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CRITICAL NOTICES 743
P.S.— Since the above was in type, M. Belleli, who came to Oxford to
examine the Hebraeo- Greek Bentateuchs in the Bodleian Library, has
called my attention to certain slips in transcription' in Dr. Hesseling' s
edition. For instance, in segolate proper names the second e is
wrongly Omitted, as 'U<j>0, Tle\y, lie prs, for riD', JJS, }HS. In Gen.
xlix. 16 and 17, Dr. Hesseling takes the proper name fH for the Greek
conjunction Stw, thus destroying the sense of both passages. In
Num. xxx he gives «x<»p«>-e several times for efiirodifre (&On) through
misreading 3 as 3 and 1 as "I in the Hebraeo-Greek text. Again we
find airri (Wi)) for airol (DH) as well as e(j>xrye for eirrjyt, (f)drj for rrdji
and vice versa. In Gen. xxx. 8 the editor reads fioo-e where the
Hebrew (^Pl) shows Sore to be correct. Most of these faults might
have been avoided if Dr. Hesseling had been assisted by a. Hebrew
scholar when engaged in preparing his text.
BUBER'S "AGADATH ESTHER."
1RDX mJN. Agadische Abhandlungen zum Buche Ester nach einer
Handschrift aus Jemen, mit Vergleichungen einer zweiten Jemener
Handschrift aus der Oxf order Bibliothek, Cod. e. 57, zum ersten Male
herausgegebtn und mitAnmerkungen versehen, von Solomon Bxtbek.
(Krakau, Fischer, 1897.)
The well-known critical editor of Midrashim continues his very
useful work with a Midrash on the book of Esther according to a
Yemen compilation. I regret to find by his dedication that he has
lately lost his son Meir, born in 1850; may God console and continue
to him strength to pursue his learned work, more especially in the
publication of the Yalkut Makhiri on the Psalms, which is in
preparation. The present Midrash is carefully edited, as Buber's
editions usually are, from two Yemen MSS., the one in his own
possession and the other in the Bodleian Library. Both were
written in the seventeenth century; the second is the more complete.
The compiler made use of the Talmud and the usual Midrashim,
except those of the Rabba ; the Midrash Abba Gorion (see Buber's
ed. Wilna, 1886) occurs only in the Oxford MS. Many unknown
Midrashic pieces occur in the Yemen MS. The date of the com-
pilation of the present Midrash, says Herr Buber, is difficult to fix ;
all one can say is that the compiler used Alfasi's and Maimonides'
writings, both of which indeed were frequently copied in Yemen.
It seems to me that the work was compiled in the fourteenth
century at the earliest; in that century many such compilations
744 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
were made, among others the famous Midrash hag-Gadol. The com-
mentary on the text is as full as those which Buber appended to his
edition of the Tanhumd, Pesikta, and minor Midrashim, which he has
so ably edited. The place at which the Oxford MS. was written is,
according to Buber, t/'mp m JVn, which he explains as NJ»X. The
right reading, however, is "VBNnp '33 pfll, a name which I do not
find in the Index Geographicus to D. H. Mailer's edition of Al-
Hamdani's Geographie der Arabischen Walbinsel.
GROSS'S "GALLIA JUDAIC A."
Gallia Judaica: dictionnaire giographigue dela France ffaprdsles sources
rabbiniques, par Hen!BI Gross ; traduit sur le manuscrit de Vauteur
par Moi'SE Bloch. Paris, 1897 (Leopold Cerf, Paris).
Since I have had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Gross, Rabbi at
Augsburg (Bavaria), and that is more than thirty years, he has been
working at the history of the French Rabbis in the north of Prance.
His results he communicated mostly "to the Monatsschrift (Prankel-
Gratz), and also a few to the Revue des Etudes Juives. The results of
his labours and researches are now put down in his present important
works. He, or rather his translator from the German into French,
classifies the matter under three heads^namely, (1) the identification
of all the Prench geographical names mentioned in Rabbinical
literature of the Middle Ages ; (2) a notice of 'the history of the Jews
in the places or provinces indicated by such names ; (3) a literary
notice of the Rabbis and Jewish writers who were born in, or bore
the name of such places. Our author shows how difficult it is to
identify the geographical names in Jewish writers, since they are
sometimes corruptly quoted, or in other eases are written in the
ancient form, e.g. NPCnJ Worms, pYH3N York. Attempts were made
to identify French geographical names by Zunz, Carmoli, by the
regretted Isidor Loeb, as well as by the writer of this review, the last
being still in MS. Our author does not mention the difficulties con-
cerning towns caused by a Hebrew translation of the name, e. g. '3313
from Estella (see p. 52) D1D3, not identified yet (p. 20). As to
mistranscription, a better instance would have been Troyes in
Champagne, transliterated rightly IWIB , which became later B^VHO ,
and was taken for Trees (Treviso in Italy). Dr. Gross plucked up
courage to publish his interesting volume under the auspices of the
SociUe" des Etudes Juives. His method is the following : — the names of
