Nevi'im Achronim - A Rare Manuscript on Parchment from Before the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. ...

Nevi'im Achronim - A Rare Manuscript on Parchment from Before the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. 14th-15th-century, Iberia. More than 600 years old!

A significant codex produced before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal. Latter Prophets [Jeremiah 4:24 - Ezekiel (complete)], with punctuation, cantillation marks, and some  'Masorah'. 288 full parchment pages (144 leaves).

A Hebrew manuscript, written on parchment, in a beautiful and professional square Sephardic script. Each page contains two columns with 19 lines each.

The unique precision and beauty of the Spanish Hebrew Bible made them particularly cherished by collectors of Hebrew books and libraries. With the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century, Spanish Jews were scattered to every corner of the world, taking with them their most valuable possessions, their books. Nevertheless, complete Hebrew Bible manuscripts written in Iberia before the expulsion are extremely rare.

This manuscript faithfully preserves the tradition of Masorah. In addition to the biblical text itself, the manuscript includes a bit of Masorah, an extrabiblical system of signs ensuring accurate transmission of the writing and reading of the Hebrew Bible.

All Hebrew manuscripts from the medieval period written on parchment adhere to the well-known rule called the 'Gregorian rule, ' named after the researcher of the nineteenth century who first observed that the two inverted sides of an open manuscript always display the same side of the parchment, either the side of the animal hair or the side of the flesh. The norm for Hebrew manuscripts in Spain was to start with the hair side of folio 1r. In the next opening, two pages facing each other (f.1v-2r) would display the flesh side, and in the opening after that (f.2v-3r) the two hair sides would naturally be presented, and so on.

This manuscript is similar to other manuscripts from the fourteenth century, (as seen, for example, in the reproductions in Bezalel Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Isles, Vol. 2, 1982, Plates 7-10, etc).

The Iberian Peninsula is located in southwestern Europe, containing two large countries: Spain and Portugal. In addition, it includes Andorra in the Pyrenees in the north and Gibraltar at the southern tip.  The occupation of the peninsula by the Christians in the Middle Ages, encouraged by the pope as a holy war known as the 'Reconquista, ' especially gained momentum under Pope Urban II. In the medieval period, the peninsula neighbored many kingdoms, the dominant ones being Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Leon, and Portugal. The Christians gradually took control of the peninsula until they expelled the Moors and the Jews in 1492, defeating the emirates of Granada.

The expulsion of Spain, in 1492, was the forced removal of Jews from the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon who refused to convert to Christianity. Expulsion under different conditions occurred five years later, known as the 'Rençá' [1497], also for Jews in Portugal. In 1498, Jews were also expelled from the kingdom of Navarre.

An extremely early and highly important manuscript, more than 600 years old.