â??This book is entirely the work of my hands, for I copied it for my own use. I am Nachman, son of Rabbi Samuel Foa. I copied it in the year 5315, when I was 15 years of age, in the house of the generous person Samuel, son of Moses Kazis.â?
A flash of the personal tucked into a colophon; the colophon framed with casual undulating lines; these doodles at odds with the meticulous pages of Italian-style Hebrew calligraphy that follow in young Nachmanâ??s compilation of the work of Rabbi Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra, the great medieval Spanish grammarian and commentator on the Bible; the text, in several places, blacked out, FBI-style, by Vatican censors, as was commonplace in mid-16th-century Italy; the pages worm-eaten, almost translucent, and bound in creamy velum: Here is an early Hebrew manuscript like dozensâ??hundredsâ??of other early Hebrew manuscripts.
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