan source ; for Morinus and Hottinger assert that the custom of omitting or evading the anthropomorphisms of the Hebrew text is a char- acteristic of the Samaritan versions. (2) A version of Isaiah, which in the original MS. is ascribed to Saad- yah, with several extrinsic evidences of truth, and without the opposition of a single critic, appeared un- der the title, R. Saadice Ph'jumensis Versio Jesaice Arabica e MS. Bodley. edidit at que Glossar. instrurit, H. E. G. Paulus (fasc. ii, Jena, 1791, 8vo). The text was copied from a MS. written in Hebrew characters, and the difficulty of always discovering the equivalent Arabic letters into which it was to be transposed has been one source of the inaccuracies observable in the work. Gesenius (in his Jesaias, i, 88 sq.) has given a summary view of the characteristics of this version, and has shown the great general agreement between them and those of the version of the Pentateuch in a manner altogetherconfirmatory of thebelief in the iden- tity of the authors of both. (3) Saadyah's version of Job exists in MS. at Oxford, where Gesenius took a copy of it (Jesaias, p. x). (4) That of Hosea is only known from the citation of ch. vi, 9, by Kimchi (Po- cocke's Theolog. Works, ii, 280).
b. The version of Joshua which is printed in the Paris and London Polyglots, the author and date of which are unknown.
c. The version of the whole passage from 1 Kings xii to 2 Kings xii, 10, inclusive, which is also found in the same Polyglots. Professor Rodiger has col- lected the critical evidences which prove that this whole interval is translated from the Hebrew ; and ascribes the version to an unknown Damascene Jew of the eleventh century. Likewise, the passage in Nehemiah, from i to ix, 27, inclusive, as it exists in both Polyglots, which he asserts to be the translation of a Jew (resembling that of Joshua in style), but with subsequent, interpolations by a Syrian Christian. (See his work De Origine Arabicm Libror. V. T. His- toric. Interpretations, Halle, 1829, 4to.)