OCR Text |
Show A JIBRAHY OF BIBLES, f THE SCRIPTURAL COLLECTION MADE BY A RESIDENT OF BOSTON. Old Jewish Miunirrlt Tlint Were Hun! to Oliltiin A Itoll from the Fiimou Jorn-! Jorn-! wilitin Donler The Wonderful "Chnlned Illlile" A Piece of tiyms. ' S. Brainard Pratt, of Forest Hills, Is i the owner of tho largest and finest col- i lection of Bibles in this part of tho coun- ; try. For upward of twenty-five years v Mr. Pratt has been accumulating this collection, and now has over three hundred hun-dred volumes and a great variety ol manuscripts of the Bible. Somo of his ; Bibles aro nowhero else to bo seen in this i country. i Beginning with tho manuscripts, is a s Jewish roll of the five books of Moses. Thoso Jewish rolls are very difllcult i things to get. Mr. Pratt had boon try - ing for ten years to find one, when u j learned German professor, Dr. Gregory, j of Leipsio, secured this one for him. It j is contrary to the Jewish law to allow one to fall into tho hands of a Gentile, i When one is worn out, or for any reason ', of no further use, it is buried in the ground and the placo of its interment j forgotten as soon as possible. It would bo considered sacrilege to destroy ono in any other manner as much as to let a j Christian havo it. This roll In Mr. j; Pratt's possession was mado by a learned S rabbi of Posen, Prussia, for his own use, !j und at his death his children thought I more of tho money than tho sacredness of the roll and sold it to Dr. Gregory. It j f came into Mr. Pratt's hands for $0.1 i t The roll is of vellum, which is a mate-1 r rial of finer texture, thinner and smother ! than parchment, and is a continuous roll l 48J feet long, mado by sewing together i; a lot of skins some 20 inches in length, i , Not an erasure or correction appears on I? tho whole manuscript, as the copyist is " obliged, if he makes an error, to destroy the entire skin on which it has occurred i and bogiu his work again. 1 j THIS TWELVE 31INOR I'UOPHETS. f Mr. Pratt has since received several of f these rolls, ono of the most interesting of 'i ' which contains the twelvo minor proph- 1; ets, Ilosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, icwisli Btandiird of absoluto correctness and perfection in their roll is so high that an imperfect copy doesn't count, and a single letter wrong or missing makes the wholo roll imperfect and worthless in their sight. So the first letter of the first word of tho first verso of the first chapter chap-ter of Genesis is omitted. This vitiates tho whole business, and the roll is of no account, it can lawfully bo sold, it can go into the hands of a Gentile, and it can be sent out of tho sacred limits of the holy city. Four nioro of these curious rolls canw from Constantinople to Mr. Pratt's library, li-brary, containing respectively tho books of Itiith, Songs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations, all of them on parchment. parch-ment. Ho has two parchment rolls of tho book of Esther, which camo from Constantinople, one of which was formerly for-merly read from in a synagogue in the Bultan's capital, and another on an exquisitely ex-quisitely carved ivory roller, which is written in characters so small as to be a perpetual wonder and tribute to the extraordinary ex-traordinary patience and linger cunning of tho copyist. IIo has a roll tf Esther on paper from Russia, and one on parchment parch-ment from Germany. A GREAT CURIOSITY. Ono of tho greatest curiosities in tho wholo collection is a "chained Bible." This mediaeval relic was printed at Stras-burg Stras-burg in 1480, less than half u century after tho invention of printing, and twelvo years before the discovery of America. It is in four immense folio volumes, each being 20xl!ljx5 inches in j size, and containing a voluminous com-I com-I mentary on tho sacred text, both text j and commentary being iu Latin, tho tough old black letter being used, which , nono but ft few adepts can read. Tho I binding of these ponderous tomes is i heavily re-enforced with iron plates and clasps, and ft heavy iron chain is at-i at-i tached to each of them, by which tho j old books were secured to pillars in the j churches where they were kept. These I volumes wero printed by John Guteii- berg, the father of printing, and were ; doubtless among tho first Bibles ever l printed. One can only gaze with awo nnd veneration ven-eration upon a piece of papyrus, framed behind glass, on whoso brown and dingy surface, in strange characters dulled by centuries and barely distinguishable is written tho third verso of tho wmul i, jiiiu!i, .Liitiiiiiu, uiuKiiihuu, .epnuman, j Ilaggai, Zechariah and Malachi. This i roll was used for a long timo at a syna-j syna-j goge in Jerusalem, and vas finally laid j, aside, as tho letters were too iino for tho j eyesight of tho reader, and another was f; made iu larger letters. Tho discarded j: roll was condemned to be buried, but the Kev. Dr. Selah Merrill, who was then in f Jerusalem, persuaded tho man to whom ... the duty was intrusted that it could be buried in Boston just as well as iu Jeru-. Jeru-. saleiu. Mr. Pratt h:is another roll from Jerusalem Jeru-salem containing the Book of Genesis. ;J This was purchased by the Itev. II. C. Tumbull, 1). D., at tho shop vf M. W. j Shapira, a famous Jerusalem dealer iu ancient manuscripts, who became noted for almost succeeding in swindling the 5 British Museum out of 250,000, which he demanded for nn alleged ancient copy of some rare Biblical manuscript. It took tho keenest experts on tho subject in the world to prove tho manuscript spurious. I. This roll in Mr. Pratt's possession is a fine r specimen of Hebrew lettering, with one it funny thing about it. It is against the f law to send a roll of any part of the Scriptures out of Jerusalem. But the chapter of Exodus. This dates back, perhaps, per-haps, 2,000 years no ono can tell how-old how-old it belongs to nn antiquity so vast. Tho very reeds from which this papyrus w as mado were of a siecies that ceased to exist centuries ago. Tho language is ! ancient Coptic, a dead languago while Latin and Greek were daily spoken by millions. Mr. Pratt has another similar but less ancient pieco of papyrus, abo from E.jjpt, and boarlng a fragment in Greek letters. Mr. Pratt was impelled to begin bis collection col-lection by tho general ignoranco of tho origin of tho Biblo nnd tho way it came down to us, among the peoplo, as revealed re-vealed by his Sunday school class. So 'ne started to form a collection of manuscripts manu-scripts and volumes that should illustrate illus-trate each successive form which tho holy books have taken from the beginning begin-ning until the present day, the various kinds of material on which it has been inscribed or printed, and tho languages which it has passed through. What it has cost him ho has no precise notion, but tho closest guess that can be made would not placo its total cost at less than $5,000. Boston Advertiser. |