Dodi Ve-Nechdi (Quaestiones Naturales)

us the proof that the political and social ostracism existing in Christian lands did not have the effect of preventing those thus excluded from taking their share of the spiritual possessions.''

Between the tenth and eleventh chapters of this work, according to the order in the Munich manuscript, there appears the following confession on the part of our author:

“I, Berachya, son of Natronai, was worried in thought till I girded my loins, and translated these subjects into Hebrew. I found them in non-Jewish writings, translated (or copied) as they were from the Hebrews (read ‘Arabs’ The author notes that Berachya mistakenly refers to Arabs as Hebrews here.). In them were concealed matters coming from the wise men of our age, whilst the splendid knowledge of the expert was not even looked at by the eye of the untutored. Now when I saw such splendid wisdom placed in front of (or, ‘restored to’) you in an ugly setting, I cleansed it from the hand of the Gentile, and wrote it out in the Holy Language, which is so dignified in tone. Now this is a dialogue between two contemporary scientists, an Uncle and a Nephew, being their contention in a style, refined and purified.''

It cannot be determined from whom the numbering of the questions in Adelard and Berachya originated—the latter only as far as the Munich manuscript is concerned, since the numbering does not occur in the other manuscripts. Steinschneider holds that it is often the work of the copyist; and thus might be explained the variations in the divisions and combinations of some of the questions in the present work. We can scarcely regard such deviations as arbitrary; even a wrongly bound copy of the original might serve to explain why, for example, chapters I–VIII of Berachya and Adelard XLVII–LIV change places.

I am able to confirm this surmise from very recent experience. It is perfectly obvious that in the Bodleian manuscript of Joseph Kimchi's Shekel Hakodesh (“The Holy Shekel”), which I have just edited, some of the leaves were misplaced and wrongly bound together, which proved somewhat perplexing to me until I was able to find out their proper place in the work.

Adelard discourses in his work, in the form of a dialogue between Uncle and Nephew, on various branches of...