Talk:Sefer Asufot

I reverted edits made from Feb 3rd 2023

A number of frankly incorrect edits were made by one user, who then took it upon themself to move the page to a different name. If that user is reading this, please don't reinsert your edits without discussing them here. Joe in Australia (talk) 09:07, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

@Joe in Australia Name your objection? Everything was properly sourced. Explain exactly what was "frankly incorrect". GordonGlottal (talk) 12:50, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Some of your edits look OK, but given the number of changes you made I couldn't revert them individually and under the circumstances I thought it best to go back to an earlier version. If you want to reintroduce edits that are (a) properly sourced and (b) not things like "this source has a typo" I would have no objection.

The big thing was that your transliteration was incorrect and the way you went about moving the page witghout consultation throws doubt on your other edits. Similarly, you changed the publication date from 14th-century to 13th. If you look at the citation to the Jewish Encyclopedia you will see that it says the author lived at the beginning of the fourteenth century. That article was written by Louis Ginzberg and Moses Gaster. An editor contradicting those scholars is either very brave or very foolhardy, and in either case should cite sources that have similar weight. Joe in Australia (talk) 11:35, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@Joe in Australia Ginzberg and Gaster were tremendous scholars, but they died 80 years ago. When Gaster died only a few pages of the manuscript had ever been published. Since the sources your version uses were published the manuscript has been sold to a new home, published in part, and undergone more extensive study. Unfortunately, updating the article means using the lesser scholars that followed them. I'll deal with a few points:

• Re: the "typo," it isn't one. It's an incorrect expansion of the author's initials, ש. א. שטרן. The author of the Sotheby's catalogue used "A." as an equivalent for א, but because the א is short for אליעזר it should be translated E.. This error wasted some of my time and prevents the next researcher from easily following his citations, so I left a note. I don't really understand your objection.
• You don't say which source you object to. I added (1) Gaster's article, which you say you admire, (2) Djiubas' 1942 edition, which is extremely solid, take a look, (3) The auction catalogue. Sotheby's catalogues are always prepared by top scholars and should be considered premiere sources for this type of page. Moreover, I personally checked both claims for which I used it, namely the citation to Moriah and the marking of "Meir", and (4) the current NLI catalogue entry. To which do you object?
• Gaster (and therefore Ginzberg, who never made an independent study) was aware of only one piece of evidence for dating the manuscript: Heinrich Gross' 1883 article "Das handschriftliche Werk Assufot" in which he points to the model get dated 1307. More recent scholars have treated the MS as a compound work; the get is assumed to be one of the later additions but the core, which repeatedly acknowledges Eleazar of Worms (d. 1238) as a personal mentor, must be 13th century.
• Not every move needs a discussion. This is not a high-traffic page and the previous name was incorrect because
• There is no such word as "asufot." The title of the book (and therefore this page) is אֲסֻפּוֹת, Asuppot, a word which appears at the end of Ecclesiastes. The medieval Ashkenazi tradition interpreted this word as "anthologies" (as did some Christian sources), which is why it is attached to this book. Not only is there a dagesh qal (marking the "pp" sound) in the word in all editions of Ecclesiastes, it is grammatically necessary. Similar words on the same pattern include אֲסֻפִּים (Asuppim), אֲגֻדּוֹת (bands), אֲרֻבֹּת (sluices), עֲקֻדִּים (striped), and בְּרֻדִּים (marked). A word of this type must have a dagesh in the beged-kephet third radical, which means our title must be transliterated Asuppot.

GordonGlottal (talk) 12:34, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Actually, in re the dating, note that Gaster actually says both "about the beginning of the fourteenth century" and "at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century" at different points in his article. This is probably due to the conflicting internal evidence described above, which has since been considered resolved by multiple authorship. Further, Gross can't be blamed, because he clearly writes "Ende des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts gelebt hat" on pg. 65 and considers the get an addition as later scholars. GordonGlottal (talk) 14:34, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Ivan G. Marcus, in the 2001 article cited previously on this page, says "probably in the middle of the thirteenth century". GordonGlottal (talk) 17:53, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Keeping track: Aptowitzer, Luzzatto, and Zunz all date it c. 1290. GordonGlottal (talk) 19:08, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

See here where Marc B. Shapiro comments on the correct pronunciation of this word. GordonGlottal (talk) 01:18, 18 May 2023 (UTC)