The Second Edition of Dibré Aboth ha-Olam or Sayings of the Jewish Fathers may be shortly described as a reprint of the work as published in 1877, with a section of ADDITIONAL NOTES. Interspersed with the reprint are insertions in square brackets, a few things are omitted, and short new notes fill up pages 26, 41, 77, 98. With the two titles of the book compare Shebach ABOTH OLAM in the Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus and its Greek rendering Πατέρων ύ?μνος {Greek Patérwn ú?mnos}.
An Appendix not yet published contains the CATALOGUE of Manuscripts referred to in the Introduction, which was announced as undertaken "with especial reference to disputed readings," followed by critical Notes on the Text of Aboth. It is complete as first planned, but awaits a supplement describing Manuscripts examined or to be examined by Mr Schechter, Reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic in the University of Cambridge, to whose learning and acumen I am indebted for the suggestion of additions and improvements throughout the work.
The collection of Manuscripts lately brought from Egypt by Mr Schechter, with the generous consent of the Grand Rabbi
of Cairo, includes some fragments of the Old Testament in Greek with the TETRAGRAMMATON written repeatedly in Hebrew characters ου? το&ιcιρc;ς ν&υcιρc;ν α?λλὰ το&ιcιρc;σ α?ρχαιοτάτοισ {Greek ou? toîs nûn a?llà toîs a?rxaiotátois}, in accordance with the remark of Origen on Psalm ii. (Opp. II. 539) that it so stood ε?ν το&ιcιρc;σ α?κριβεστέροισ τω^ν α?ντιγράφων {Greek e?n toîs a?kribestérois tw^n a?ntigráfwn}, and the confirmatory testimony of St Jerome (Praef. in Sam. et Malachim) "Et nomen Domini tetragrammaton in quibusdam Graecis voluminibus usque hodie antiquis expressum litteris invenimus." The Name is so written in the annexed specimen of Aquila's version of the Old Testament (p. viii).
In the same collection is being found more and more of the long lost original Hebrew of ECCLESIASTICUS (p. 169), a book which furnishes not a few apt illustrations of Aboth, although the precise degree of its affinity in thought and diction to the New Hebrew is still under discussion.
Of the innumerable works on ABOTH it must suffice to make mention here of Professor Dr H. L. Strack's concise and thoroughly practical edition Die Sprüche der Väter.
C. TAYLOR.
13th August 1897.