high educational status among his coreligionists at Odessa, bul rather aa one ofthebesl Hebraists of our day. When in 1839 Abraham Firkowitch brought from the ( ,'rimea a mass ot curious and unknown manuscripts, and. among others, a codex of the later prophets, whiedi had. like several Pentateuch fragments, with Haphta- roth and Targum, a peculiar punctuation tic- vowel and accent points deviating in form, placed not un- der, km above the consonants and which he presented to the Odessa Society tor history and antiquities, Pin- sker gave himself to the deciphering of this newly dis- covered system of punctuation, and never rested till, in 1842 kk in- became thoroughly acquainted with the materials before him. lie Bhowed the- patience- of a monk >-t tin .Mid. IK- Agi s, continually making researches
PINSKER
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PINTELLI
in bibliography, biography, and literary history, and did not even shrink from commencing to study the Arabic, the language in which some of the manuscripts were composed. To acquire the latter was in those days no mean task, especially in a town like Odessa, yet Pinsker overcame all difficulties, and by his indefatigable dili- gence he mastered that language also. But none of these researches and their result were communicated to the world. Pinsker was too modest a man to presume that he had anything at command worth knowing by the rest of the world until Osias Schorr applied to him for a contribution to his critical Ha-Chaluz. For this purpose, Pinsker began his labors with a communica- tion concerning the accomplishments of two Karaites, Mose Darai and Radba (David ben- Abraham), natives of Fez, who lived during the Middle Ages, and stood in great repute for their learning. The result of these la- bors grew to a great work of comprehensive contents, which he published under the name Likkute Kadmo- nioth (" Collections from Times of Yore"), and also under the title, The History of Karaism and the Karaite Lit- erature. In it he describes the development of Karaism, and notes four consecutive periods : a pre-Ananitic, one of Anan himself, another of the reformer Nohawendi, and last the Karaites proper. The latter period brought about the breach concerning the Talmudic tradition, and missionaries were sent to Jewish congregations in order to call the people together to enlist them for the new doctrine. From this calling together (Hebrew, Icara*), the word Karaite, according to Pinsker, was derived. They were the people who laid the foundation-stone for completing the edifice of Biblical orthography, grammar, lexicography, and modern Hebrew poesy ; and although Gaon Saadia may be considered in Pabbinical circles as the first who wrote a Hebrew grammar and a lexicon, and Dunash ben-Labrat is looked upon as the first who wrote poetry according to Arabic rules, yet there were already among the Karaites many grammarians, lexi- cographers, and poets, who made use of the Arabic me- tre, and of this we find ample proofs in the Likkute. Important Karaite writings are quoted, among which the Lexicon by Radba and the Divan by Mose Darai are largely treated of. Pinsker maintains that the latter lived during the 9th century; and, if so, Darai must lie considered the leader of a great poetic period, the value of whose poetical productions was highly ap- preciated, inasmuch as Gebirol Mose ibn-Ezra, Jehuda ha-Levi, and Abraham ibn-Ezra employed many suc- cessful similes, expressions, and even whole strophes, which accord in sound and manner with those of Darai. The Likkute found a reception which surpassed the highest expectations of the author. Hardly known pre- viously in the republic of letters, Pinsker became all at once a celebrated name. The extraordinary compila- tion, the imposing erudition, the superabundance of rich material, the conscientiousness and geniality of com- binations, were all calculated to cause admiration. Be- fore the work was all published, those, as it were, of- ficial representatives of Jewish history, Jost and tiriitz, hastened to declare their acknowledgment. The for- mer, with full admiration, in the " Ben-Chananja" (1860), and the latter in the preface of the fifth volume of his history of the. Jews. Also Dr. Schmiedl (Frankel's Mo- natsschrijl, 18(51) signified his appreciation of Pinsker. I In the year 1863 Pinsker published in Vienna his Mebo ha-Nikkud, or, as entitled in German, "Introduction to i the Babylonic- Hebraic punctuation system, executed according to the manuscripts for history and antiqui- ties in the Odessa Museum." This work is a master- piece of critical penetration into the historic develop- ments of the vowel and accentuation points. Every line of the Likkute and Mebo sufficiently proves Pin- sker's inquiring mind as a grammarian, and it was one of his favorite ideas to publish a system of Hebrew grammar, which he was on the point of carrying out when his health began to fail him; and the more he tried to bid defiance to nature, the more inexorably the
overtasked mind took revenge on him. He died Oct. 29, 1864. He left in MS. more than eighty works, the most of them having reference to Pabbinical or Karaite authors, such as Jephet ben-Ali, Aron the First, Abra- ham ibn-Ezra, Maimonides— the books Abodah and Cor- banoth — Kalonymos ben-Kalonyms, Mordecai Contini, Delmedigo, and many others. They treat of punctua- tion, accentuation, the Masorah, theoretic and practi- cal grammar, lexicography, concordances, comparisons in philology, exegesis, bibliography, Biblical geogra- phy, and numerous other subjects. His loss is greatly mourned among Hebraists, for had he lived he would probably have given a completeness to his works which no one else is able to supply. (J. H. W.)