FOREWORD.

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For the most part, they are only slightly instructed in the sacred language, and it is not surprising that the manuscripts copied by them and edited by scholars suffer from this. We believe their ignorance is specifically the cause of the change in gender we notice for certain words, which in the common language are feminine, whereas they are, conversely, masculine in the sacred language. For example, p. 257 nebresch growth/sprout; p. 173 schawzaba savior/deliverer; p. 155 chaye life; p. 128 debcha sacrifice (plural debche).

The title Liber Superiorum Book of the Superiors that we have adopted is the translation of ktaba d'rischane Book of the Heads/Chiefs, which is found in the conclusion of the work (¹). Mr. Budge translated it as The book of governors. The exact meaning of rischane is chiefs.

The Table of Contents, provided by the author himself and placed at the beginning, does not always agree with the chapter titles inscribed in the body of the work, which is quite inconvenient. However, we did not want to change it out of respect for the author. We have limited ourselves only to regularizing the chapter numbers of the third book, which seemed too cumbersome for reference.

In the notes, here is how we indicate the different manuscripts: Bᵈ = Mr. Budge’s manuscript; Bᵈ BC, Bᵈ A = other manuscripts of Mr. Budge; Bʳ = Berlin manuscript; V. = Vatican Library manuscript.

(¹) See p. 435.