Microfilm of Rare Talmud Manuscript ‘rediscovered’ at Hebrew U

A microfilm of a rare Talmud manuscript, in the possession of a monastery in Spain, has recently been “rediscovered” by Prof. Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal, Professor of Talmud at the Hebrew University. The manuscript is the entire Tractate of Nezikin ( “Damages” ) of the Palestinian Talmud (“Yerushalmi” ), comprising the subtractates of Bava kama, Bava Metzia and Bava Batra.

The text may prove to be of great importance to the scholarly world because it is the only complete one of the Yerushalmi’s Tractate Nezikin besides that included in the so-called Leyden manuscript of the complete Yerushalmi.

A microfilm of this manuscript has been in the collection of the institute of microfilmed Hebrew manuscripts of the Jewish national and university library for many years. Rosenthal accidentally came across the text while browsing through the university’s file of microfilms of old manuscripts while investigating a certain passage of the Babylonian Talmud.