A HEBREW-GERMAN (JUDEO-GERMAN) PARAPHRASE OF THE BOOK ESTHER OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
The text published here for the first time is preserved on fol. 400r to 417v of a single MS. in the Bodleian Library of Oxford, having the press mark Opp. 19 (Neubauer, no. 170). Fol. 1 to 400 contain a literal translation of the Pentateuch with intercalated exegetic remarks which are headed by the word peshat=meaning. While the translation of the Pentateuch is written in two columns to a page, our text is not divided into columns. Each line is marked off by a dot, and the stanzas by a break. The stanzas must have originally consisted of four long lines or two rhyming couplets,[1] evidently an imitation of the Nibelungen strophe. There are, it is true, four stanzas of twelve lines each (1, 13, 77, 105), ten of eight lines each (25, 45, 76, 89–104, 117, 351–362), four of six lines each (257, 1149, 1511–1522), and one of two lines (855), but these are exceptions and are no doubt due to the copyist. That the MS. does not present the text in its original form becomes evident from such spellings as the following:—herzen: smerzen 23, schon: kronen 39, began: gên 61, kummen: gefrümmen 223, künt: stunt 263, diesen: wesen 303, taeten: verrâten 311, urkünde: sund 345, brêngen: gelingen 351, erlosen: boesen 405, erloest: trôst 515, ll85, finden: schinden 641, huoben: gruoben 917, innen: finden 511, verzaget: magt 1193, samnt, samet (=sament, sant): genant 575: gemaut 374: haut 956: laut 1515.
The first part of our MS. was finished on the ninth of adar, 5304=February, 1544 by the scribe Joseph, son of Jacob of Wetzlar, and is dedicated to his wife Juteln, daughter of Naphtali Levi, "zu Wetzlar is sie gesessen mench zît, aber zu Frankfurt sie ach untr wîln leit." The second part, the Book Esther, was finished on Friday, the 28th of Adar I of the same year as the first part by Isaac, "der schrîber" (cf. v. 1512, 1519). The
- ↑ The rhymes are in the proportion of 1 feminine to 10 masculine rhymes. The strong preponderance of masculine over feminine rhymes is very characteristic of MHG. poems of a later period. Cf. Kochendörfer, ZfdA. xxxv, 291.
