Kayserling's biography. An encyclopa?dical knowledge was displayed by Manasseh in his writings; this should certainly not stand against him. His most important works are (1.) nsi ^DS, in Hebrew, being an index to all the passages of the Hebrew Scriptures in the Jllid- rash Rahhoth on the Pentateuch and the Five Megil- loth (Amsterdam, 1628) ; (2.) Conciliator, sive de con- venientia locorum S. ScripturcE, qum pugnure inter se vi- dentur, etc. (in Spanish, Amst. 1632-1651, 4 vols.; vol. i was translated into Latin by Vossius, Arast. 1633, and the whole into English by Lindo, London, 1842) ; (3.) De Creatione Prohlemata (in Spanish, Amsterd. 1635) ; (4.) De Resurrcctione Mortuomm, Libri tres (in Span- ish, Amsterd. 1636) ; (5.) Qiinn "111::, De Termiiio Vitce (in Latin, Amsterd. 1639 ; translated into Eng- lish by Thomas Pococke, Lond. 1699) ; (6.) Ci'^n rTSTJ, four books on the immortality of the soul (written in Hebrew, Amst, 1651 ; new ed. Leips. 1862. These are valuable contributions to Biblical literature, inasmuch as IManasseh gives in them all the passages from the Hebrew Scriptures which, according to the explanations of the ancient rabbins, teach the immortality of the soul and the resurrection) ; (7.) mp"^ 'f^ii,Piedra Gloriosa 0 de la Estatua de Nehuchadnesar (Amst. 1655), an ex- position of Daniel's dream, written in Spanish, which the immortal Kembrandt did not think it below his dig- nity to adorn with four engravings. He also carried through his own press several beautiful and correctly- printed editions of the Hebrew Scriptures; wrote a He- brew grammar, entitled il"l1"i3 tlS'iU, Grammatica Ile- brea, diridida en quatuor libros, which has not as yet been published ; and left us over four hundred well-writ- ten sermons in Portuguese. See Flirst, Biblioth. Jiid. ii, 354-358 ; Steinschneider, Cataloejus Libr. Ilebr. in Bibli- otheca Bodleiana, col. 1645-1652 ; and especiallj' the val- uable biographies by Kayserling, Jahi-buch fiir die Ge- schichte der Jiiden (Leipz. 1861), ii, 85 sq. ; and by Car- moly, in the Revue Orientale (Bruxelles, 1842), p. 299- 348 ; C. D. Ginsburg, in Kitto, iii, s. v. ; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, xxxiii, 145 sq.
Manas'ses {Mavaaar)c), the Greek form of the name Manasseh, and, as such, a]ii)lied not only to those mentioned in the O. T., but to another in the Apocrypha.
1. The son of Joseph by that name (Rev. vii, 0).
2. The king of Judah"(Matt. i, 10; and so in "the Prayer" thus entitled).
3. One of the sons of Hashum (1 Esdr. ix, 33; comp. Ezra X, 33).
4. A wealthy inhabitant of Bethulia, and husband of Judith, according to the legend. He was smitten with a sunstroke while superintending the laborers in his fields, leaving Judith a widow with great possessions (Jud. viii, 2, 7 ; x, 3 ; xvi, 22-24), and was buried between Dothan and Baal-hamon Smith. See Ji;dith.
MANASSES, The PRAYER of, one of the shorter apocrj'phal pieces appended to the O. T. (In the fol- lowing account we mainly follow the articles on the subject in Kitto and Smith's Dictionaries.) Though wanting in the early printed editions of the Sept., it must have been included in the ancient i\ISS. of the Sept., as is evident from the fact that there exists an Ante-Hieronymian Latin version of it. It is found in the Codex Alexandrinus, and the Greek text was first published in Robert Stephens' edition of the Biblia La- tina (Paris. 1540), and in the edition of the same printed in 1546. It was also printed in the Apostolical Consti- tutions in 1563; it v.as then publisheii by Dauderstadt in 1628: inserted in the fourtl) volume of the London Polyglot, with the various readings of the Codex Alex- andrinus, in the Apostolical Fathers of Cotelerius in 1672; in the Lihri apocr. V. T. (Francof. ad j\L 1694, Halle, 1749) ; in the editions of the Apocrypha by Rei- neccius (1730), ^Michaelis (1741); and after the text of the Cod. Alexandrinus in the editions of the Sept. by Grabe and Breitinger.
MANASSES
697
MAND^ANS
I. THh and Position. — This apocryphal production is called the prayer oj' j)fanasses (irpoafvxi) Maiaacri)), or hi/mn of prayer ( Trpo(Ttv\i] rye tiioijc), because it pur- ports to be the supplications which this monarch oft'ered to God when captive in Babylon, mentioned in 2 Chron. xxxiii, 12, 13. Its position varies in the MSS., printed editions of the text, and in tlie versions. It is more generally api)ended to the Psalter with the collection of hymns and prayers, as in the Codex Alexandrinus, the Zurich MS. of the Psalms mentioned by Fritzsche, and in the Ethiopia Psalter, published by Ludolf (Frankfort- on-the-Main, 1701); in the three Latin MSS. used by Sabatier it is placed at the end of 2 Chron. (Sabat. Bibl. Lat. iii, 1038) ; in the editions of the Vuli;;ate formed after the Trident. Canon of the Bible it is usually put at the end of the N. T., succeeded by the third and fourth books of Esdras. Luther placed it as the last of the Apocr\'pha, at the end of the O. T., while IMatthew's Bi- ble, wliich first inserted it among the Apocrypha, and wliich is followed bj' the Bishop's Bible and the A. V., puts it before the Maccabees.
II. Contents, Author, Bate, Original Lanr/uaf/e, etc. — It opens witli an appeal to the God of the faithful patri- archs and their righteous seed, describes his greatness as Creator of all things, before whose power every one trembles, and whose wrath no sinner can endure, and speaks of his proffered pardon to the penitent (ver. 1-8). Thereupon the repentant king confesses his sins, humbles himself on account of them, praj-s for pardon, and promises to lead a life of gratitude and praise (ver. 9-15).