Author Description

In the Escorial manuscript, the text of Tractate Nezikin of the Babylonian Talmud is presented in the center of the page. Below it, in the margins, is the legal digest of Isaac al-Fasi; on the right and left of the folios are the rulings of Maimonides; and at the top of the page, in a narrow strip, is the text of the Talmud Yerushalmi. The surprising discovery of this text places at the disposal of researchers an additional version of the Talmud Yerushalmi for the tractates Bava Qama, Bava Mezi`a, and Bava Batra. In its style and formulations, the Escorial manuscript represents a different and usually superior tradition to that represented in the Leiden manuscript and shows an affinity to one of the ancient, reliable fragments from the Cairo Geniza. A survey of European libraries turned up thousands of fragments of Hebrew manuscripts that had been used as covers for archival material. These included fragments of Yerushalmi Neziqin, which are preserved today in archives in Bologna and Savona in Italy. They are included in this new printing, with Introductions describing their genealogy and the nature of their formulation and style. The Savona fragments provide a further textual witness to the Sephardic-Oriental tradition of Yerushalmi Neziqin preserved in the Escorial manuscript and in the Cairo Geniza fragments, while those from Bologna provide a further witness to the western-Italian tradition preserved in the Leiden manuscript.